01/09/2026
ISRAELI MILITARY SUPPORT FOR ARGENTINA’S FASCIST JUNTA IN 1982
Declassified files from the National
Archives in Kew reveal that Israel supplied
significant weaponry - including strike aircraft -
to the Argentine Junta in the run-up to, and
during, the 1982 Falkland’s conflict.
The files show that Israel provided, via Peru, air-
to-air missiles, missile radar alert systems, and
large capacity fuel tanks for the Argentine
Skyhawk aircraft, giving them extra defensive
capability and air time over the Falkland Islands,
during the conflict.
Israel also sold a large number of reconditioned Nesher (“Dagger2) fighter jets from the 1970s, the Israeli version of the Dassault Mirage 5 multi-role aircraft, to the Argentine fascist regime during the period of the Junta (1976-83) together with spare parts and other military materiel.
Israeli arms exports to Argentina in this period are estimated to have been around US$1 billion, which greatly assisted the Junta in slaughtering British soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen during the conflict.
This activity was well known to the UK
authorities at the time but officials were
pessimistic that the Israelis could be persuaded
to stop. UK-Israeli relations were strained over
the first Lebanon war and Israel’s Prime
Minister, Menachem Begin, was no Anglophile.
Begin had led the Zionist tèrrorist group, Irgun,
during the British Mandate in Palestine and had
proclaimed a revolt against the British in 1944.
The Irgun were responsible for various terrorist
acts, including the attack on the British headquarters at the King David Hotel, killing 91 people.
Of the 91 killed by the Jewish tèrrorists, most of them were staff of the hotel or British Secretariat: 21 were first-rank UK government officials, including under-secretary Robert Paus Platt, the most senior official among the victims, and seven assistant secretaries; 49 were second-rank clerks, typists and messengers, junior members of the Secretariat, employees of the hotel and canteen workers; 13 were British soldiers; three policemen; and five were bystanders. By nationality, there were 41 Arabs, 28 British citizens, 17 Jews, two Armenians, one Russian, one Greek and one Egyptian. Forty-nine people were injured.
Begin also nursed a real hatred against the British for the ex*****on of his close friend and Irgun tèrrorist collaborator, Dov Gruner, in 1947. Despite a personal intervention from the UK Foreign Secretary, Geoffrey Howe, Begin was also prepared to sell signals intelligence equipment for use on Argentine spy planes.
Israel’s relationship with Argentina has always
been complex. Argentina has a sizeable Jewish
community (with some 180,000 emigrants, the
seventh largest Jewish community in the world
and second largest in South America). It has
survived periods of peaceful co-existence,
particularly in times of open immigration in the
19th and early 20th centuries, but also periods
of intense anti-Semitism.
Under President Peron, Argentina provided a safe haven to fleeing N***s (ironically as did Israel) and stopped further Jewish immigration; yet Peron allowed the establishment of diplomatic relations with the new state of Israel in 1949. During the “dirty war” under the Argentine Junta in 1976-83,
many Jews were arrested and “disappeared” but
the realpolitik of the day meant that Israel’s wider interests lay in supporting the fascist regime of the Junta in defence of the Zionist colonial project in Palestine- even if it was committing deadly pogroms against its own Jewish population.
