JTA — When the president of El Salvador came to the White House this week, he rejected a US Supreme Court order to “facilitate” the return of a man locked inside one of his country’s notorious detention facilities.
“How can I smuggle the terrorist into the United States?” Nayib Bukele said at the meeting, echoing a White House position that has led a federal judge to rule the Trump administration in possible contempt of court. “We’re not very fond of releasing terrorists into our country.”
Bukele’s allegation of terrorism was presented without evidence; the Trump administration has admitted in court that the man in question, Maryland resident Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, was deported by mistake. Yet at the meeting, Trump advisor Stephen Miller, who is Jewish, and Attorney General Pam Bondi both claimed Abrego Garcia was a member of the violent gang MS-13.
For Jews with a passing familiarity with Bukele, his conflating of gang activity and terrorism had a familiar ring. After the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led onslaught on Israel, Bukele — who himself is Palestinian — compared Hamas to MS-13.
“As a Salvadoran with Palestinian ancestry, I’m sure the best thing that could happen to the Palestinian people is for Hamas to completely disappear… Anyone who supports the Palestinian cause would make a great mistake siding with those criminals,” he wrote on social media at the time. “It would be like if Salvadorans would have sided with MS-13 terrorists, just because we share ancestors or nationality.”
Coming from a head of state with Palestinian grandparents, whose country is home to an estimated 100,000 Palestinians and a history of electing Palestinians to higher office, this stance would seem unusual.
But the 43-year-old Bukele, who has called himself the “world’s coolest dictator” and embraced authoritarianism since his 2019 election, and whose deportation deals with Trump have thrust him onto the US media scene, is himself an unusual figure, particularly on Israel and Jewish issues.
The young Salvadoran leader is descended from Palestinian Christians on his father’s side. His paternal grandfather was born in Jerusalem and his grandmother was from Bethlehem; the two migrated to El Salvador amid a wave of Palestinian immigration to Latin America. His father, born in El Salvador, converted to Islam in adulthood and became a well-known imam, one whom Nayib has claimed had warm relationships with Jews and Israel.
Nayib himself, whose mother is Roman Catholic but who was targeted by anti-Islam messaging during his campaign, has said he is “not a person who believes much in the liturgy of religions.” But, he added, “I believe in God, in Jesus Christ. I believe in his word, I believe in his word revealed in the Holy Bible. And I know that God does not reject anyone because of their origins.”
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