In a Renewed Bid for Power, Sandinistas Vow Ties with Israel

They say they have changed. They insist that they are not the revolutionaries they were in the 1980s.

But try as they might, the Sandinista National Liberation Front finds itself spending much of the final days of this country’s third democratic election campaign running against its past.

That past saw a leftist-oriented government that instituted a hated draft, imposed food rationing in the face of a U.S. embargo and forced the vast majority of the tiny local Jewish population to go into exile in the United States and neighboring Costa Rica.

“We are not going to have a return to the past,” a high- ranking Sandinista official who asked not to be identified said in an interview.

“You are not going to see the things that went on here in the ’80’s repeat themselves. This time, things with Israel are going to be managed on mutual respect and friendship.”

Should Sandinista candidate and former President Daniel Ortega win Sunday’s highly contested vote, the official said, there will be an outreach to Israel and the United States, countries that sometimes covertly financed, aided and even directed attempts to overthrow the Sandinistas in the 1980s, particularly through the Contra rebels, who relied heavily on CIA and Mossad support.

Isaac Gorn, a member of the near-defunct Nicaraguan Jewish community who now lives in Costa Rica, does not trust the Sandinistas.

Recalling that the country’s synagogue was seized by the Sandinista government and converted into a secular school, he said no one should trust the Sandinistas.

“Before we lived tranquilly and no one bothered us, but then the Sandinistas came, took the synagogue, burned [his family’s textile] factory and everyone had to leave,” he said. “Maybe there are 20 Jews in Nicaragua and if the Sandinistas win, they will leave again, running.”

Once the nemesis of the United States, the Sandinistas now say they are a reform social democratic party no longer wrapped up in radical rhetoric.

“I see it very clearly that the Sandinistas committed many errors,” Sandinista campaign chief and Foreign Minister-designate Alvaro Fiallos said. “We cannot act like we did in the 1980s. The world has radically changed, we recognize that, and our position now is non-confrontation.”

All that is just hogwash, according to former Managua Mayor Arnoldo Aleman, an ultraright ally of the Contras who is neck and neck with Ortega in the polls.

He calls the Sandinistas a “red and black coral snake, modest in size but still deadly” and predicts that voters “will step on the coral snake and break its spine.”

Aleman notes that Ortega was an active participant and remains an ardent defender of “Pinata,” when the Sandinistas handed out vast properties and many businesses to their supporters during the lame-duck period after their electoral defeat in 1990.

At the time, members of the Basque separatist organization ETA and Italy’s Red Brigade got Nicaraguan citizenship. Members of Middle Eastern terrorist organizations were also reported to have gotten Nicaraguan passports.

Aleman has openly courted the 150-member Nicaraguan Jewish community and invited them to return home to vote.

Although the community is small, he hopes that the symbolism of Jewish support helps with fund raising and gets him a favorable reception in Washington, which is worried by his hard-line rhetoric.

“He definitely is with the Jews,” Gorn said of Aleman.

The Sandinistas’ vow not to antagonize Israel is also geared toward the United States, both to back their claim that they are changed from their days of U.S.- bashing and to make amends with American progressives who opposed Contra aid but were also leery of the Sandinistas’ unsavory ties to radical Middle Eastern groups.

Since the Sandinistas lost power, ties with Israel have been re-established under the government of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, who is not running for re- election. At the same time, the fully staffed Libyan Embassy is one of the more visible buildings here.

The posters supporting the Palestinian uprising that once adorned Sandinista party offices are no longer in place and the anti-Israel slant in the Sandinista newspaper Barricada has been toned down.

However, the Toralt that used to be housed in Nicaragua is now in Costa Rica, and the bitterness that led to the exodus of Nicaraguan Jews has not been forgiven, even if forgotten by the Sandinistas.