AN ISRAELI government scheme to secretly transfer thousands of Palestinians from Gaza to South America in 1969 has been detailed by a deportee on trial for murder in a new investigative podcast.

Palestinians in Paraguay, launched today, reveals a Mossad plan approved by Israel to relocate 60,000 Palestinians from Gaza to Paraguay.

Young men were recruited with fake promises of work in Brazil, but were abandoned in a country they had never heard of, their passports taken and never returned.

Talal al-Dimassi, then a teenager and now in his mid-70s, was detained and tortured by Israeli forces before his deportation. 

“They’d hang us up like bats, by our legs,” he told the podcast. “We’d stay hanging like that for an hour and a half.”

Faced with a choice between joining the scheme or having his family expelled from Gaza, he boarded the plane. 

“It felt like something was being ripped out of my chest,” he said. 

“The plane was climbing, and it was like my heart couldn’t follow.” 

The scheme unravelled on May 4 1970, when Mr Dimassi and another deportee opened fire into the Israeli embassy in Asuncion, killing one person. 

At their trial, Mr Dimassi exposed the deportations.

“I don’t regret spending 13 years in prison because I saved 60,000 Palestinians who were going to be expelled to Paraguay,” he said.

“They remain there. In our homeland.”

In prison, Israel made three failed attempts to have him assassinated, including a poisoned birthday cake and a paid attacker, the podcast heard.

The podcast draws on declassified Israeli documents, Paraguay’s Archive of Terror testimonies, and interviews with researchers. 

Palestinians in Paraguay is available on all major podcast platforms.