Latin America’s Leftists Embrace Hamas as Region’s Dead and Abducted Toll in Israel Grows

Former Cuban President Raul Castro, right, raises the hand of Cuban President Miguel Diaz-
AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa
Christian K. Caruzo

Latin American leftists, including the leaders of the region’s three authoritarian regimes, openly expressed support or justification for the genocidal terrorist organization Hamas’s killing spree in Israel this weekend.

The vocal leftist voices justifying the killing, torturing, abducting, and desecrating of corpses beginning in Israel this weekend continued as reports have grown of missing and/or dead Latin Americans in Israel.

At press time, there are several reports of dead Latin American citizens among the over 800 killed by Hamas. The number of injured or missing Latin Americans continues to grow, though it remains fluid and unconfirmed.

Some of the confirmed reports include four Argentine citizens dead as a result of Hamas’ terrorist attacks and four more missing. Two Chilean nationals have also been confirmed dead. Authorities at the Brazilian Foreign Ministry confirmed that one of their nationals was injured by the attacks and three Brazilian men remain missing as of Sunday.

A Colombian couple attending the Supernova music festival in southern Israel is also reported missing. At least two confirmed Mexican nationals are being held hostage by Hamas, according to the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs Alicia Bárcena.

While a Paraguayan husband-and-wife couple were reported dead by local Paraguayan media over the weekend, the nation’s Foreign Minister stated on Monday that Paraguay has not yet received official confirmation from Israeli authorities.

Some regional governments began to initiate on Monday proceedings towards providing assistance to the hundreds of Latin American nationals currently in Israel and arranging for their eventual return to their respective countries. Out of the roughly 14,000 Brazilians currently living in Israel, some 1,000 Brazilians currently in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem have requested Brasilia’s aid to facilitate their safe return home.

Most of the region’s governments have condemned Hamas’s terrorist attacks, but not all, and some have justified Hamas’ actions.

Venezuela’s socialist regime was among the first to justify Hamas’s terrorism through a statement issued by its Foreign Ministry on Saturday. The regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro expressed its “profound concern” about the events and blamed them on the “impossibility of the Palestinian people to find in the multilateral international law a space to assert their historical rights.”

Venezuela, under the rule of late socialist dictator Hugo Chávez, broke diplomatic ties with Israel in 2009 after Chávez’s notorious animosity towards Israel strained the bilateral relationship. Chávez established ties with the Palestinian Authority shortly after severing the relationship with Israel.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a ceremony marking the start of the judicial year at the Supreme Court in Caracas, Venezuela, January 22, 2021. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a ceremony marking the start of the judicial year at the Supreme Court in Caracas, Venezuela, January 22, 2021. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

Cuba’s communist Castro regime, through its Foreign Ministry, avoided condemning Hamas’s attack, opting to refer to the incident as an “escalation of violence between Israel and Palestine.” While Hamas is a Palestinian terrorist organization, the Palestinian Authority is the current ruling entity in Gaza and the West Bank. the Castro regime blamed Hamas’ unilateral assault on Israeli civilians on “75 years of permanent violation of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and of Israel’s aggressive and expansionist policy.”

“The United Nations Security Council must fulfill its mandate and put an end to the impunity of Israel, the occupying power, in which the United States has historically been complicit by repeatedly obstructing the body’s action, undermining peace, security and stability in the Middle East,” the Cuban Communist Party asserted.

Former Cuban President Raul Castro, right, raises the hand of Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel during celebrations of the 69th anniversary of the Moncada Barracks assault in Cienfuegos, Cuba, on July 26, 2022. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

In Nicaragua, communist dictator Daniel Ortega issued a statement via state-owned media in which he refused to condemn Hamas while expressing his regime’s “solidarity with the Palestine cause.”

“The Government of Reconciliation and National Unity, and the people of Nicaragua, always in solidarity with the Palestinian cause, always fraternal, always close, condemning the barbarism unleashed again between two brotherly peoples, from our own experiences of imposed wars,” the statement reportedly read.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice-President Rosario Murillo, raise their fists during the commemoration of the 51st anniversary of the Pancasan guerrilla campaign in Managua, on August 29, 2018. (INTI OCON/AFP via Getty Images)

The government of Colombia’s far-left President Gustavo Petro generated its own fair share of controversy during the weekend regarding the attack on Israel. Petro reportedly spent much of his weekend sharing content regarding Israel and Hamas on his Twitter account.  

In a post on Twitter on Sunday morning, Petro, a former member of the Marxist M19 guerrilla organization, claimed that he had studied the Israeli-Palestine conflict since he was “very young” and asserted that he knows the “immense injustice that the Palestinian people have suffered since 1948. Just as I know about the immense injustice that the Jewish people suffered from the Nazis in Europe since 1933.”

Colombia’s new President Gustavo Petro delivers a speech after swearing in during his inauguration ceremony at Bolivar Square in Bogota, on August 7, 2022. (JUAN BARRETO/AFP via Getty Images)

“If I had lived in Germany in 1933 I would have fought on the side of the Jews and if I had lived in Palestine in 1948 I would have fought on the Palestinian side,” Petro said. “Now the neo-Nazis want the destruction of the Palestinian people, freedom and culture. Now the democrats and progressives want peace and freedom for the Israeli and Palestinian people.”

Local media reported that the Colombian government had initially issued a statement where it condemned the terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. While the original statement saw the Colombian government express its solidarity with the victims and their families, it failed to directly mention Hamas.

The statement disappeared from the Colombian Foreign Ministry’s website and replaced with a new version that removed the word “terrorism,” replacing it with “attacks on civilians.” While the original statement is now inaccessible, it can still be read through Google’s cache at press time.

A group of pro-Palestinian hooded men attacked the Israeli embassy in Colombia following the Hamas assault. The rioters reportedly burned Israeli flags, chanted pro-Palestine slogans, and painted swastikas on the building.

Argentina’s outgoing leftist government of Alberto Fernández issued a brief statement condemning Hamas’ terrorist attack, while Brazilian radical leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva expressed his “rejection of terrorism in any of its forms” but did not issue a direct condemnation of Hamas and its actions.

Sources inside the Brazilian Foreign Ministry told CNN Brasil on Saturday that Lula’s intention was to avoid giving publicity to terrorist groups and that the same stance has been adopted in past conflicts. CNN Brasil nonetheless stated that sectors of the Brazilian government are sympathetic to Hamas and consider the terrorist group “important” for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Bolivia’s former radical leftist president and aspiring dictator Evo Morales condemned Israel over the weekend, blasting the Bolivian Foreign Ministry’s statement for not reflecting the “feeling of solidarity of the Bolivian people with the Palestinian people.”

Morales, who has been at odds with leftist current President Luis Arce, ousted Arce from the ruling Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party and is poised to be the party’s candidate for the upcoming 2025 election.

“The Bolivian people will always condemn the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories, the systematic aggressions against the Palestinian people and their fight for independence,” Morales said. “These are the true causes of the conflict, not reporting them is being an accomplice.”

Morales, during a radio interview held over the weekend, asserted that MAS’ “democratic and cultural revolution” policies are “in defense of Palestine,” claiming that the Bolivian government’s statement is “biased” and serves as an example of the “right-wingfication” of Arce’s government.

“Israel is the peer of the United States, interventionist, expansionist,” Morales said, adding that “defending that is unacceptable.”

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.

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