In the
Southern Cone, governments are split between criticism and full support of the
Israeli government over the war
In 2023, after the Hamas attacks and the war, Brazilian citizens were repatriated from Gaza. Photo: Paulo Pinto/Agência Brasil, used with permission
At a press conference on June 3,
2025, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was asked by a journalist
to comment on a statement by the Israeli Embassy in the country, which claimed
the nationalist Palestinian group Hamas lies about the current situation in
Gaza ‘‘to feed antisemitism around the world.” The statement was released after
Lula called what is happening in the region a genocide.
Answering the question, he
reinforced this position:
They
come and say it is antisemitism? They need to stop playing the victim and know
the following: what is happening in Gaza is a genocide. It’s the death of women
and children who are not part of the war. It’s a government’s decision that not
even the Jewish people want. I cannot, as a human being, not even as Brazil’s
president, but as a human being, accept it as a normal war.
Lula’s criticism over the war in
Gaza, following Hamas’ attacks of October 7, 2023, is not new. Alongside
Chile’s Gabriel Boric, he has been an outspoken critic of the actions taken by
Benjamin Netanyahu’s government since the early days of the conflict, a
position that is not unanimous among their neighbors in the Southern Cone and
that helps to brew narratives of political polarization in the region.
For instance, Lula’s predecessor,
Jair Bolsonaro, a close ally of Netanyahu when he was in office, was invited to
visit Israel in 2024, a few days after Lula was declared ‘‘persona non grata”
for his criticism. Under investigation for attempting a coup d’état, however,
Bolsonaro’s passport is currently being retained by the authorities.
Check out how the region’s
countries are positioned on the war in Gaza:
Brazil
In 2010, during Lula's second
term as president, Brazil recognized the Palestinian state with the borders
established up to 1967. It became one of the first Latin American countries to
do so. While criticizing what happens in Gaza now, saying ‘‘It is not a war,
but an army killing women and children,” he kept standing for a two-state
solution.
The government also approached
the matter officially, on June 1, when it published a statement against the
creation of 22 new settlements on the West Bank, announced by Israel a few days
before:
Brazil
repudiates the recurring one-sided measures taken by the Israeli government,
which, by imposing a situation equivalent to the annexation of the occupied
Palestinian territories, compromises the implementation of a two-state
solution.
Brazil
also reaffirms its historical commitment to an independent and viable
Palestinian State, living in peace and safety alongside Israel, within the 1967
borders, including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, having Eastern Jerusalem
as its capital.
The organization Conib (Brazil’s
Israelite Confederation) stated that the president was once again attacking
Jewish people and risking their safety.
Chile
President Gabriel Boric, like
Lula, has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s war on Gaza. On June 1, during
his annual address, he also classified the Israeli government as ‘‘genocidal”
and said he would send a bill to the Legislature to ban any imports from
Israeli-occupied territories:
Considering
the ongoing violation of international law by Israel's government, regarding
illegal settlements in the Palestinian territory, and their recent announcement
about expanding this policy, I've decided that is fair to sponsor, and ask
urgently, for a bill forbidding the import of products from illegally occupied
territories.
Boric also said he demanded that
his defence minister draw a plan so they can stop depending on Israeli industry
in other sectors.
As Reuters reports, the Chilean
president recently ‘‘recalled military personnel from Chile’s embassy in the
country and summoned the ambassador for questioning.”
Uruguay
On May 15, 2025, hundreds of
people marched in Montevideo, Uruguay’s capital, commemorating the anniversary
of the Nakba — a date that marks the violent displacement of Palestinians from
their land. Besides calling for an end to the war, protesters demanded that
President Yamandú Orsi’s new government cease its relations with Israel,
reports newspaper La Diaria.
A few days later, on May 19, the
Defense Minister, Sandra Lazo, met with the Israeli ambassador, Michal
Hershkovitz. The meeting was made public by the Israeli representative on
social media, while Lazo said she decided not to take the protocol picture alongside
Hershkovitz, knowing it could ‘‘hurt feelings.”
She also claimed to have
reinforced that Uruguay recognized the Palestinian State’s independence since
2011, and does not agree with this ‘‘completely asymmetrical conflict.”
Orsi’s left-wing political
coalition, Frente Amplio (FA, Broad Front), through its executive secretariat,
issued a resolution on June 3, calling for support for actions defending the
human rights of the Palestinian people. The document says:
These
actions will encompass the articulated mobilization with social, cultural and
human rights organizations (…) and all those that, in a pacific and organized
way, contribute to support our national government in all their measures
advocating for the end of the massacre, the entering of humanitarian aid
without restriction, the respect for human rights.
The stand also drew criticism
from the opposition, such as the Colorado party, which issued their own
statement saying FA’s stance could promote hate and the demonization of Israel
and the Jewish people. The Blanco party, also in opposition, stated that Israel
had a right to self-defense, while calling for respect for humanitarian
principles to prevent harming people not involved in the conflict.
Orsi himself said on June 5 that
the statement came from a political force, ‘‘and that the government is
something else.” He also told journalists that the people in Gaza need more
than announcements, and he plans to send them powder, milk and rice, among
other products.
Argentina
Javier Milei, the ultra
libertarian Argentine president, is the most vocal supporter of Israel in the
region. The NY Times called him ‘‘a Catholic president who consults with a
rabbi,” pointing out that his devotion to the Jewish faith influences his national
politics. Last July, Milei’s cabinet issued an official statement declaring
Hamas an ‘‘international terrorist organization”:
President
Javier Milei has the unbreakable commitment to acknowledge terrorists for what
they are. This is the first time that there is a political willingness to do it
so.
The support for Israel recently
granted Milei the Genesis award, the ‘‘Jewish Nobel Prize,” which is worth 1
million US dollars.
As reported by AP news, the
organizers of the award explained their decision as an appreciation of ‘‘Milei
for reversing Argentina’s long history of anti-Israel votes at the United
Nations, designating the Hamas and Hezbollah militant groups as terrorist
organizations and reopening investigations into the bombings of Jewish and
Israeli targets in Argentina in the 1990s.”
Last year, in an interview with
Ben Shapiro on his YouTube channel, Milei said:
It’s
important to understand the freedom bond with Israel. It’s fundamental, because
it’s a people that has achieved the conjunction between the spiritual and the
material. And this spiritual and material harmony generates progress.
Paraguay
Last December, the country
re-opened its embassy in Jerusalem, acknowledging the city as Israel’s capital,
and was the first country to do so since the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023.
According to AP news, the move by President Santiago Peña, who attended the
embassy reopening in person, was ‘‘a rare diplomatic victory’’ for Israel.
As reported by Reuters, Peña
didn’t mention the war in Gaza on that occasion, but declared: ‘‘This step
symbolizes our commitment to shared values and the strengthening of the ties
that build a future of peace, development and mutual understanding.”
Previously, the Paraguayan
embassy had been located in Tel Aviv, and went through back-and-forth changes
since 2018, amid shifts in government, as also reported by the news agency.
This May, the Israeli foreign
relations minister, Gideon Sa’ar, called the gesture ‘‘friendship in the
harshest moment’’ for his country.
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