Latin American delegation visits Israel amid surge in antisemitism at home
Public diplomacy initiative brings local officials from Central and South America to witness aftermath of Oct. 7 first hand, in a bid to curb rise in anti-Jewish hate
Gianluca Pacchiani is the Arab affairs reporter for The Times of Israel
A delegation of Latin American mayors visited Israel last week in solidarity with the victims of the October 7 massacre in the Gaza envelope and the rest of the country’s citizens.
Organized by the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) from March 10th to 14th, the mission brought seven mayors and elected officials from Spanish-speaking countries to visit areas devastated by Hamas in its October 7 rampage, as well as to meet with families of hostages and with Israeli diplomats at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem.
The short but intense experience appeared to have left a mark on the participants. “We were always told that Israel was the root of the problem. But when you come here, you see that it’s not the case. You realize the truth is different,” said Jose Anibal Flores Ayal, mayor of La Paz, Honduras, at the end of the trip.
“Most people in Latin America only get to learn about what is happening in Israel through news outlets or social media, but never get the full picture,” he added.
Shay Salamon, the Uruguayan-Israeli head of the mission and CAM’s Director of Hispanic Affairs, explained to The Times of Israel that the public diplomacy initiative was born out of the realization that “reality has changed after October 7, both for the Jewish state and the Jewish people, and we also need to change our action in support of Israel.”
The delegation included elected officials from countries throughout the Spanish-speaking world: Guatemala, Chile, Uruguay, Panama, Honduras. Beside the governor of Panama City, the mayors came from middle-sized cities between 50,000 and 200,000 inhabitants, and had little prior knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and only one of them had ever set foot in Israel before.
The delegation was also joined by Pilar Rahola Martinez, former vice mayor of Barcelona, a prominent Spanish-Catalan journalist, writer and long-time Israel supporter.
Filling up the participant slots for the mission proved to be a challenge, organizer Salamon said, given the surging anti-Israel sentiment in various parts of Latin America and the political fallout of a solidarity visit to a country that is often perceived to be the aggressor.
“We sent out over 200 invitations to officials to join this trip, using all of our personal connections,” Salamon said. “It was very sad to see that most of the responses were negative, justified with all sorts of excuses, or only because ‘the situation is complicated.’”
“In these moments, you feel disappointed and you wonder who your real friends are. There are mayors that I have known for years who turned a cold shoulder. It hurts,” he added.
‘Now we know what Israelis have to live with’
Carla Brittannia Garcia Borace is the governor of the Panamá district, the administrative area that includes the capital of the central American republic, Panama City. Speaking at the end of the tour, she recalled that before her departure for Israel, her family were worried about her traveling to a war zone, and yet she felt she needed to “show solidarity and muster up the courage.”
“Now we know first-hand what Israelis have to live with,” she said. “We didn’t know that people here can get an incoming rocket alert on their mobile phones at any time, and they have to run for a public shelter. We were all deeply shocked.”
Garcia Borace recalled with horror the sights of devastation she witnessed in Nir Oz, one of the kibbutzim where Hamas wreaked the most havoc in its October 7 rampage, and the reports of massacres of whole families by hoards of terrorists.
“They did not care about whether their victims were children, adults, elderly or disabled people, even when they saw their panicked faces and heard their screams. They just killed them, raped them, abducted them,” she said.
“People around the world can have distinct political ideologies and religions, but we need to find a way to have a conversation in a framework of dialogue and understanding. We can never tolerate violence,” she said.
“At the same time, we have also seen how resilient and patriotic the Israeli people are. Five months into the war, life in the country goes on, children are going to school, people are working hard and taking care of each other,” she added.
Honduran mayor Flores Ayal echoed her words of praise for the country’s tenacity. “When I’m back home, I will be a mouthpiece for Israelis. I will tell people they are very industrious I will speak about the constant tension they live under, and their desire to live in peace. They deserve it. I hope this delegation is not the only one that will come here.”
The role of public diplomacy on the local level
Commenting on the choice to organize a study trip for local mayors and governors, as opposed to state-level officials, Salamon said that “local officials are in a position where they can really implement policies for their citizens.”
Action on the local level is not new for the organization. Before October 7, CAM lobbied on a municipal level in various countries to include the fight against antisemitism in educational curricula, and has pushed for the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism.
The definition is preferred by mainstream Jewish groups, as well as the Israeli government, but has taken flak due to some of the definition’s accompanying examples, which according to critics would brand legitimate criticism of the Jewish state as antisemitic.
Among CAM’s most notable achievements in this field is the adoption of the IHRA definition by the city of Rio de Janeiro last November.
In spite of the ground efforts, antisemitic incidents in Latin America, whether physical or on the internet, have become “a daily occurrence” after October 7, Salamon lamented. “It’s something we’d never seen before.”
In his words, the Hamas’s October 7 onslaught and its aftermath caught the public diplomacy community unprepared.
“Even though we had good tools, the physical assault in the south of Israel came accompanied by a media assault that had been in the making far ahead of October 7. It was not improvised, we know there were bots in Iran and Russia plotting it in parallel with the physical onslaught,” Salamon alleged.
“Israeli embassies in Latin America are small, their resources are limited, and they could never have prepared for an October 7 scenario. On the civil society front, we have done the best we could to respond,” he added.
“On a more positive note, Latin American Jewish communities have gotten involved from the get-go. Thousands have taken to the streets to show their support, spoken to the press, and have been keeping this effort up for months. This has surprised me,” he noted.
In one of the most poignant displays of solidarity, rallies were held in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires and in the Uruguayan cities of Montevideo and Punta del Este to mark the one-year birthday of Kfir Bibas, the youngest hostage in Hamas’s hands, on January 18.
Kfir was 9 months old when he was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz to Gaza along with his 4-year-old brother Ariel and parents Yarden and Shiri Bibas. The family holds Argentinian citizenship. After the Hamas attack, Argentina’s Foreign Affairs Ministry revealed that seven Argentine nationals had been killed, while 15 more were snatched from their homes.
Surging anti-Israel sentiment in Latin America
Some Latin American countries have a long history of kinship with the Jewish state. Panama city governor Garcia Borace took pride in the fact that her country is home to over 12,000 Jews and Israelis, a thriving community of traders that grew around the Panama Canal and that coexist peacefully with the local Arab and Muslim minority.
The country was one of the first UN members to recognize the newly born State of Israel in 1948. It had two Jewish presidents during the 20th century, and the current president, Laurentino Cortizo Cohen, is a practicing Christian of Jewish descent.
On the other hand, diplomatic relations with some Latin American countries, such as Venezuela, have been fraught for decades, or have grown tense since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, particularly when the government is left-led.
Bolivia cut diplomatic ties with Israel in October, while Chile, Colombia and Honduras recalled their ambassadors soon after. Ties have also been strained with the regional powerhouse Brazil, with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in February comparing Israel’s offensive in Gaza to the Holocaust, in a marked shift of policy from his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.
Salamon, however, remained sanguine that the public diplomacy work will pay off. One of his organization’s achievements in the mission, he noted, was that it managed to bring on board two mayors from Chile and Honduras, two countries in the anti-Israel bloc.
