Latin America’s left is railing against Israel: Bolivia’s former head of state Morales and Colombia’s head of state Petro disqualify themselves with statements about the Hamas attack.

Supporters of Palestine demonstrate in front of the Israeli embassy in Bogota on October 10th Photo: Chepa Beltran/VW Pics/imago

Evo Morales didn’t even want to wait for the Israeli government to respond to the Hamas attack in southern Israel. “From Bolivia we condemn the imperialist and colonial actions of the Zionist Israeli government,” the former head of state of the South American country posted just a few hours after the terrorist organization began its offensive.

Shortly before, the State Department expressed its “deep concern about the violent incidents between Israel and Palestine in the Gaza Strip today.” It’s a gift that agency officials didn’t know exactly where Hamas was massacring hundreds of people. In any case, that wasn’t enough for Morales. He wrote on

“Immense injustices”

While Morales could only become president of his country again in two years, Gustavo Petro is already making solid government policies. Colombia’s left-wing leader, as he told the UN General Assembly in September, has spoken extensively about the “immense injustices” committed against the Palestinian people since 1948 and the Jewish people after 1933. Immense injustices. Petro tweeted the result of his extensive studies three days after the Hamas attack: “I was in the Auschwitz concentration camp, and now I see a copy of it in Gaza.” This publication was a disgrace for him and his country, reacted the World Jewish Congress. People like him should do better.

That would be too much to expect from quite a few Latin American leftists. In its first print edition after the Hamas massacre was the headline of the pro-government, left-wing Mexican daily newspaper La Jornada with a picture of a Palestinian celebrating the Hamas attack. It is only mentioned in passing who the aggressors were. In the days that followed, the front page featured only photos showing the suffering caused by the Israeli army in Gaza.

All the misery

It is almost unnecessary to mention what is happening on social media: the “uprising of the Palestinian people against apartheid” is being celebrated there, IDF soldiers are shooting in Nazi uniforms, posts show the same building next to the photo of the Brandenburg Gate illuminated in Israeli flags with swastika flags. Others post a watercolor-style painting of a Palestinian woman walking forward with a child raising her fist while her heroes fight in the background.

Maybe it’s even this banal, not at all bloodthirsty image that best sums up the whole misery. Just as the woman pictured has little to do with the real situation in Palestine, the statesmen, editors or internet activists quoted are not interested in the fact that she is actually doing better.

All they care about is the imagination of a homogeneous people fighting somewhere in the world against an enemy that is supposed to be the same as their own. The fact that this enemy is Zionism, which only acts in the interests of US imperialism anyway, makes it even easier. The prospect of peaceful coexistence between the Jewish and Palestinian populations would be counterproductive in its concept. This is also where the interests of this left and the clerical-fascist Hamas meet.

That’s not new. Morales, Venezuela’s head of state Nicolas Maduro and many radical Latino leftists have long stood firmly on Iran’s side, without whom the terrorist offensive would hardly have been conceivable. The fact that the apologists of simple anti-imperialism can appear so offensive despite the massacre is dangerous. Hamas has done a great job for them. The Israeli response will help them sharpen their weapons further.