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Latin American nations have vehemently denounced the Israeli aggression in Gaza, and several of them have taken actions to that effect, including recalling ambassadors and offering support to Palestine.
Eco Morales, President of Bolivia and one of the far-left leaders from Latin America, put deemed Israel as a “terrorist” nation and removed its visa waiver program with Israel.
Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff had earlier this week called Israel’s aggression a “massacre”. Last week, tensions between Israel and Brazil had escalated when Brazil recalled its ambassador from Tel Aviv – the move prompted a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry to call Brazil a “diplomatic dwarf”.
President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro denounced “a war of extermination that has lasted nearly a century” against Palestinians. An MP from the United Socialist Party, of which Maduro is a member of, used the term “genocide” to describe the situation.
Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador and Peru have also called back their ambassadors, while Argentina and Costa Rica, which have large Jewish populations, called their Israeli ambassador at foreign ministries for meetings.
Uruguay’s President Jose Mujica had on Thursday asked for “an immediate withdrawal” of Israeli soldiers from Gaza and suggested that it might recall its ambassador in Tel Aviv.
Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for Israeli Foreign Ministry, expressed his “deep disappointment” regarding the recalls and said that they constituted “encouragement for Hamas, a group recognized as a terror organization by many countries around the world”.
Several leftist Latin American nations had broken diplomatic ties with Israel years ago – Nicaragua broke of diplomatic relations with Israel in 2010, Bolivia and Venezuela in 2009 after the previous Israeli military operation in Gaza, and Cuba after the Yom Kippur war in 1973.
In recent weeks, protests from all over Chile to Mexico have had thousands of people in the region took to the streets to show their solidarity for Palestinians in Gaza.
