Could one of the few pockets of resistance to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and its myriad other war crimes, be about to fall?
Last Tuesday (December 9), Bolivia’s Foreign Minister Fernando Aramayo and his Israeli counterpart signed a joint declaration in Washington to formally reestablish diplomatic ties between their two countries. Ambassadors will be appointed in the near future, Saar said.
Bolivia was the first country in Latin America, and one of the first in the world, to sever ties with Israel over its still-ongoing, now-UN-formalised genocide in Gaza. The then-Luis Arce government justified the decision, taken on November 7, 2023, as a necessary response to Israel’s “aggressive and disproportionate” military actions in Gaza.
Now, that decision is in the process of being undone by the administration of Rodrigo Paz Pereira, Bolivia’s first right-wing government in 20 years.
Hamas described President Paz’s decision as a “retreat in the honorable step taken by the previous Bolivian government to cut relations with the occupation in the face of the genocide committed against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip”:
“We renew our call on all countries and organizations to continue to isolate the Zionist entity and hold it accountable for its crimes against our people and their grave violations of international law and human values.”
Israel’s Biggest Con Trick
Media accounts hold that since October 2023, the Israeli army has killed over 70,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, and wounded more than 171,000 others in a relentless assault that has left the enclave in ruins. Those are the official numbers, however, and they are not remotely accurate.
As Jonathan Cook points out in his substack, “the biggest con trick Israel has managed to pull off over the past two years is imposing entirely phoney parameters on a ‘debate’ in the West about the credibility of the death toll in Gaza, now officially standing at just over 70,000”:
Israel has successfully penned us all into a “debate”, one entirely divorced from reality, that relates only to those killed directly by its bombs and gunfire.
The truth is that far, far larger numbers of people in Gaza have been actively killed by Israel not through these direct means but through what statisticians refer to as “indirect” methods.
These people were killed by Israel destroying their homes and leaving them with no shelter. By Israel destroying their water and electricity supplies and their sanitation systems. By Israel levelling their hospitals. By Israel starving them. By Israel creating the perfect conditions for disease to spread. The list of ways Israel is killing people in Gaza goes on and on…
None of these kinds of deaths are included in the figure of 70,000. And all precedents show that many, many times more people are killed through these indirect methods than directly through fatal injuries from bombs and bullets.
According to a letter from experts in this field to the Lancet, studies of other wars – most of them far less destructive than Israel’s on the tiny enclave – indicate that between three and 15 times more people are killed by indirect, rather than direct, methods of warfare.
The authors conservatively estimate an indirect death toll four times greater than the direct death toll. That would mean, at a minimum, 350,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza through Israel’s actions.
A Thorn in Israel’s Side
Depressingly few of the United Nation’s 193 Member States can hold their heads high over their response (or lack thereof) to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Most of them did little or nothing as the world’s most televised genocide unfolded on all of our screens.
The Arab States paid lip service to the suffering of Gaza while doing nothing to relieve it. Many BRICS members, including China and Brazil, not only continue to trade with Israel but have raised it to higher levels since October 2023.
China and Russia failed to use their veto power in the UN Security Council to block the adoption of Resolution 2803, which formalised the Trump administration’s post-war neo-colonial arrangements for Gaza while doing little to stop the genocide.
They told us everything from the starvation, the carpet bombing, and the mass graves was justified because of “the hostages.” Now they’re all home, but the killing never stopped.
The fact that the genocide continues despite freeing the hostages exposes the propaganda shield that… pic.twitter.com/fmCRJpbpzm
— YourFavoriteGuy (@guychristensen_) December 14, 2025
The few countries that can hold their heads up high include Iran and its evolving axis of resistance in the Middle East (the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon…) as well as the US’ axis of evil in Latin America — Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua — which Washington hopes to regime change in the near future.
In fact, Latin America was arguably the region of the world that made the most noise (at the governmental level) against Israel’s actions. Some countries even went from words to actions. By doing so they became an annoying thorn in Israel’s side.
Nicaragua cut its diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv in November 2024 and even filed a suit against Germany at the International Court of Justice. Nicaragua alleges that Germany failed to prevent genocide in Gaza, failed to ensure respect for international humanitarian law in Gaza, and was complicit in the commission of genocide and the violation of IHL in Gaza. The case is ongoing.
Meanwhile, the governments of both Cuba and Venezuela, which had already cut their ties with Tel Aviv long before Oct 7, have been vociferous critics of Israel’s genocidal behaviour. The US and Israel’s traditional client state in the region, Colombia, went even further by attempting to impose unilateral sanctions on Israel:
Despite concerted pressure and criticism from Israel, Washington (under both Biden and Trump), the Jewish community and the domestic and global media, Colombia’s Gustavo Petro government has not only spoken out against Israel’s naked criminality in Gaza from the very start; it has consistently turned those words into actions. And in so doing, it has put much of the rest of the world to shame.
The Petro government severed formal ties with Israel in May 2024. It then imposed a ban on the export of Colombian coal to Israel in late August of the same year as well as on the purchase of Israeli weapons, becoming one of the first, if not the first, country in the world to impose unilateral sanctions on Israel since the genocide began.
This is in a country that itself has been described as the “Israel of South America” due its close ties to Washington as well as the presence of US forces at at least seven military bases. Colombia is also historically closely aligned with Israel. According to the Mexican-Lebanese geopolitical analyst Alfredo Jalife, the Israelis control Colombia’s spyware and help train its soldiers and paramilitaries — a situation that had been going on for decades.
Colombia-based reader Edgui also recently pointed out that Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer, has 13 agreements with high-level entities in Colombia (the Air Force, the Ministry of Defense, the Criminal Investigation Directorate and Interpol of the National Police, etc.) — all of which had the Israeli company as the sole bidder.
Yet despite all that, Petro has taken one of the strongest positions against the genocide in Gaza of any international head of state. However, Petro will be leaving office in March, 2026 (Colombian presidents are currently only legally able to serve one term). That hasn’t stopped President Donald J Trump from threatening Petro in pure gangster fashion.
“He’s been fairly hostile to the United States,” Trump said. “He’s going to have himself some big problems if he doesn’t wise up.”
“Colombia is producing a lot of drugs. They have cocaine factories. They make cocaine, as you know, and they sell it right into the United States. So he better wise up, or he’ll be next. He’ll be next. I hope he’s listening. He’s going to be next because we don’t like people when they kill people.”
You heard that right: the US government, arguably the biggest gangster state of all time which has spent the past two years supporting, financing and enabling a genuine, real-life genocide, doesn’t like it when people kill people.
The good news for Trump, and by extension Netanyahu, is that Latin America is seeing a new wave of right-wing leaders and governments come to power that are desperate to bend the knee to Washington as well as support Israel in whatever it does.
They include Chile’s new President Elect Josè Antonio Kast, who is the pro-Israel son of a Nazi Party Member who escaped to Chile at the end of the Second World War — yet more evidence that we are living on one of the weirdest (and darkest) time lines. Kast (hijo) is also a strong admirer of Pinochet, which isn’t much of a surprise.
Chile's new far-right President-elect José Antonio Kast is an open Pinochet supporter. His father was a lieutenant in the Nazi German army, who fled to Chile after WWII.
Kast's brother Miguel was a neoliberal Chicago Boy economist. The CIA-backed Ford Foundation gave Miguel Kast… https://t.co/sQQblhw08L
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 15, 2025
I can’t believe I’m alive to see the Ambassador of Israel to the UN congratulating a son of a Nazi (literally) and a supporter of Pinochet who was just elected President of Chile. https://t.co/lNDz6l4dgC pic.twitter.com/3lFXP3aL33
— Mauricio Lapchik (@MauricioLapchik) December 15, 2025
“The Angry Tide”
With Peru and Colombia both scheduled to hold elections in the coming months and Ecuador already in the grip of the handlers of President Daniel Noboa, the US-born son of a banana magnate, most of the states along the western edge of South America (from Chile to Colombia) could soon be governed by the far right, warns Vijay Prashad.
Prashad calls this “the Angry Tide”:
The Angry Tide politicians who are making waves have many things in common. Most of them are now in their fifties – Kast (born 1966), Paz (born 1967), Venezuelan politician María Corina Machado (born 1967), and Milei (born 1970). They came of age in the post-dictatorship period in Latin America (the last dictatorship to end was in Chile in 1990). The decade of the 1990s continued the economic stagnation that characterised the 1980s – The Lost Decade (La Década Perdida) that convulsed these countries with low growth rates and with poorly developed comparative advantages forced into globalisation. It was in this context that these politicians of the Angry Tide developed their common agenda: anti-communism,… libertarian economics,… and culture wars.
Another thing they all have in common is that they all support Israel to the hilt. Argentina’s faux libertarian president, Javier Milei, is arguably more fervent and unapologetic in his support of Zionism than any other head of state or government outside of Israel, including Trump.
In a recent televised interview, Milei said humanity should be grateful to Netanyahu and Israel since they are a bastion of the West. Back in June, Milei was even awarded the Genesis Prize, which is often referred to as the “Jewish Nobel”, in a special ceremony at the Knesset.
As we reported at the time, during his visit Milei signed a “Memorandum in Defence of Freedom and Democracy against Terrorism and Anti-Semitism” that reaffirms the strategic alliance between Argentina and Israel:
The Memorandum sets the stage for unprecedented cooperation against terrorism, cybercrime investigations, establishing fast-track customs lanes, joint satellite launches and water technology centres on the Paraná River, Argentina’s most important trade and transport waterway.
A commercial agreement was also signed that establishes direct flights between Buenos Aires and Tel Aviv. According to La Nación, the memorandum have been designed to deepen security ties and innovation cooperation not only between Israel and Argentina but throughout the Southern Cone:
Hence, the Memorandum has also been baptized as the “Isaac Accords”, as if it were something similar to the “Abraham Accords” sealed by Israel and several Arab countries in the Persian Gulf region, but in the far south of the Latin American continent.
The Isaac Accords, “a new initiative aimed at strengthening political, economic and cultural cooperation between Israel and Latin American countries” and modeled on the Abraham Accords, have now been formally launched, reported the Jerusalem Post in early December:
The announcement came during a meeting in Buenos Aires between President Javier Milei and Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who is on a regional tour to consolidate diplomatic ties.
Milei said Argentina would serve as a “pioneer” alongside the United States in promoting the new framework, describing it as a vehicle to deepen engagement with Israel across a range of strategic fields.
The Isaac Accords are being administered by the American Friends of Isaac Accords, a New York-based nonprofit organization established in 2025 by The Genesis Prize Foundation (GPF). Danny Danon, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, said this about the accords:
“Given the hostility toward the Jewish state from some nations in the region, support of Israel by Latin American countries which are now on the sidelines is very important… Israel has long been a beacon of innovation and resilience. The establishment of a Latin America–Israel alliance rooted in shared values and mutual benefit is long overdue. I am pleased to see the Isaac Accords initiative get off the ground and thank President Milei for setting an example for his neighbors in the region.”
Here are some of the membership conditions countries are expected to adhere to, writes Freddie Ponton for 21st Century Wire:
- Move their embassy to Jerusalem, recognising Israeli sovereignty over the city, as Milei has already pledged to do.
- Redesignate Hamas and Hezbollah in line with Israeli security doctrine.
- Reverse voting decisions at the UN and OAS, where Latin America has historically voted in favour of Palestine.
- Engage in intelligence-sharing agreements targeting Chinese, Cuban, Venezuelan and Iranian influence.
- Open strategic sectors to Israeli firms, including water, agriculture, digital governance, and security, to Israeli firms. This is already happening in some Latin American countries, particularly in the areas of water and security.
Maria Corina Machado is, of course, also fanatically pro-Israel. Like Milei, the Nobel Peace laureate has openly praised the Jewish State as it has carried out a genocide against the Palestinian people. She also supported Israel’s war against Iran.
In 2018, allegedly wrote a letter to Netanyahu asking for an Israeli military intervention in Venezuela, just as she has been doing behind the scenes with the Trump administration. Then in 2020, her party, Vente Venezuela, signed a formal inter-party cooperation agreement with Israel’s ruling Likud Party.
If the Isaac Accords are successful and more and more Milei and Machado-type figures take the reins in Latin America, one of the few pockets of resistance to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its myriad other war crimes may be about to fall. Much will depend on whether the people of Latin America, and the Global South in general, are willing to accept this new arrangement.
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As I’ve said before, relations with the little entity in the Mideast make predictable USA foreign policy.
Then, a glaring question arises in one of points of the “Isaac Accords”:
– Engage in intelligence-sharing agreements targeting Chinese, Cuban, Venezuelan and Iranian influence.
But…How much Israel / China decoupling is happening?
It’s probably compartmentalized. Either way, one of the USA imperatives is to keep Latin America exclusively for them and boot China out, so it’s predictable they will focus on in to target China
The USA will still be having dealings with China.
It also compartmentalizes. Lots of that going around.
Still…the question burns:
How much Israel / China decoupling is happening?
Jiang from Predictive History tells BettBeat Media “China and Israel get along really really well.”
If he’s right, and I think he might be, there is no decoupling happening.
Yeah, the chinese government doesn’t seem averse to surveillance tech.
There’s probably a number of more eleventy dimensional aspects that are over my head.
Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua are pretty much the remaining steps before latin American is reduced to just serve natural resources for Israel.
We resist so that we don’t just end up as an impoverished neoliberalised land of cheap resources for a greedy empire, but knowing we are the last bastion before a subcontinent ends up just existing to sustain and entitled nation of baby murders is extra motivation to remain defiant.
No offense, but the living standards of the people in these three countries you mentioned have shown significant growth during the “neoliberal era” (since President Reagan first took office?).
It seems to be that the more hard right a government is, the more likely that it is to support Israel. of course it could be for more pragmatic reasons. Like if you support Israel, the US will look on you kindly and maybe not try to overthrow you. And of course being friends not only allows you to but their weapons but also their expertise in subjugating a population which is something that all hard right governments want to do. And I would argue that this includes India’s Modi who also wants to lock down all the different peoples that there are in India.
And bonus points for that Ben Norton tweet which brings together Pinochet, Nazis, neoliberal Chicago Boy economists and the CIA all in one tweet.
Kast is the son of a NSDAP-member who absconded to Chile. The family of von der Leyen’s husband features a high-ranking NSDAP-member who was administrating occupied territories — including Galicia — and doing his part in organizing the final solution there. Macron is an admirer of Pétain, whose régime edicted 64 laws and decrees against the Jews, and persecuted them mercilessly. Orban is close to openly antisemitic thinkers, publicists, and politicians. Meloni started her political career at the neo-fascist MSI, founded by former members of the mussolinian regime (which edicted antisemitic laws and persecuted Jews). Merz’s grandfather was a politician member of the NSDAP.
On the “olive green” side, Baerbock’s grandfather was a meritorious, decorated Wehrmacht officer and ardent NSDAP-supported, while Habeck’s great-grandfather was a NSDAP honcho.
Apart from those high-ranking politicians, there are also such people as Metrewelli (head of MI6), whose grandfather was collaborating with the Germans during WWII for the dirty work, or former minister Freeland, whose grandfather was a convinced propagandist for the cause of the Third Reich.
I do not believe it is a coincidence that those (right-wing) people stand so forcefully with Israel. I suspect they are, ideologically or because of their family background, hypocritical antisemites who really want to keep the Jews there, far from their own countries. Let us remember that antisemitism was a deeply-held European value for (at least) a thousand years. I doubt it can wholly disappear in just a couple of generations.
Besides, the Israelis are quite unabashed slaughterers of Arabs and assorted Persian Muslims — all of whom are deeply hated by the aforementioned politicos. Hence, two birds with one stone.
Latin America has long served as a laboratory for US foreign policy. US counterinsurgency policies utilizing death-squads, developed in El Salvador, were exported to Iraq, for example, and many of the other war of terror actions were gestated there. It’s the Empires Workshop and there’s no more important empire actor than Israel.
Great post. Terrible fact set. Thanks for documenting the atrocities.
Great Post. Not sure how much Latin America matters one way or another to the fate of Israel, which will remain as it is until the US economy collapses, who knows when. Good (/snark) news is that the millions of fleeing Israeli’s (literal, circa 1.5 million this summer per Col. Wilerson), will have a warm welcome mat out to their pro-genocidal morality in Latin and South America, where these governments were voted in.
To bring in one other quote from the linked Prashad piece, the left is divided, the right is not.
“A deep ideological crisis grips the Left, which cannot properly decide whether to build a united front with the traditional right and with liberals to contest elections or to build a popular front across the working class and peasantry to build social power as a prelude to a proper electoral push.”
I have something that’s been on my mind: Why does the United Nations recognize Israel’s military operations in Gaza as genocide but not recognize Hamas’s actions in Israel as genocide? If Hamas were to defeat the IDF, how many civilians would they kill?