For The Good Of All, Sever Relations with israel

ByMexico Solidarity

This article by Silvana Rabinovich appeared in the September 2, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

Since October 7, 2023, the siege of the overcrowded population in the Gaza Strip has accelerated. This fragment of territory was invented by UN Resolution 181 and comprises 1.3 percent of historic Palestine. In numbers, in lives: if in 1947 the population in the 365-square-kilometer strip was 60,000 inhabitants, with the Nakba, starting in May 1948, it rose to 260,000: 200,000 expelled from Yaffa and Bir al-Saba’, among many others. In 1967, it was occupied by illegal Israeli colonies and in 2005, “disconnected,” that is, besieged for the exhibition of “tested weapons” of the Israeli industry on an exclusively Palestinian population. During all this time, second- or third-degree refugees arrived: from various neighboring countries or from other refugee camps. Besieged for 17 years, in October 2023, that same stretch of land—with highly contaminated water and limited food intake—housed some 2.3 million people squeezed together. For the past 680 days, the survivors of that population have been trapped, without shelter, food, water, medicine, hospitals, or schools, in 65 square kilometers: between 30,000 and 40,000 inhabitants per square kilometer.

What does “Mexican Humanism” mean when our country’s representatives cling to something they insist on euphemistically calling a “peaceful solution” to mediate between the “conflicting parties”? A “dialogue” between two parties to a settler colonialism in which the colonizer, with broad consensus among its population, is convinced that it must completely eliminate—through physical extermination or exile—the colonized people? A “mediator” who is a client of the arms industry, which one side exploits on the other?

Photo: Jay Watts

In January 2009, Claudia Sheinbaum wrote a letter to this newspaper entitled “Save the world that is now called Gaza.” Our President affirms that in Mexico, the people rule. Mexicans, Palestinians (and also Sahrawis) are people who live on the same side of different walls. On the same side of those three walls, in different languages, relatives exhume the bones of their loved ones: here (and in the Western Sahara), from clandestine graves; in Gaza, beneath the ruins. Recognizing a piece of clothing allows one to embrace a dusty skull, a gray femur, to give a decent burial to a loved one. The people (who rule) affirm life through painful acts.

In times of Mexican Humanism, “saving the world” must be translated into clear actions. The first is to stop being only observers of The Hague Group. Mexico should fully integrate now: the deadline to join is September 20. That date marks a great opportunity to renew the meaning of our Cry of Independence, following the implementation of the embargo on Israel agreed upon by the member states (in our case: stopping the purchase of not only new weapons but also spare parts and ammunition, reviewing which companies that sustain the economy of genocide are directly or indirectly contracted by various agencies of our government and suspending those contracts), in addition to demanding the extradition of Tomás Zerón and Andrés Röemer and investigating the alleged bribery of [former Mexican President] Enrique Peña Nieto by NSO, the supplier of the Pegasus spy system.

I propose that this September 2025 promote the humanist redefinition of Mexican independence:

  • An ethical independence (also in international politics) from the United States, which systematically vetoes any possibility of peace with justice in a world plagued by wars, indigestion, and in debt to its weapons.
  • An independence that frees political power from economic power, just as the migrant from San Quintín asked AMLO to do.

So, after signing to join The Hague Group, if our government is going to “mediate,” let it be with these demands: demand the release of the Palestinian Mandela, Marwan Barghouti (for now, the only political figure of unity because, contrary to the verdict of some Israeli “pacifists,” there was always someone to talk to on the other side); prevent the mass deportation of the population of Gaza and the West Bank; implement the legitimate right of return for Palestinians (UN RES. 194, 1948); adopt the Nakba as a legal concept, as proposed by Rabe’a Eghbaria.

What’s difficult to accomplish? Undoubtedly, but much more difficult is continuing to cover up a genocide. If Mexican Humanism isn’t simply on paper—as I believe—this cry for independence must be expressed in a clear commitment to the Global South (the Global North, which the neoliberals tried to force us into, is drenched in blood). Somalia’s representative at the urgent meeting of the UN Security Council was categorical: neutral silence is a sentence for the Palestinians. It’s impossible to maintain “neutrality” in the face of a genocidal state: that is complicity. Military, economic, diplomatic, cultural embargo (or “For the good of all”: sever relations with Israel!)

Madam President, saving Gaza today means saving the world.

Silvana Rabinovich is a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the University of Rosario, Argentina. Invited by the Sorbonne, she has published several books on Arab and Islamic studies and is an active member of Mexico’s Palestinian Solidarity Movement.