Morena Deputy & “Trade Unionist” Pedro Haces Establishes a Friendship Group with israel
This article by Enrique Méndez and Fernando Camacho originally appeared in the December 3, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.
The deputy coordinator of Political Operations for Morena in the Chamber of Deputies, Pedro Haces Barba, invited and met in his offices with the “Sephardic Grand Rabbi” David Yosef, whom he originally intended to receive in the Legislators Hall, the second most important room in the legislative building.
However, the meeting place had to be changed due to the rejection of deputies from Morena and the PT, who even went to Haces’ offices to demonstrate against “a Zionist who promotes genocide in Palestine and who is with the murderous army of Israel.”
The invitation was extended by Haces Barba on Monday, and yesterday a sector of Morena, which had already prevented the formal installation of the Mexico-Israel friendship group, expressed its discontent.
Pedro Haces tried to justify the encounter as a chance meeting: “There was no invitation. The Chamber of Deputies is the people’s house, and we deputies have an obligation to attend to whoever comes knocking on the door… I don’t get involved in other people’s conflicts or problems, and if someone came, I attended to them.”
He stated that a group of Mexican businessmen of Jewish origin “came to see me with a rabbi… they came to visit me, and I personally attended to them. Whoever comes will always be welcome. If a bishop from the Catholic Church or a Protestant comes tomorrow, I will receive them.”
However, parliamentarians received a letterhead invitation, signed by Haces and dated December 1: “Through this means I am pleased to invite you to the meeting with the Sephardic Grand Rabbi David Yosef, the most important rabbi in the world, which will take place on Tuesday, December 2, 2025, at 1 p.m., in the Legislators of the Republic Hall of the Chamber of Deputies.”
According to the Jewish Virtual Library, David Yosef was born in 1957 “into one of Israel’s most respected Sephardic rabbinical dynasties,” and is a “prominent figure in legal theory and spiritual leader of the Shas party.”
He has publicly defended Javier Milei’s pro-Israel stances and criticized Pope Francis’s opinions regarding the war against Palestine.
The Jerusalem Post reported in 2024 on the uproar caused by an initiative by Yosef for the Chief Rabbinate to take control of the party, instead of the local authorities.
A photograph circulated on social media yesterday afternoon showing a poster announcing a meeting of the “Mexico-Israel Friendship Group,” set up next to the podium in the Legislators’ Hall, which remained empty due to the last-minute change.
Congresswoman María Magdalena Rosales (Morena) recounted that a group of congressmen tried to enter the meeting and that she was carrying a Palestinian flag. “The bodyguards blocked my way,” she said.
She added that the Mexico-Israel friendship group was secretly established on November 27, despite an internal agreement not to formally integrate it, precisely because of the rejection by a sector of Morena legislators to maintain a relationship with a country accused of genocide.
“We all recognize this genocide stemming from their desire to seize all of Palestinian land. And here in the Chamber of Deputies, they’re hiding the fact that they’re establishing a friendship group with this country, a country we don’t want to be friends with. Furthermore, they’re receiving a Zionist who promotes this entire genocide and who is aligned with Israel’s murderous army.”
She stated that Rabbi David Yosef is persona non grata in Mexico and in the Chamber of Deputies.
“This person, besides the fact that the Chamber is a secular institution, has been precisely the one who has called on Pope Francis to rectify his position and not condemn Israel for the genocide it is committing in Palestine… Israel is an invading people that now grants itself all the prerogatives to wipe out an entire people, the Palestinians.”
The rabbi, she stated, is “a figure who agrees with the Zionist government in doing all this damage to the Palestinian people.”
He argued that not only was the friendship group, chaired by PRI member Miguel Alonso Reyes – former governor of Zacatecas – “secretly established itself and today also secretly received this person, in a way that goes unnoticed, just as they don’t want the theft of Palestinian territory to be noticed.”
She assessed that, although the reception for David Yosef was scheduled in the Legislators’ Hall, “seeing that there were going to be problems, I imagine, they decided to cancel it there and move it to another small office in Building H, on the second floor. And, by the way, the Israeli flag wasn’t allowed in; it stayed outside, it wasn’t present at the event. I wanted to go in to see what was happening, and they prevented me.” The legislator only recorded a video of the incident.
Regarding the fact that other people, besides the rabbi, attended the interview with Haces, he said that they could be from the Israeli embassy in Mexico “or a commission from their country or from that stolen territory.”
Rosales Cruz and his fellow congressman José Narro announced that a meeting of the Mexico-Palestine friendship group will be held today with lawyers specializing in international law.
“And you know how Israel and the United States have broken all international treaties, all international law, and yet they continue to do so with impunity. And we are going to lay bare all the crimes committed so that the whole world knows what is happening and what could happen to any country in the world. If we allow what continues to happen in Palestine, we should be very worried,” the legislator emphasized.
Designated by Congress
Narro expressed surprise that Israel “has been singled out in this Congress and by the President of the Republic and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the issue of genocide, the violation of the human rights of the Palestinians and for more than one hundred thousand murders in Gaza.
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