SHEINBAUM RULES OUT BREAKING RELATIONS WITH ISRAEL

Mexico City. In response to a question about the demand made by academics on a hunger strike that Mexico break relations with Israel (a demand continuously raised by the Palestinian solidarity movement in the country almost a year and half into the genocide), Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum gave a predictably anodyne answer and did not commit to such a step, even though earlier this week on May 21st, the Israeli army had fired on Mexican diplomats near the Jenin refugee camp in Palestine.

The President said, “Firstly, we condemn the situation. Secondly, all we seek is peace and that is the foreign policy of our country. So what we are looking for is to build peace. At the time, President Lopez Obrador made proposals for both the war in the Ukraine and the situation in Palestine. The Secretary of Foreign Affairs is actively seeking by all means to build peace in this strip. Yes, that is Mexico’s Foreign Policy and we are following it.”

Secretary of Foreign Affairs Juan Ramón de la Fuente, who the President has said is “actively seeking by all means to build peace” is a 2015 recipient of the Jerusalem Prize, awarded by the World Zionist Organization and the Zionist Council of Mexico. At the awards ceremony, de la Fuente said, “Jerusalem is alive, it is current—and it will continue to be a controversial territory—and that’s why we must understand it, admire it, and love it.”

Mexico no longer has diplomatic relations with Peru, since President Pedro Castillo Terrones was overthrown in a coup in December, 2022; nor Ecuador, since the April 2024 forceable entry into the Mexican Embassy in Quito by Ecuadorian police officers, seeking to arrest former Ecuadorian Vice-President Jorge Glass.

In Latin America, neither Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Nicaragua, nor Venezuela currently have diplomatic relations with Israel.

Recently, Israeli Defence Force (IDF) soldiers have been reported to be making contact with children in schools under the cover of a charity named Heroes for Life in Mexico City and the southern state of Chiapas, as reported by Temoris Grecko. Mexico was identified as a priority for the sinister operation because of the negative reputation that the genocidal entity has in the country, a testament to the sense of the Mexican people. Chiapas state already saw a media flurry in 2013 after Security and Civil Protection of Chiapas Secretary Jorge Luis Llaven Abarca announced the IDF would train counter-insurgency forces there. The Secretary is a member of the PVEM (Partido Verde Ecologista de México), an ideologically which is part of the governing coalition of the country.