Redacción Uruguayans supporting Hamas terrorism: how can this paradox be explained?
Steady gaze in the face of these facts
Any Uruguayan who today, in 2025, defends the Palestinian cause in Gaza is, de facto, supporting Hamas. This Islamist and terrorist organization has controlled the Gaza Strip for almost twenty years, repressing the Palestinians themselves. Its worldview is totalitarian, apocalyptic, and deeply hostile to any form of pluralism or freedom.
However, we see Uruguayan university students enthusiastically waving Palestinian flags, accusing Israel of genocide and repeating slogans that, in many cases, deny the very right of the State of Israel to exist.
How can this paradox be explained?
1. Geopolitics: the old anti-Western reflex
The Palestinian cause has been essentialized for decades by authoritarian regimes such as the Soviet Union, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, and today Russia, not out of love for the Palestinian people, but as a tool to weaken the West.
In Uruguay, the left has drawn from that tradition and keeps ideological and material ties with those countries. Sympathy with Hamas is often not conscious, but it serves those interests.
Evidence? There is some. In July of this year, the Cuban ambassador actively participated in an event of the Uruguayan Communist Party. This is a form of open political interference. Its objective? To strengthen narratives that weaken Israel, the United States, and Europe. Result? Young people repeating speeches designed thousands of kilometers away. None of them has read Hamas's founding charter.
You may also be interested in this article about Mujica's contradictory past.
2. Culture and psychology: useful apocalypticism
Hamas is not just an armed group: it is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization that preaches a holy war against the West. But many young Uruguayans fail to see this.
Raised in a secular and progressive environment, they do not understand how a mind indoctrinated in religious fanaticism from childhood works. They then place Islamists in the category of "oppressed," and Israel—a vibrant democracy—as "oppressor."
You may also be interested in how Uruguayan social democracy is linked to these contradictions.
3. Structural antisemitism
Uruguay is not immune to antisemitism. It persists, often disguised as anti-Zionism. In some cases, it is encouraged or tolerated by the Frente Amplio.
This doesn't prevent its leaders from receiving international honors for combating antisemitism: Mujica received the Jerusalem Prize in 2010; Yamandú Orsi the Anne Frank Prize in 2025; and Carolina Cosse was a speaker at the Mayors Summit Against Antisemitism organized by the Central Jewish Committee of Uruguay in Frankfurt, 2021.
Meanwhile, while they pose as defenders of the Jewish people abroad, they allow their activists to proclaim slogans such as "from the river to the sea," which deny the existence of Israel. Incoherence? No: opportunism. They attract antisemitic votes and then wash their hands of it.
You may also be interested in this follow-up on Yamandú Orsi's double discourse.
Conclusion: Peace will come when Hamas is defeated
In Gaza there is no legitimate authority other than Hamas. Supporting "the Palestinian cause in Gaza" today is equivalent to supporting, consciously or not, Hamas. No neutrality is possible.
Canada has just made it clear: it will only recognize a Palestinian state if there are elections and Hamas doesn't participate. Because Hamas is the problem. The Arab League has called for the disarmament of Hamas.
Peace is possible, yes, but not while this organization keeps control of the territory and the narrative. Only Israel—which has already signed peace with Egypt and Jordan—can dismantle its military apparatus and free the Palestinians from its yoke.
Uruguay needs a serious debate. We need more young people to read Hamas's founding charter and fewer to copy slogans from social media.
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