How Israel’s War Machine Became Latin America’s Favorite Tool of Repression

Latin America loves a good speech about human rights. Presidents tweet flags of Palestine, ambassadors walk out of UN meetings, and ministers give fiery statements about “genocide” and “international law.” On paper, the region has become one of the loudest moral voices against Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza.

But while Latin American governments are busy condemning Israel with one hand, the other hand is signing million-dollar contracts with Israeli arms manufacturers and surveillance firms — the same ones that test their weapons on Palestinians.

This is the dirty secret of Latin America’s so-called solidarity: it’s built on imported repression.

The Moral Double Standard

Take Brazil. President Lula made global headlines for comparing Israel’s attacks on Gaza to the Holocaust. He recalled the ambassador, called out “massacres” at the UN, and became a symbol of moral resistance.
Yet at home, his Defense Ministry quietly approved a $190 million deal with Elbit Systems — the same company that supplies drones and targeting tech for Israel’s bombing campaigns in Gaza.

The deal, delayed after public backlash, is still expected to go through once the noise dies down. Because in Brazil, moral outrage doesn’t stop armored trucks from rolling into favelas.

Those trucks? Made in Israel. The same Plasan Sasa vehicles that crush resistance in Gaza now patrol the hills of Rio, carrying police who routinely kill children.

In Colombia, President Gustavo Petro built the “Hague Group” to denounce Israel’s crimes, but his country is still crawling with Israeli spyware and weapons from earlier right-wing administrations. Mexico called Israel’s actions “genocide” — while its army keeps using Pegasus, the Israeli spyware that can silently hijack a phone, open its camera and mic, and read every message you send.

So yes, Latin America is against genocide — except when it comes with a tax exemption and a combat-tested label.

The Business of Repression

Israel’s arms industry doesn’t just sell weapons; it sells a worldview.

Its marketing slogan — “battle-tested” — means one thing: tested on Palestinians. Every rifle, drone, or surveillance algorithm carries the residue of occupation. And Latin America is buying it up, from left to right, from populist to neoliberal.

At defense expos like SITDEF in Lima, Israeli companies are treated like rock stars. Plasan, Elbit, and IWI sign contracts worth millions. Their equipment isn’t just exported hardware — it’s exported ideology. It’s the normalization of a militarized state that sees every poor, racialized, or dissenting body as a potential target.

In El Salvador, Nayib Bukele — who calls himself “the world’s coolest dictator” — has turned Israel’s playbook into policy. His mega-prison now holds over 85,000 people, many without trial, while he imports millions in Israeli weapons and spyware. The irony? Bukele has Palestinian roots.

In Ecuador, Israeli-made vehicles were literally used to storm the Mexican embassy and arrest an asylum-seeking former vice president — a move straight out of an authoritarian manual.

In Argentina, Javier Milei flew to Israel as his first act as president, kissed the Wall, promised to “deepen defense cooperation,” and mused about converting to Judaism. Now his government is pushing for new security partnerships, praising Israel’s model of “efficiency” in controlling threats.

This isn’t foreign policy. It’s militarized theatre, where repression becomes a form of national identity.

The Spyware Gospel

Then comes the digital side of the occupation.
Latin America has become a testing ground for Israeli cyber-surveillance — from Pegasus spyware to military-grade facial recognition.

In Mexico, the government paid at least $61 million for Pegasus since 2011. The targets? Journalists, opposition leaders, human-rights defenders — the very people exposing state violence.
In El Salvador, the same spyware was used against the investigative newsroom El Faro.
In Colombia, right-wing governments spied on critics with Pegasus allegedly funded by Washington.
Even the Dominican Republic got caught using it against reporters.

Israel calls this technology “security innovation.”
In practice, it’s digital colonialism — where Latin America imports the tools of occupation to control its own citizens.

Solidarity for Show, Repression for Real

The hypocrisy couldn’t be louder. These are the same governments that lecture the Global North about ethics while buying from the world’s most efficient machinery of domination.
They denounce apartheid, but love its gadgets.

For Israel, Latin America is a dream market: a region full of inequality, violence, and paranoia about crime. Its governments are desperate for control — and Israel sells exactly that: control wrapped as security.

For Latin American leaders, the Israeli defense industry is a mirror of their own contradictions. The left justifies it as “necessary modernization.” The right celebrates it as “toughness.” Both end up with more surveillance, more militarization, and fewer rights.

Importing the Occupation

Every time a drone buzzes over a favela, every time a protester’s phone gets hacked, every time a poor neighborhood is treated like a war zone, the logic of the occupation expands.
Israel exports not just its weapons — it exports its mindset.

A mindset where “security” justifies everything. Where dissent equals terrorism. Where state violence is permanent, normalized, profitable.

And the so-called “anti-Israel” bloc of Latin America is eagerly buying into it.

When future generations ask how the region lost its democratic soul, the answer won’t come from speeches at the UN. It’ll come from the silent hum of an Israeli drone circling over Bogotá, Lima, or Rio — ready to strike, ready to surveil, ready to keep the peace by any means necessary.

Because in Latin America, solidarity is the slogan — but repression is still the business.