NACLA Report on the Americas, July 29, 2026
by John Lindsay-Poland
The government’s deepening commercial ties to Israel are emblematic of its contradictory approach to Palestinian solidarity.
Last year, as Israel carried out its ongoing genocide in Gaza and waged wider regional war, the Mexican government purchased more firearms from Israel than from any other country. The staggering figure—numbering nearly 18,000 assault rifles, light machine guns, and pistols—comes from Mexico’s report to the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT).
While Israeli weapons are purchased all around the world—2025 was a record year for the world’s seventh largest arms industry—the fact that one of the region’s few remaining progressive governments is deepening ties with the genocidal state raises serious concerns. Nevertheless, it was not all that surprising a revelation; since taking power in October 2024, President Claudia Sheinbaum’s approach to Israel—like that of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO)—has been mixed, much to the frustration of Mexico’s vibrant Palestinian solidarity movement.
In the months before the attacks of October 7, 2023, Palestine’s diplomatic mission in Mexico was elevated to the status of an embassy. Nevertheless, in contrast to the region’s other progressive governments, first AMLO and then Sheinbaum refused to use the language of “genocide” to describe Israeli actions; the current president finally used the term in September 2025. Sheinbaum also declined to support the international Sumud Flotilla, which included Mexicans, that sought to bring humanitarian aid to Gazans.
Against this backdrop, Israeli military arms and surveillance technology have continued to flow to Mexico. The country imported more than three times as many firearms from Israel last year than in 2024, the most since 2018. Sheinbaum insisted last October that these purchases were made for state police and that they were holdovers from state requests in 2024 and that they “no longer exist.” However, the Mexican army also purchased Israeli rifles and handguns for its own use in 2022, 2023, and 2024, according to its published list of weapons purchases.
Photo: Claudia Sheinbaum receiving salutes from commanders of the Mexican Armed Forces (Eneas De Troya/Flickr CC BY 4.0)
