Spanish far-left leader accuses Israel of ‘genocide’ — in Syria

Belarra and her Podemos party have threatened to withhold its crucial support for next year’s budget unless the government breaks diplomatic relations with Israel, among other actions.

By The Algemeiner

The leader of an influential far-left Spanish political party who recently served as a government minister appears to have accused Israel of “genocide” in Syria following the collapse of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s regime this past weekend.

“Israel is taking advantage of the instability in Syria to advance its colonial and genocidal plan, bombing several areas, including Damascus,” Ione Belarra posted on X/Twitter on Tuesday.

“Virtually no Western media outlets are reporting on it. International inaction in the face of genocide endangers humanity as a whole.”

Belarra, who served as Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s social rights minister between 2021 and 2023 but is no longer in the governing coalition, is now secretary general of the Spanish hard-left party Podemos (“We Can”).

The politician appeared to be referencing Israeli military operations this week to eliminate much of Syria’s strategic weapons arsenal and secure the buffer zone along Israel’s northeastern border amid uncertainty about the future of Syria.

Assad fled Damascus on Sunday as a coalition of rebel groups stormed the capital, ending his family’s five-decade rule.

The deposed leader, who has been accused of war crimes during his crackdown on rebel forces since 2011, was a partner of Russia and allied with Iran, which for years has used Syrian territory to send weapons to its terrorist proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon.

However, many Western observers have expressed concern about the leading Syrian rebel faction, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a group formerly allied with Al Qaeda and which is designated a terrorist organization by the US, European Union, Turkey, and the UN.

This week, Israel conducted more than 350 aerial strikes targeting a wide range of military assets in Syria, with the aim of preventing them from falling into the hands of Islamic terrorists.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said he instructed the military to establish full control over the once-demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights, which was established under the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement between Damascus and Jerusalem that ended the Yom Kippur War.

He also announced the establishment of a temporary demilitarized “defensive zone” beyond the buffer zone in southern Syria aimed to prevent terrorist threats.

Israel has denied claims that it has gone beyond these areas further into Syria. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Israel has no intention of interfering in Syria’s internal affairs but would take action as needed to defend itself and ensure its security.

Despite a lack of evidence for Belarra’s claim regarding Israeli activity in Syria, the Spanish politician’s accusations have been in line with her fierce and repeated criticism of Israel since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of the Jewish state last Oct. 7.

Less than three weeks after the massacre, Belarra posted a video on X/Twitter calling on European Union (EU) nations to sever diplomatic ties with Israel and comparing Jerusalem’s defensive war against Hamas with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

She also demanded stiff economic sanctions against the Jewish state and the prosecution of its leaders for “war crimes.”

More recently, Belarra and her Podemos party threatened to withhold its crucial support for next year’s budget unless the government breaks diplomatic relations with Israel among other actions.

Sanchez’s socialist-led government, which relies on a coalition of smaller parties to approve legislation, needs the votes of the four Podemos lawmakers in the lower house for the budget to pass.

However, Sanchez also requires support from some center-right parties that will have their own conditions to back the budget, creating a tough balancing act for the Spanish premier.

In October, Belarra said in a video message that her party would only support next year’s budget if the government “immediately breaks off diplomatic and trade relations with the genocidal state of Israel.”

Her second condition was for Madrid to “tackle the housing crisis by lowering rents by 40 percent by law, banning the purchase of houses by anyone who’s not going to live in them, and dismantling squadron commandos,” a reference to private companies that mediate in squatting situations to evict occupants.

Belarra added in a tweet: “Breaking relations with Israel and lowering rent prices by law is the minimum that can be demanded of a self-proclaimed progressive government. We need all your support to twist the [government’s] arm.”

Senior Podemos official Javier Sánchez Serna echoed the same point at the time, saying, “Pedro Sánchez’s government has been veering to the right for months and it’s going to get worse if someone doesn’t stand up. If the [government] wants to pass the 2025 budget, it will have to meet the two conditions proposed by Podemos: break relations with Israel and intervene in housing.”

Despite Belarra and Podemos’s criticisms of the government, Spain under Sanchez has been one of the most vocal critics of Israel since Oct. 7 of last year, when Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists invaded the Jewish state from neighboring Gaza.

The terrorists murdered 1,200 people, wounded thousands more, and abducted over 250 hostages in their rampage, leading Israel to respond with a defensive military campaign aimed at freeing those taken captive and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities.

In October, Sanchez urged other members of the EU to suspend the bloc’s free trade agreement with Israel over its military campaigns against Hamas in Gaza and the terrorist organization Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Sanchez’s demand came three days after the Spanish premier urged other countries to stop supplying weapons to the Jewish state.

In the aftermath of the Oct. 7 atrocities, Spain launched a diplomatic campaign to curb Israel’s military response. At the same time, several Spanish ministers in the country’s left-wing coalition government issued pro-Hamas statements and called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, with Belarra falsely accusing Israel of “genocide.”

More recently, Spanish officials said they would not allow ships carrying arms for Israel to stop at its ports. Last week, the US Federal Maritime Commission opened an investigation into whether Spain, a NATO ally, has been denying port entry to cargo vessels reportedly transporting US weapons to Israel.

Spain stopped its own defense companies from shipping arms to Israel in October 2023.

In May, Spain officially recognized a Palestinian state, claiming the move was accelerated by the Israel-Hamas war and would help foster a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israeli officials described the decision as a “reward for terrorism.”

Spain, like many other countries around the world, experienced a surge in antisemitic incidents targeting the Jewish community following Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.

Two weeks after the onslaught, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain (FCJE) warned of “the greatest escalation of antisemitism in Spain in recent times.” A statement from the FCJE on the upsurge in antisemitism highlighted the statements of Belarra, who at the time was Spain’s social rights minister and had already accused Israel of “genocide.”

“The demonstrations against Israel, the burning of Israeli flags, the proclamations calling Israel a murderer, genocidal, and the author of a planned ethnic cleansing, as Minister Ione Belarra has reiterated on several occasions, have inflamed [the situation],” the FCJE observed.

After attending a pro-Hamas demonstration in Madrid exactly two weeks after the Hamas atrocities, before Israel launched its ground campaign in Gaza, Belarra tweeted, “Dignity has filled the streets of Madrid, [which] today urged the end of the genocide that Israel is planning against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. Freedom for Palestine.”

GenocideIDFIone BelarraSpainSyria