Collaborators of Genocide 

President Claudia Sheinbaum has openly condemned the genocide in Gaza, and has called for an end to the atrocities committed by the state of Israel against the civilian population of the occupied territory. A position she reaffirmed just a few weeks ago in her daily morning presser, and which she seems to reiterate periodically ever since her predecessor and political mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), recognized the Palestinian state in 2023.

Sheinbaum’s Jewish ancestry is no secret, making her stance on the Palestinian question even more credible, and virtually invulnerable to attacks from either side of the political spectrum. But, a scandal that recently broke out in one of the country’s most visible pro-Palestine activist groups could end up costing Sheinbaum, and the Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional (Morena), its historic popularity. 

Just over two weeks ago, the Mexican chapter of Global Movement to Gaza (GMG) issued a public statement severing ties with two of its members, who had participated in the voyages of the Global Sumud Flotilla to Gaza as recently as three months ago. Arlin Medrano and Violeta Núñez were formally dropped from the organization in a one-page post on Instagram, where the GMG unambiguously declared that none of the actions, interviews, statements or events attributed to or associated with the activists represented the ethical, political or ideological position of GMG or the Mexican delegation. And while the missive didn’t address the reason for their dismissal directly, it was clear to anyone in the know by the end of the communique:

“It is inconsistent to raise one’s voice against genocide while simultaneously providing a platform or legitimacy to actors who are part of the belligerent or political apparatus.”

In addition to their activism, both Medrano and Núñez are journalists with a modest presence on Mexican television and digital platforms respectively. Núñez is a college professor as well, and co-host for an online political analysis show called Rompeviento TV, founded by long-time human rights activist and government functionary Ernesto Ledesma, while the much younger Medrano co-anchors a morning show on Canal Catorce, Mexico’s only fully government-run TV station. Rompeviento itself is also rebuked in GMG’s letter, which denounces any relationship between the media company and the Gaza relief organization in “totality”, indirectly ostracizing Ledesma himself, who was part of the Mexican delegation in the 2025 Gaza Sumud Flotilla with Medrano and an outspoken critic of Israel.

GMG’s decision to separate itself from some of the most well-known public figures in Mexico’s pro-Palestine solidarity movement answers to the suspicions pulsating under the surface about the true nature of some of its most prominent voices, which paint people like Medrano, Núñez and Ledesma as craven opportunists who are using the Palestinian cause to advance their own political and career ambitions at best, or part of a controlled opposition deployed by the Mexican government to obfuscate its close ties to the Israeli defense industry, and thus complicity in the genocide in Gaza.

Congressman Ávila and Morena’s ties to the genocidal Israeli apparatus

Francisco Arturo Ávila Anaya’s path from private citizen to senator didn’t require a single vote. After three consecutive failures to reach political office in the state of Aguascalientes, where his tactical gear and ballistics company is located, Ávila was essentially handed a seat in the Mexican congress by the outgoing AMLO administration in 2024, through a unique feature of the Mexican political system, that allows a political party to occupy a certain number of congressional seats based on the concept of proportional representation. The provably unelectable carpetbagger was sworn in as a member of the 66th legislature soon after Claudia Sheinbaum’s landslide victory that summer, where he now acts as the designated spokesperson for Morena’s caucus in congress.  

His self-serving incursion into politics had begun years earlier, when he registered as a founding member of Morena, in 2015. By then, Ávila had already built several successful businesses, with multi-million-dollar contracts to provide armored military vehicles and spyware to the Mexican government. His biggest company, IBN Industrias Militares de Alta Tecnología Balística (High-Tech Ballistics Military Industries), specializes in tactical bulletproof gear and has been a partner of Israeli bulletproofing firm Plasan since at least 2015.

IBN’s plant in Aguascalientes manufactures parts for Plasan’s line of composite body armor for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), and shares production for bulletproof military vehicles like the SandCat, which Plasan provided to the Israeli military free of charge for the Gaza offensive as part of an “emergency mobilization” in 2023. Plasan is an integrated partner of Israel’s largest arms and military technology firm, Elbit Systems, which has a stake in another one of Ávila’s companies, Share y Asociados, through its subsidiary Israel Military Industries (IMI Systems).

Share y Asociados, currently under the puppet leadership of Ávila’s father while he’s in congress, is IMI System’s official representative in Mexico. IMI is the main supplier of artillery and munitions for the Israeli military, and one of Elbit System’s top sources of revenue. Established in the Palestine Mandate territories before the state of Israel even existed, IMI Systems links Ávila’s business interests to the Nakba itself, and its ongoing aftermath. The planned expansion of IMI’s arms production facilities in the Ramat Beka Industrial Zone is slated to demolish 1,200 homes and is already wreaking havoc for local Bedouin communities, whose lives have been destroyed.

Odd bedfellows for a “founding member” and congressional spokesman for the most progressive party in Mexico’s history. But, what’s even stranger is the complete radio silence about these sordid connections coming from the left, and president Sheinbaum herself, who has even come to Ávila’s defense about allegations of money laundering levied against the senator as a result of properties he owns in San Diego’s most exclusive neighborhood.

It was Arturo Ávila Anaya, who the GMG was tacitly alluding to in its statement suggesting that Arlin Medrano, Violeta Núñez, and (indirectly) Ernesto Ledesma were “inconsistent” by being outspoken critics of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, while providing a platform and “legitimacy to actors who are part of the belligerent or political apparatus”. Specifically, by failing to bring up any of Ávila’s business interests or ties to the Israeli war machine when the Morena congressman had been on one of their shows or mentioned as part of a wider policy discussion that involved the plurinominal legislator. 

A steady pipeline of security contracts and propaganda

Ávila’s business activities are not only facilitating the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinian women and children half way across the world, they are also bolstering the emergence of radical right wing authoritarianism right here in the Western Hemisphere. In 2021, IBN’s San Diego-based subsidiary entered into a contract worth $2.6 million with the government of El Salvador to furnish Trump acolyte and offshore ICE detention contractor Nayib Bukele with 10 all-terrain military vehicles, equipped with drones. The deal was executed by Ávila’s former law partner Jesse Sainz Blanco Jr., who signed as the company’s legal representative.

Closer to home, Ávila’s business partner Elbit Systems has been working directly with Customs and Border Protection (CPB) to build border surveillance technology for more than twenty years, including a $145 million-dollar contract to construct its Integrated Fixed Towers (IFT) border surveillance system in Nogales, Arizona, that began construction just as Trump was beginning to talk about his “wall”, which is really part of a multi-administration effort to militarize the southern border of the United States, using technology often tested first on the open-air prison of Gaza.

In 2020, Elbit Systems integrated a new “threat detection” capability to its IFT system in Nogales, that was originally developed for Israel’s separation wall in the West Bank. Elbit’s infamous Hermes drones that have been patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border since 2004, are the same ones used to target and kill seven aid workers in Gaza two years ago. 

For Ávila and his partners the genocide in Gaza is a trade show, Bukele’s CECOT is a proof of concept, and the criminalizing of immigration is a business opportunity. Morena’s party mouthpiece knows a thing or two about the power of propaganda, which he’s also invested in through a so-called “big data” division within IBN called B Analytics. Sometimes referred to as a “think tank”, it is little more than a narrative churning operation, that has published supplements in Mexico’s establishment newspapers like Excelsior and El Heraldo de México, to disseminate convenient storylines in order to justify his business and keep landing more contracts.

In one particularly egregious example, B Analytics put out a Sunday spread in 2018 about the Mexican military’s role in the infamous Ayotzinapa case, where 43 pedagogy students ages 17 to 25 were kidnapped and forcibly disappeared, never to be seen again. Despite evidence of military involvement, Ávila concluded that they played no role whatsoever. A position that was fully aligned with the government in turn during the tragedy, and with which Ávila had lucrative contracts for spyware, among other things. 

Ironically, the spyware brand Ávila provided as part of his services was a direct competitor of the Israeli Pegasus spyware technology, which then director of Mexico’s Criminal Investigation Agency Tomás Zerón de Lucio, was employing to target reporters and investigators, whose diligence threatened the state’s narrative of events. Zerón would end up fleeing to Tel Aviv after AMLO’s administration declared the case to be a state crime and issued a warrant for his arrest. 

President Sheinbaum met with the parents of the 43 missing students last Thursday, who continue to demand accountability from the government. Twelve years later, answers about what actually happened on that fateful night in Iguala, Guerrero or the whereabouts of their children are still not forthcoming. Meanwhile, Israel continues to ignore pleas for Zerón’s extradition, which a new class of pedagogy students demanded last week. 

Capturing Mexico’s Palestinian solidarity movement 

Mexico’s Palestinian solidarity movement is strong and growing among its younger generations, who recognize the parallels between the plight of Gaza and the history of state violence in Mexico. From the 1968 massacre at Tlatelolco to Ayotzinapa in 2014, along with the horrifying cases of femicides, kidnappings, and human trafficking that continue to afflict the country due to the grip that drug cartels have in certain states. They are starting to see these events as manifestations of a structural problem with the world, and standing with the people of Palestine lets them join their voices to a greater ideological struggle. 

Arlin Medrano is 26 years old. On the surface, the budding journalist fits the profile of the average Mexican youth activist, which she cultivates on social media, using targeted language like ‘imperialism’. ‘colonialism’ and ‘global south’ to color her repeated invectives against Israel’s occupation and genocide, that were definitely absent from her lexicon just a few years ago when she was giving speeches in the Mexican congress as the president of the Advisory Youth Parliament in 2019 and as a Youth Parliamentarian of the Mexican Senate in 2021. 

Since 2017, when she received an award from the governor of her home state of Nayarit for contributions to “Political Culture, Human Rights and/or Democracy”, Medrano’s life has been closely followed and guided by elements inside the Mexican government. By age 20, she was traveling to South America under the auspices of Mexico’s Youth Parliament program to speak in the legislative houses of Colombia and Peru. After graduating with a degree in political science from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), she started working as a political commentator for a YouTube channel produced by Morena, and following Sheinbaum’s election was tapped to co-host the Mañanera 360 program on the government-owned and operated Canal Catorce, covering the president’s daily pressers.

On February 21, 2025, Medrano had none other than Arturo Ávila on her show, who was brought on to talk about the constitutional amendments proposed by president Sheinbaum following Trump’s executive order designating drug cartels as terrorist organizations. Introduced as an expert in constitutional law, the genocide collaborator praised the measures as a defense of Mexican sovereignty and launched into popular anti-American talking points as Arlin nodded vigorously in agreement. At no point during the 10-minute interview did she question Ávila about his links to the Israeli war machine.

Two months later, Ávila was announced as Morena’s candidate for the governorship of Aguascalientes during a youth conference organized by Ávila’s own predecessor as senate caucus spokesperson, Ricardo Monreal, who has been in charge of the youth parliamentarian program since 2018, that Arlin Medrano was formed in. Monreal praised Ávila as a man of “singular intelligence” before revealing the news. Ávila, seated three spots away on the dais, fished for a reaction from the collection of young political activists in the audience, but the man mocked as “El Cero Votos” (Mr. Zero Votes) online got nothing.

That summer, Medrano disclosed her upcoming participation in the Global Sumud Flotilla of 2025, which set sail at the end of August from several Mediterranean ports. The Mexican delegation was comprised of six people, including Rompeviento TV’s director and dyed-in-the-wool Morenista, Ernesto Ledesma. On October 1st, their boat was intercepted by Israeli authorities triggering the release of Medrano’s pre-recorded emergency video message, that was re-posted across all major Mexican media outlets. 

Conclusion and commentary

GMG’s decision to cut ties with Medrano and company was precipitated by events that transpired over the last several weeks, when it became clear that a Morena-linked group of activists were trying to co-opt the organization’s messaging in order to steer it away from the party’s complicity in Israeli state crimes, exemplified by the business interests of Arturo Ávila Anaya and his relationship with the federal government.

Following new and much larger humanitarian mission to Gaza that included Ernesto Ledesma’s co-host on Rompeviento TV Violeta Núñez as part of another Mexican delegation, the deliberate omission of Ávila’s links to the Israeli arms industry by Ledesma, Núñez and Medrano on their respective media platforms and events, where they use GMG branding to legitimize their criticism of the apartheid state became unacceptable.

Upon her return to Mexico in June, Núñez published a list of 61 instances of abuse reportedly suffered during their 3-day imprisonment, including sexual assault and beatings, though it is unclear what injuries if any she sustained personally. Just last week, Núñez and Medrano have appeared on panels denouncing the alleged torture and the genocide in Gaza, while making no mention of Morena’s complicity as they sat on stages featuring GMG’s logo on the backdrop, which had nothing to do with the event.

At the end of the day, personal agendas or career pressures should never get in the way of a humanitarian cause, and if they do it is the activist’s responsibility to take a step back. Tragedies like Gaza will not stop until the perpetrators and their accomplices are given no quarter. People like Arturo Ávila Anaya should not be able to appear in public, let alone hold elected (or unelected) office. 

President Sheinbaum’s detractors accuse her of offering little more than lip service and photo-ops, when it comes to solving the country’s problems and punting on substantive policy initiatives on issues like the economy and public safety. In some cases, those criticisms are unfair. Efforts to strengthen the social safety net and the much-needed judicial reform, though controversial, are marked steps in the right direction relative to the neoliberal circus that reined during the four decades before Morena came to power. But, on the issue of the genocide in Gaza, today’s youth have drawn a line in the sand for the leaders of the future, who definitely won’t come from the Parliamentary Youth programs Morena is counting on.