The Jerusalem Post reported that two Jewish teenagers fell victim to an antisemitic attack in Uruguay.
By Rachel Avraham
Two Jewish teenagers were chased through the streets of Montevideo and up to the door of their home by young men hurling antisemitic slurs and threatening to hit them with pieces of paving tiles, the Jerusalem Post reported. According to multiple reports, the victims, aged 13 and 14, were walking home from school in their uniforms from a local Jewish high school when they were approached by two young men described as apparently in their early twenties.
Recognizing the boys as Jewish, the assailants allegedly pushed them and shouted, “Jews, we know what you did,” a phrase understood locally as blaming them for events related to Israel and Gaza, the Jerusalem Post added. As the teenagers ran, the attackers picked up broken paving tiles from a construction area and chased them for several blocks, threatening to strike them, the Jerusalem Post noted.
According to the report, the pursuit reportedly continued to the home of one of the boys. There, the attackers stood outside the house, shouted more antisemitic slurs, and threatened the boy’s mother, telling her that they now knew where the family lived, the Jerusalem Post added. The Jerusalem Post reported that although there were no injuries, the two Jewish teenagers were deeply shaken by the incident. According to the report, one of the parents described the antisemitic attack as “a lynching attempt.” The parents filed a formal police complaint for hate crime charges including incitement to hatred. To date, no arrests have been made, although CCTV footage from the area has been reviewed by authorities.
The Central Jewish Committee of Uruguay, the umbrella body representing the country’s Jewish community, said it would fully support the family’s complaint and push for the attack to be prosecuted as an antisemitic offense, the Jerusalem Post reported. According to the report, the committee said the teenagers “were pursued, harassed, and threatened because they are Jews” and warned that hate speech in the country was “enabling real attacks.”
Earlier in the year, I24 News reported that the Web Observatory, which is formed by the Latin American Jewish Congress (CJL), the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AIMA), and the Delegation of Argentine Jewish Associations (DAIA), found a sharp rise in antisemitic online in Spanish since the October 7th massacre. One in five posts shared was antisemitic, the research found, I24 reported. On Facebook, antisemitic content increased to 11.52 percent, up from 2 percent in 2023, I24 added. According to the report, this was even higher in the comments, reaching nearly 17 percent. I24 noted that Uruguay had the highest proportion of hate speech.
According to the World Jewish Congress, “Uruguay is home to the third largest Jewish community in South America after Argentina and Brazil. Records show that as of 2020, there were about 16,500 Jews residing in Uruguay. The Jewish community is integrated to the civil society of the country, exercising its Jewish identity and adding positively in the economic and social development of the Republic.”
The World Jewish Congress added, “Uruguay maintains full diplomatic relations with Israel. When President Tabaré Vazquez was re-elected in 2014 and took office in 2015, positive relations with Israel resumed. He got along well with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; during a friendly phone call, Netanyahu invited Vazquez to visit Israel and discussed furthering trade and technology agreements. During his presidency, Uruguay has been a consistent defender of Israel at numerous United Nations sessions and international summits.”
Uruguay’s new President is now Yamandu Orsi, who is also not anti-Israel, even though he is left-wing. The Times of Israel claims President Orsi “expressed admiration for Israel’s multicultural society after visiting and reiterated those sentiments shortly before the election, even suggesting that he could self-identify as a Zionist. He says he supports Israel’s right to exist while also backing calls for a Palestinian state.”
“My strategy is dialogue. I can understand that they want to impose vetoes or … a kind of ideological purity of my actions,” Orsi stated in an interview about the left-wing critics, who criticized his visit to Israel ahead of the October 7th massacre. “Clearly, it is not my path. Dialogue and peace, peace and dialogue — I will not give up on that, nor on the freedom to express one’s opinion.”
“I like Zionism, and also like the Palestinian cause to have a state,” he said. “Having said that, I’m in favor of Israel’s right to exist but I’m not always agreeing with the actions of the Israeli government.”
According to Bnei Brith International in 2024, “In Uruguay the Jewish community takes note of a series of anti-Semitic acts, among others, the performance that is prosecuted in Justice and that occurred during the International Women’s Day march, Nazi graffiti, the recent attempt to censor the presence of Professor Alberto Spektorowski in a course of the Faculty of Humanities, some pronouncements of political and union sectors, and the pro-Palestine march on May 15, the day they commemorate the Nakba or Catastrophe in Arabic and remembers when the State of Israel was created in 1948.”
In the specific case of Uruguay, B’nai B’rith Director of Latin American Affairs Eduardo Kohn pointed out that “all the parties of the governing coalition have rejected the intense, repeated and endless demonstrations of anti-Semitism. But there are anti-Semitic expressions that come from political sectors such as the Communist Party, and also from unions, social organizations; and not to mention social networks.”
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