Ayuso, Israel's "sincere friend"

The Hamas attacks and Israeli retaliation have shown the seams of the ruling coalition in office, with opposing positions on the Middle East. While the PSOE has joined the European position of condemning the massacre with some 'but', Sumar does not even consider Hamas a terrorist group. But where national differences have made the most noise is in Madrid. Vox called the left "scum" and "garbage", Más Madrid accused the PP of "supporting a genocide" and President Isabel Díaz Ayuso managed to link Pedro Sánchez with the alleged beheading of babies in a single tweet (X). Setting the pace for the right, Ayuso has made the Community of Madrid the ideological battering ram from which to fight. The Jewish cause has long been one of the pillars of its foreign policy. On Friday, his party refused to join a minute of silence for all the victims. In his words, it is a way of giving "shelter" to terrorism.

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Minute of silence for all the victims in Israel and Palestine in the Assembly of Madrid with the right sitting

On the day of the start of the regional campaign in May 2019, when candidate Ayuso was still unknown to much of the electorate, he tweeted a photo of himself showing his closeness to the Jewish state. "Today marks the 71st anniversary of the independence of that great Middle Eastern democracy that is Israel," he wrote. Ayuso lost those elections to the PSOE, but thanks to Vox and Ciudadanos she became president.

With a powerful gesture he put the Jewish community in his pocket. In that photo, Ayuso didn't appear anywhere. They were the Golan Heights, considered by the United Nations a territory taken from Syria. Five months after coming to power, in January 2020, already as president, she ordered to change the textbooks of Geography and History of the institutes of Madrid to introduce more content on Jewish history and culture. With this, "they will not only learn the history of Sefarad, but they will also learn about the legacy and evolution of the Jewish people to this day," he said on the day he made the announcement during an annual event held by the Assembly of Madrid to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Earlier this year, in February, Ayuso returned to Israel and this time she was much more formal: she visited the Western Wall, the Mount of Remembrance, a synagogue and met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and the Minister of Economy.

In keeping with such closeness, his response to the Hamas attacks has been notes of condolence, lighting up the Post Office Palace in blue and white, visits to the Jewish community and nine tweets between Sunday and Friday. In some cases, condolences for the Israeli deaths and in others, attacks on Sánchez's government. His most explosive tweet criticized Sánchez's "equidistance" with a viral story about decapitated babies about which Israel has contradicted itself without providing evidence.

On her trips to the United States, next week will be next week, Ayuso has brought Latin American investments and money. But on his trip to Israel, he was interested in two things: health and safety. The president visited the Jerusalem control center from which every corner of the Old City is monitored. The press release states that "he was interested in the security system that Israel has with more than 700 cameras connected in this area where Catholic, Muslim, Jewish and Armenian communities converge." Ayuso linked it to Spain by saying that Madrid is the only region "that has a Comprehensive Security Strategy" that coordinates the different security bodies and that it will invest 300 million euros in local police until 2024. Paradoxically, the infallible Israeli system admired by Ayuso has been at the center of criticism for security errors in foreseeing the Hamas attack.

As far as health is concerned, he was interested in the public system, which he described as "very interesting" because through Big Data "it seeks to make medicine more and more personalized because each of us has a different genetic load," he said after visiting the Hadassah hospital in Ein Kerem. He also asked about ALS treatment, in view of the first public residential center in the world dedicated only to patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis that will be launched in Madrid. In 2022, Israel's investment in Spain was €19 million and 90% of it went to Madrid, mainly in the electricity, gas (64.9%), and construction (32.7%) sectors.

Ayuso's affinity with Israel has caught the attention of those who have been following the conflict and the evolution of positions in Spain for some time. During the second half of the 20th century, the right kept its distance from the Zionist cause. Franco's policy of friendship with Arab countries left its mark and was inherited by Alianza Popular in democracy. The turn came around the Iraq war, when José María Aznar aligned himself with US positions, says Arabist Luz Gómez, a professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid. But Gomez sees Ayuso as one step further. "It is the extreme case of Trumpist policies in Spain and that supposes a firm adherence to Israeli interests," says Gómez, who also cites the ultra Vox party as another example.

But Ayuso's approach to the Hebrew country is not only related to the latest attacks, but is also a battlefield with Barcelona and a way to put his finger in the eye of Barcelona. The February trip came seven days after the Catalan capital's then-mayor, Ada Colau, broke off relations with Israel over "systematic violence against Palestinians." From Israeli soil, Ayuso said then that Barcelona's decision "does not represent the Catalans as a whole, much less all of Spain": "And even less Madrid, where we make positive policies, where no one is left over, where we cannot promote boycotts, where what we want is to respect plurality, the beliefs of each one and religious sensitivities. " That skyrocketed his popularity in the Jewish community. The director of the Museum of Holocaust History, Dani Dayan, praised Ayuso's "courage" and said he was "an example to the world for his determination to fight anti-Semitism.

This week, Ayuso has asked the Government of Pedro Sánchez to cut "unceremoniously the economic tap to anything that has to do" with Hamas, a statement that places her next to the hawks in Europe who have demanded an end to financial support for the Palestinians of Gaza, where 80% live on humanitarian aid. Politicians from all walks of life have taken positions in this great global debate and many have reacted with nuances, but the president of Madrid has chosen to support Israel unequivocally.

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