Colombia
Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro has stated that the country will terminate all diplomatic connections with Israel, whose leader he branded as “genocidal” in its attack in Gaza.
“Tomorrow (Thursday), diplomatic relations with the State of Israel will be severed… for having a genocidal president,” Petro said during a May Day protest in Bogota on Wednesday, referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Petro has been a strong opponent of Tel Aviv’s attack on Gaza since October 7, when Hamas launched an unprecedented raid on southern Israeli military positions and settlements.
Petro warned thousands of supporters that the world could not tolerate “genocide, the extermination of an entire people.”
“If Palestine dies, humanity dies,” he remarked to thunderous applause from the audience, some of whom were waving pro-Palestinian symbols.
Israel, as usual, replied by characterizing Petro as “anti-Semitic and hateful” and accusing him of rewarding Hamas.
In October, days after the conflict began, Israel claimed it was “halting security exports” to Colombia after Petro accused Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant of using language about Gazans comparable to what “Nazis said about Jews.”
Israel accused Petro of “expressing support for the atrocities committed by Hamas, fueling anti-Semitism,” and summoned Colombia’s ambassador at the time. Bogota then ordered Israel’s envoy to leave the South American country.
Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing president, has likewise declared that “democratic peoples cannot allow Nazism to reestablish itself in international politics.”
In February, he froze Israeli weapons purchases after scores of people perished in a food assistance scramble in war-torn Palestinian territory, which he described as “genocide and reminiscent of the Holocaust.”
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