President Gustavo Petro stated Wednesday Colombia will sever diplomatic ties with Israel, whose federal government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he referred to as “genocidal” in its war in Gaza.
“Tomorrow (Thursday) diplomatic relations with the state of Israel will be severed … for having a federal government, for having a president that is genocidal,” Petro, an extreme critic of the disastrous war versus Hamas, informed a May Day rally in Bogota.
Netanyahu is Israel’s head of federal government, while the nation’s president– a function which is mainly ritualistic– is Isaac Herzog.
The war in Gaza broke out after the extraordinary Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7. That attack led to the deaths of some 1,170 individuals, primarily civilians, according to Israeli figures.
Hamas militants likewise took about 250 captives, 129 of whom stay in Gaza, consisting of 34 Israel states are presumed dead.
Israel’s vindictive offensive has actually eliminated a minimum of 34,568 individuals in Gaza, mainly ladies and kids, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run area.
On Wednesday, Petro informed countless fans that the world can decline “genocide, the extermination of a whole individuals.”
“If Palestine passes away, humankind passes away,” he stated to loud applause from the crowd, a few of whom flew pro-Palestinian banners.
Israel reacted by explaining Petro as “anti-Semitic and despiteful,” stating his position totaled up to handing a benefit to Hamas.
“The Colombian president has actually assured to reward Hamas killers and rapists– and today he provided,” Foreign Minister Israel Katz stated on X.
“History will bear in mind that Gustavo Petro chose to wait the most despicable beasts mankind has actually understood, who burned infants, killed kids, raped females and abducted innocent civilians,” Katz included.
Hamas, for its part, hailed the relocation as a “triumph.”
“We considerably value the position of Colombian President Gustavo Petro … which we think about a triumph for the sacrifices of our individuals and their simply trigger,” the Islamist group stated in a declaration, prompting other Latin American nations to do the same.
The Confederation of Jewish Communities of Colombia provided a declaration conscious of the “brotherly” relations the nation has actually had with Israel going back to 1953.
It advised the ties “be kept, exposing channels of discussion” for “the good of both individuals.”
Colombia has actually signed up with Bolivia, Belize and South Africa in severing or suspending ties with Israel. Numerous other nations have actually remembered diplomats.
– ‘Fueling anti-Semitism’ –
In October, days after the start of the war, Israel revealed it was “halting security exports” to Colombia after Petro implicated Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of utilizing language about individuals of Gaza comparable to what the “Nazis stated of the Jews.”
Israel at the time implicated Petro of “revealing assistance for the atrocities dedicated by Hamas terrorists, sustaining anti-Semitism,” and summoned Colombia’s ambassador.
Bogota consequently required that Israel’s envoy leave the South American nation.
Petro, Colombia’s very first leftist president, has likewise asserted that “democratic individuals can not enable Nazism to restore itself in global politics.”
In February, he suspended Israeli weapons purchases after lots of individuals passed away in a scramble for food help in the war-torn Gaza Strip– an occasion he stated was “called genocide and remembers the Holocaust.”
Colombia’s militaries, participated in a decades-long dispute with leftist guerrillas, conservative paramilitaries and drug cartels, utilize Israeli-made weapons and airplane.
The nation has a history of strong diplomatic and military relations with Israel and the United States.
Petro had actually come out in assistance of Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who likewise drew the ire of Israel by stating its Gaza project “isn’t a war, it’s a genocide.”
Colombia and Brazil supported South Africa’s problem versus Israel to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, declaring the attack on the besieged Palestinian area totaled up to a breach of the Genocide Convention.
Colombian May Day demonstrator Sandra Gutierrez, a 38-year-old instructor, invited her president’s statement.
“One can not be an accomplice of the killers,” she informed AFP on Plaza Bolivar square.