More than 34,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October, in Israeli retaliation against Hamas.
Bogotá:
President Gustavo Petro said on Wednesday that Colombia will sever diplomatic ties with Israel, whose leader he described as “genocidal” in the war in Gaza.
“Tomorrow (Thursday) diplomatic relations with the State of Israel will be severed… for having a genocidal president,” Petro said at a May Day rally in Bogotá – referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Petro has been a harsh critic of the attack on Gaza that followed an unprecedented Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, resulting in the deaths of some 1,170 people, most of them civilians, according to Israeli data.
Hamas militants also took about 250 hostages, 129 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 who Israel says are presumed dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive killed at least 34,568 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory.
On Wednesday, Petro told thousands of supporters that the world cannot accept “genocide, the extermination of an entire people.”
“If Palestine dies, humanity dies,” he said, to loud applause from the crowd, some of whom were flying pro-Palestinian flags.
Israel responded by describing Petro as “anti-Semitic and hateful” and saying his stance was tantamount to handing over a reward to Hamas.
“The Colombian president promised to reward Hamas murderers and rapists – and today he delivered,” said Foreign Minister Israel Katz on X.
“History will remember that Gustavo Petro decided to support the most despicable monsters humanity has known, who burned babies, murdered children, raped women and kidnapped innocent civilians,” Katz added.
– ‘Fueling anti-Semitism’ –
In October, days after the start of the war, Israel announced that it was “suspending security exports” to Colombia after Petro accused Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of using language about the people of Gaza similar to what the “Nazis said about the Jews”.
At the time, Israel accused Petro of “expressing support for the atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists, fueling anti-Semitism” and summoned the Colombian ambassador.
Bogotá later demanded that Israel’s envoy leave the South American country.
Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing president, also stated that “democratic people cannot allow Nazism to re-establish itself in international politics.”
In February, he suspended purchases of Israeli weapons after dozens of people died in a fight for food aid in the war-torn Palestinian territory – an event he said was “called genocide and reminiscent of the Holocaust”.
Colombia’s armed forces, involved in a decades-long conflict with left-wing guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and drug cartels, use Israeli-made weapons and planes.
The country has a history of strong diplomatic and military relations with Israel and the United States.
Petro came out in support of Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who also drew Israel’s ire by saying his campaign in Gaza “is not a war, it is a genocide.”
Colombia and Brazil supported South Africa’s complaint against Israel to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, alleging that the attack on Gaza constituted a violation of the Genocide Convention.
Colombian May Day protester Sandra Gutierrez, a 38-year-old teacher, welcomed her president’s announcement on Wednesday.
“You cannot be an accomplice to the murderers,” she told AFP in Plaza Bolívar.
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