Tens of thousands of Colombians cheered loudly as President Gustavo Petro declared, “If Palestine dies, humanity dies,” during the May Day celebrations.
Colombia will sever all diplomatic links with Israel, whose leader he called “genocidal” for his actions in the Gaza War, according to President Gustavo Petro.
“Tomorrow (Thursday) diplomatic relations with the state of Israel will be severed… for having a genocidal president,” Petro declared on Wednesday, alluding to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at a May Day rally in Bogota.
After an extraordinary Hamas strike on southern Israeli military installations and settlements on October 7, Petro has been a strong critic of Tel Aviv’s war on Gaza.
The world cannot tolerate “genocide, the extermination of an entire people,” Petro urged thousands of supporters.
To thunderous cheers from the audience, some of whom were flying pro-Palestinian banners, he declared, “If Palestine dies, humanity dies.”
Calling Petro “anti-Semitic,” Israel
As usual, Israel replied by calling Petro’s actions “anti-Semitic and hateful” and asserting that they amounted to giving Hamas a reward.
Days after the conflict began in October, Israel declared it was “halting security exports” to Colombia in response to accusations made by Petro that Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had used rhetoric regarding Gazans that was akin to what “Nazis said of the Jews.”
When Petro was charged by Israel at the time of “expressing support for the atrocities committed by Hamas, fueling anti-Semitism,” Colombia’s ambassador was called.
After that, Bogota insisted that Israel’s representative depart the nation of South America.
The first leftist president of Colombia, Petro, has further declared that “democratic peoples cannot allow Nazism to reestablish itself in international politics.”
He put a freeze to Israeli arms sales in February after dozens of people perished in a desperate attempt to obtain food in the beleaguered Palestinian territories; he described the incident as “called genocide and recalls the Holocaust.”
“Cannot help murderers commit their crimes”
Israeli-made weaponry and planes are used by Colombia’s military forces, which have been fighting leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries, and drug traffickers for decades.
Strong diplomatic and military ties between the nation and the US have existed for a long time.
Petro had publicly endorsed Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the president of Brazil, who infuriated Israel by declaring that his country’s Gaza campaign “isn’t a war, it’s a genocide.” Over the past few months, there has been an increase in the president’s popularity.
Brazil and Colombia backed South Africa’s complaint against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, claiming that Israel had violated the Genocide Convention by attacking Gaza.
Sandra Gutierrez, a 38-year-old teacher from Colombia, who participated in the May Day demonstrations, applauded her president’s statement on Wednesday.
In the Plaza Bolivar square, she stated to the AFP news agency, “One cannot be an accomplice of the murderers.”
SOURCE: TRTWORLD
