The Israeli ambassador has been asked to leave by Colombia. (FILE)
Bogota Colombia:
Colombia demanded on Monday that Israel’s ambassador leave the South American country amid a worsening row over President Gustavo Petro’s comments on the war with Hamas.
Foreign Minister Alvaro Leyva said the envoy, Gali Dagan, should “at least apologize and leave” after criticizing Petro’s comparison of Israel’s attacks on Gaza to the Nazi persecution of Jews.
Leyva lashed out on social media at the “rudeness” of Israel’s response to Petro, adding: “It’s a shame.”
Petro, in a post on X, formerly Twitter, accused Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of using language about the people of Gaza similar to what the “Nazis said about the Jews.”
Israel declared war on Hamas after its operatives swept across the Gaza-Israeli border in a surprise attack on October 7 and attacked Israeli towns, settlements and army bases, killing more than 1,400 people.
Israel has responded with bombings that have killed at least 2,750 people in the Gaza Strip, most of whom are ordinary Palestinians.
Colombia’s first left-wing president claimed that “democratic peoples cannot allow Nazism to re-establish itself in international politics.”
On Sunday, Israel, one of the main arms suppliers to the Colombian military, said it was halting “security exports” to the South American country as the diplomatic feud escalated.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Lior Haiat said Colombia’s ambassador, Margarita Manjarrez, had been summoned because of Petro’s “hostile and anti-Semitic statements.”
The president’s statements were received with “astonishment,” the spokesperson said.
He accused Petro of “expressing support for the atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists, fueling anti-Semitism, targeting the representatives of the State of Israel and threatening the peace of the Jewish community in Colombia.”
‘Genocide’
Responding to Haiat’s statement, Petro said his country does not support “genocide.”
“If we have to suspend foreign relations with Israel, we will suspend them,” he added.
Colombia’s armed forces, locked in a decades-long conflict with left-wing guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and drug cartels, use Israeli-made weapons and aircraft.
The country has a history of strong diplomatic and military relations with Israel and the United States.
Petro is also directly involved in an online war of words with Ambassador Dagan, who had urged the president to condemn a “terrorist attack on innocent civilians.”
In his response, Petro said: “Terrorism is the killing of innocent children, whether in Colombia or Palestine.”
Dagan then invited Petro to visit the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem and the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, which the president responded that he “saw copied in Gaza.”
“No democrat in the world can accept turning Gaza into a concentration camp,” Petro added.
Initially, the Colombian Foreign Ministry had issued a statement “strongly condemning the terrorism and attacks on civilians that have taken place in Israel” and expressing solidarity with the victims of Hamas.
The link to that statement was later disabled, while a new one made no mention of “terrorism.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
