Hatred from the Casa de Nariño: Colombia severs ties with Israel - Opinion

On the morning of May 1st, May Day, Gustavo Petro, the one-time guerrilla leader and the first leftist president ever of Colombia, spoke to the press from his office in the Casa de Nariño, the executive palace in Bogota, and proudly announced that the South American nation was severing diplomatic ties with the State of Israel. The unilateral move came as an extreme response to Petro’s anger over the war in Gaza and his calls that Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders were genocidal.  To emphasize their country's outrage, Bogota has now announced that they are opening an embassy in Ramallah. Unsurprisingly, the Colombian President was silent over the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, and said nothing about the murders, rapes, mutilations, and abductions perpetrated by the terrorists that horrible day. Gustavo's Petro’s edict marked a dangerous new trend sweeping across the Americas. Leftist leaders and politicians who champion women’s rights, gay rights, and religious freedoms, have formed a toxic marriage with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s fundamentalist proxies in the Middle East to open a new front against Israel in a hemisphere far from the Jewish state’s shores.  

The fact that President Petro was siding with terrorists did not surprise the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Petro was a former high-ranking officer in M-19, one of the most dangerous terrorist groups at war with the Colombian government in the violent 1980s. But he wasn’t just a trigger puller—he was leadership. He played an integral role in the planning and execution of some of the most heinous terrorist attacks perpetrated in Colombian history, including kidnapping and murder, including the 1985, seizure of the Colombian Palace of Justice and an ensuing standoff that killed over 100, including 11 of Colombia’s top judges. Petro was arrested and imprisoned, and like all allegedly reformed revolutionaries, he turned to politics. He served as the mayor of Bogota before being elected president in 2022. 

Colombia wasn’t the first Latin American nation to sever ties with Israel after October 7—the presidents of Bolivia and Belize beat them to the punch—but Petro’s moves hurt. Diplomatic relations between Jerusalem and Bogota were first established in 1957. The ties between the two nations were strong and vibrant—especially in security, military, and intelligence cooperation. Every morning at dawn’s first light a pair of Israeli-made Kfir C-7 fighter jets race into the heavens from Captain Germán Olano Moreno Air Base located halfway between Bogota and Medellin to protect the skies over Colombia. Israeli-produced equipment is seen everywhere in the Colombian armed forces. Israeli high-tech security solutions safeguard the country’s borders, and the ties between the security and intelligence services of both countries are close-knit. IDF veteran's train the National Army of Colombia. Moreover, Colombia exported half a billion dollars in goods to Israel.

President Petro’s stance against Israel is aligned with sentiments shared by leaders across the Americas—from Chile, Brazil, and Venezuela, all the way to Capitol Hill and the “Squad,” and in Ottawa with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party. They view the State of Israel as a fascist and colonizing entity, and they use social media and the bully pulpit to rile up their base that the Netanyahu government is executing the war in Gaza as a colonial-inspired act of repeated aggression to eradicate Palestinian freedom and to subjugate indigenous people of color. They forget that for centuries, Jews were persecuted because they were a separate race, but are now ironically considered white Europeans who have subjugated innocent minorities as they go about occupying and cleansing their lands.

But these progressive leaders reek of hypocrisy. Petro has repeatedly stated, “If Palestine dies, humanity dies.” It was a remarkable statement of hyperbole from a politician who made a name for himself as an advocate of LGBTQ rights, though he supported Islamic jihadis like Hamas, a group that throws members of the LGBTQ community from rooftops. And, like the policies of progressive politicians and statesmen, they are more successful at publicity than they are at running a nation. Petro’s term has been a disaster. Crime is rampant in Colombia. Venezuelan migrants have overwhelmed the nation’s resources. Petro is embroiled in numerous corruption scandals, and then there is a criminal probe of his son for campaign finance violations. His approval rating in December 2023 was a paltry 26%. Few in the country which calls itself, "the gateway to South America", believe he can win office again.

And, in cutting ties with the Jewish State, he threatens Colombia’s national security by endangering the supply of Israeli-made spare parts and continued defense ties that Bogota relies upon. “Aside from the United States, Israel is one of Colombia’s most important defense allies,” Juan Carlos Ruíz Vásquez, a former adviser to Colombian defense leadership and professor at Bogota’s Universidad del Rosario, told The Washington Post.

Jerusalem hopes that the Colombian measures were temporary are fading, and it is a frightening indication of the dangers posed by the strange bedfellow romance between fundamentalist terror groups and progressive politicians.  Countries like Spain, Ireland, Turkey and Norway are continuing to lob diplomatic barrages at us, even as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis launch their terrorist warheads. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz was right when he posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that, “History will remember that Gustavo Petro decided to side with the most despicable monsters known to mankind.” The Colombian President—and those who share his beliefs—have chosen to make their stand on the wrong side of history. Israelis are anxiously watching to see if others will follow in the unrepentant Petro's path in unjustly sanctioning us and whether this trend will continue to spread to other faraway regions.

The writer is the president of the Shurat HaDin Law Center and the best-selling co-author of "Harpoon: Inside the Covert War Against Terrorism's Money Masters" (Hachette 2017).