BOGOTA: President Gustavo Petro said Wednesday Colombia will sever diplomatic ties with Zionist entity, whose government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he described as “genocidal” in its war in Gaza. “Tomorrow (Thursday) diplomatic relations with the state of Zionist entity will be severed... for having a government, for having a president that is genocidal,” Petro, a harsh critic of the devastating war against Hamas, told a May Day rally in Bogota.

Netanyahu is Zionist entity’s head of government, while the country’s president—a role which is largely ceremonial—is Isaac Herzog. 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 flew pro-Palestinian banners.

“We greatly appreciate the position of Colombian President Gustavo Petro... which we consider a victory for the sacrifices of our people and their just cause,” the Islamist group said in a statement, urging other Latin American countries to follow suit.

The Confederation of Jewish Communities of Colombia issued a statement mindful of the “brotherly” relations the country has had with Zionist entity dating back to 1953. In October, days after the start of the war, Zionist entity announced it was “halting security exports” to Colombia after Petro accused Zionist entity Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of using language about the people of Gaza similar to what the “Nazis said of the Jews.”P

Bogota subsequently demanded that Zionist entity’s envoy leave the South American country. Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president has also asserted that “democratic peoples cannot allow Nazism to reestablish itself in international politics.”

In February, he suspended Zionist entity weapons purchases after dozens of people died in a scramble for food aid in the war-torn Gaza Strip—an event he said was “called genocide and recalls the Holocaust.” Colombia’s armed forces, engaged in a decades-long conflict with leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and drug cartels, use Zionist entity-made weapons and aircraft. The country has a history of strong diplomatic and military relations with Zionist entity and the United States. — AFP