“The only way for Palestinian children to sleep in peace is for Israeli children to sleep in peace. The only way for Israeli children to sleep in peace is for Palestinian children to sleep in peace. War will never achieve this.”
When the former Guerrilla fighter Gustavo Petro came to office in June 2022, becoming the country’s first left-wing president since Colombia won independence in 1819, it was clear he would have to tread very carefully in his relations with Washington, especially given all the US military bases on Colombian soil. Today, sixteen months after his election, Petro faces his first major diplomatic standoff, not only with Washington but also Tel Aviv — all the result of his refusal, so far, to condemn Hamas’ ruthless attack against Israeli citizens on Sunday.
Instead, Petro, a voracious poster on X/Twitter, wrote the following on the social media platform:
War has broken out again between Israel and Palestinian Gaza. In my speech at the United Nations I showed how world power treated the Russian occupation of Ukraine in one way and the Israeli occupation of Palestine in another, very different way…
From a very young age I studied the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and I know of the immense injustice that the Palestinian people have suffered since 1948. Just as I know about the immense injustice that the Jewish people suffered at the hands of the Nazis in Europe since 1933.
If I had lived in Germany in ’33 I would have fought on the side of the Jews and if I had lived in Palestine in 1948 I would have fought on the Palestinian side.
Now the neo-Nazis want the destruction of the Palestinian people, freedom and culture. Now we democrats and progressives want peace to prevail and the Israeli and Palestinian people to be free.
“Unfortunate Messages”
Petro has also likened Gaza to Auschwitz as well as to the Warsaw Ghetto, which was destroyed by the German military after an uprising by Jews confined there. None of this, of course, has gone down well with the Israeli or US governments — or for that matter, opposition parties and much of the legacy media at home.
“They are very unfortunate messages,” said Israel’s Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Lior Haiat. “They demonstrate a lack of knowledge, not to say ignorance, and an enormous lack of respect. After the atrocities that we have seen from this barbaric attack, making the comparison that the president of Colombia made, I am sorry to say, but it is a comparison that has no basis.”
In an interview with the Colombian newspaper SEMANA, Israel’s ambassador in Bogota, Gali Dagan, called on the Colombian Government to raise its voice forcefully against terrorism.
“It is very difficult to find the common denominator between these two cases [of Ukraine and Palestine]. We hope that a country friendly to Israel will strongly and clearly condemn the terrorist attack against innocent civilians in the State of Israel.
Shortly after the attack on Saturday, Colombia’s Foreign Ministry did release a statement strongly condemning “terrorism and attacks against the civilian population.” But by the next day, the statement had been replaced by one that no longer mentioned the word “terrorism” or referred to Hamas by name.
Among the dozens of messages Petro has published or shared on Twitter/X since Sunday was a photo montage of some of the Palestinian children who have perished under Israeli occupation, alongside the following text (translated by yours truly):
The only way for Palestinian children to sleep in peace is for Israeli children to sleep in peace.
The only way for Israeli children to sleep in peace is for Palestinian children to sleep in peace.
War will never achieve this, it can only be achieved by a peace agreement that respects international legality and the right of the two peoples to exist free.
These are photos of Palestinian children murdered by the illegal occupation of their land.
To give the message maximum exposure, Petro has pinned it right at the top of his twitter profile. He also posted this graph showing the glaring disparity between Palestinian and Israeli deaths over the past 15 years of conflict:
Since then Petro has maintained a running commentary on developments in Israel and Gaza, repeatedly calling for peace negotiations. On Monday, he responded to Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Galant’s call for a total siege and blockade of Gaza and his description of Palestinians as “human animals” by warning:
“This is what the Nazis said about the Jews. Democratic peoples cannot allow Nazism to re-establish itself in international politics. Israelis and Palestinians are human beings subject to international law. This hate speech if it continues will only bring a holocaust.”
On Thursday, Petro’s remarks finally elicited an official response from the US government on Thursday.
“We strongly condemn President Petro’s statements and call on him to condemn Hamas, a designated terrorist organization, for its barbaric murder of Israeli men, women and children,” Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt of the office of the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism (SEAS) said on Twitter/X.
This is probably no idle warning…
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Nick Corbishley 