In a region characterized by turbulent politics, Colombia has long stood out as a Latin American country with a pragmatic approach to international relations. But the tenure of President Gustavo Petro, a former member of the M-19 guerilla movement elected in 2022, has brought heightened scrutiny to Colombia’s foreign policy, particularly regarding Israel.
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A recent statement by Petro criticizing Israeli policy was condemned by many as antisemitic. “Zionism, strongly supported by international financial capital that it partially controls, prevents peace and unleashes horror on Palestine, leading its most radical factions into the trap set by terrorism,” he wrote last Monday on the X social media platform.
Several months ago, he wrote another post characterizing the war in Gaza as a genocide and apparently comparing Israel to Nazi Germany. “It would seem as if Goebbels is the one who directs the world’s communications so that tens of thousands of journalists are silenced in the face of their murdered colleagues and 20,000 babies torn to pieces by bombs,” Petro wrote, referring to chief Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
Accusing Jews of being behind a global conspiracy, especially a financial conspiracy, has a long history in antisemitic rhetoric, dating back at least to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, first published in 1903. Organizations focused on combating anti-Jewish bias also point to “Holocaust inversion,” or accusing Jews of being “the new Nazis,” as another form of antisemitism.
“The early Christian antisemitic trope that Jews are money-grabbing, blood-lusting people is just the earlier version of what the Colombian president said, accusing Israel of controlling global finances to finance a war,” Daphne Klajman, a frequently published expert on global antisemitism and policy and the academic coordinator of Hillel Rio, based in Rio de Janeiro, told The Media Line. “In the original antisemitic trope, they accused the Jews, and in the accusation by the Colombian president, he is accusing this ethereal-like creature that he calls the Zionists.” Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro waves to supporters as they attend a march in support of the reforms on health, retirement, employment, and prisons sectors proposed by his government, in Bogota, Colombia May 1, 2024. Uploaded on 10/5/2024 (credit: LUISA GONZALEZ/REUTERS)
Klajman said that many left-leaning parties in Latin America have simply rebranded old antisemitic tropes by replacing the word “Jew” with “Zionist.” “There is an entire generation of political leaders in Latin America who see Zionism as an imperialist tool made by the Western civilization,” she said.
Central to this form of antisemitism is the belief that Jews have no ties to the land of Israel and have no right to a sovereign state there, she added.
She described Petro’s post as rife with inaccuracies and more focused on delegitimizing Israel than on supporting Palestinians. “He claims that before 1948 there was peace in that region, but this is also obviously wrong and also fails to address the strong bonds between the Nazis and Muslim leaders before 1948,” she said.
Janiel Melamed, an academic at Colombia’s Universidad del Norte in the field of international security, told The Media Line that Petro has long been a critic of Israel’s policies. Petro once acknowledged that the M-19 rebel group of his youth had engaged in insurgency training in Libya alongside Palestinian fighters, he said.
“Petro was a friend and sympathizer of late Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez, who cursed Israel and labeled it as a genocidal, terrorist, and murderous state,” Melamed added.
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Today, Venezuela is close partners with Iran, working together on commercial activities with dual-use military purposes. Venezuela recently signed a 20-year cooperation agreement with Iran focused on collaboration in the fields of energy, finance, and defense. One motivation for the partnership is the US sanctions applied to both countries, which have severely weakened both economies.
“Iran has also engaged in a systematic long-term approach to build and sustain a strategic presence in Latin America, doubling its embassies in the region in just a decade and establishing lines of credit with a half-dozen countries,” Melamed said. “Therefore, some regional security analysts fear Colombia could fall under the sphere of influence of this Axis of Resistance promoted by Iran through coming bilateral agreements regarding hydrocarbons, infrastructure, communications, and security agendas.”
Anti-Israel sentiment can be traced to 1970s
Klajman traced Latin American antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment back to the 1970s. “During the ’70s, in Latin America, there was also a big fight for civil rights, and then, Jews were alienated even if they supported other minorities,” she said. “Regardless of how progressive a Jew could be, if the Jew was a Zionist, anything he says is invalid. This is clearly what is happening now, as left-leaning Jews are segregated from bringing a nuanced understanding of the conflict in the Middle East.”
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made similarly inflammatory comments comparing Israel to Nazi Germany in February of last year. Klajman said left-leaning leaders like Lula and Petro tend to be more critical of Israel, while right-leaning leaders tend to be more supportive.
“Even if antisemitism exists at the extremes of the political spectrum, both on the left and on the right, today, the world today is ready to accept antisemitism from the left but not from the right,” she said. “If a right-leaning president were to say what Colombia’s president said, he would be execrated as a Nazi, and everyone would condemn it.”
She said that left-wing antisemitism often hides under the guise of opposition to the State of Israel. “These leaders are antisemitic in reality, saying that the Jews are the only nation that should not have its own country and ignoring the fact that Jewish sovereignty existed in that region multiple times,” she said. “Such a narrative adopted by left-leaning leaders doesn’t speak of changes that are a part of the life of every country. It doesn’t speak of making improvements. It simply talks about Israel not having the right to exist or defend itself.”
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