The Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Thursday the severing of diplomatic relations with Israel over the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Bogotá plans to remove all of its diplomatic staff from Israel, according to an official statement that cites the “unspeakable human suffering” inflicted on Palestinians since October. The statement emphasizes that the measure is not directed against Israeli citizens or the Jewish population, but strictly against the Government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The decision was announced by President Gustavo Petro during a May Day speech on Wednesday in front of tens of thousands of supporters in Bogotá.
He said that one word sums up “the need for life, rebellion, the raised flag and resistance. That word is called Gaza. It’s called Palestine, the girls, the boys, the babies who have died dismembered by the bombs… If Palestine dies, humanity dies and we are not going to let it die.”
The breakdown of relations with Tel Aviv, which predictably responded by calling Petro a “hate-filled anti-Semite,” comes against the backdrop of a massive crackdown on peaceful anti-genocide protests at American universities and indications that Israel will proceed with a disastrous invasion of Rafah, a city on the southern tip of Gaza that is home to more than a million refugees.
For seven months, hundreds of millions of people around the world have witnessed images of mass killings in Gaza and are now becoming even more enraged by brutal violence against students and faculty at US universities.
The danger of regional or even global conflict has also become increasingly evident, with Petro himself responding to airstrikes between Israel and Iran by warning of an imminent “World War Three.” At the time, he tweeted: “US support, in practice, for a genocide, has set the world on fire.”
With a few exceptions—notably the fascist Argentine president Javier Milei—the greatest diplomatic reaction against Israel and the United States over the massacre in Palestine has taken place in Latin America, even more so than among Muslim-majority countries.
Petro had recalled its ambassador from Israel hours after an Israeli airstrike leveled much of the Jabaliya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, killing dozens, on October 31. On the same day, Bolivian President Luis Arce severed all diplomatic relations with Israel, while President Gabriel Boric recalled Chile’s ambassador in Tel Aviv.
Days later, Honduras withdrew its ambassador and Belize suspended diplomatic relations with Israel. The Cuban and Venezuelan governments no longer had diplomatic relations with Israel and have condemned the genocide in Gaza. Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua has not broken relations with Israel, but launched a case in the International Court of Justice against Germany’s “complicity” in the genocide in Gaza as it is one of Israel’s largest military suppliers. The ICJ responded in record time by rejecting emergency measures to block arms sales to Tel Aviv.
In February, Brazilian President Lula da Silva denounced Israel for carrying out a “genocide” in Gaza similar to “when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.” The Netanyahu government responded by declaring Lula persona non gratawhich means he is not welcome in Israel.
Finally, while Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has refused to condemn the Israeli genocide, he denounced the hypocrisy of the United States for repressing pro-Palestinian students and providing weapons to kill “innocent people” around the world. “How are they going to be world judges on the defense of human rights?” He stated.
Such positions reflect enormous fear of explosive popular opposition to the genocide.
In Latin America, it is a distorted expression of instinctive hatred among the masses for the kind of neo-colonial slaughter and oppression in Palestine, which closely resembles what Latin America has faced at the hands of US imperialism and its oligarchic partners.
Millions of people in the region clearly see that Israel is acting as a battering ram for the United States’ efforts to secure its hegemony in the Middle East.
For decades, Washington has sought to turn the Colombian ruling class into its closest military partner and bastion of political reaction in Latin America. Since the 1960s, the United States has spent billions and sent countless military “advisors” to help crush leftist guerrilla movements, working hand in hand with the landed oligarchy, their multinational partners, and fascist paramilitary gangs to continue stealing millions. of hectares of peasants, a territory several times larger than Israel and the Palestinian Territories under occupation.
The war in Colombia has caused between 450,000 and 800,000 deaths and 8 million displaced since 1985.
Israel and Colombia long maintained a strategic triangle with the United States, and Israel provided much of Colombia’s weapons until Petro suspended military purchases in February. Both maintain special relations with NATO, and Colombia remains the only “global partner” of the Atlantic Alliance in Latin America.
Petro and the other “left” bourgeois nationalist leaders in the region represent sectors of the ruling class that are particularly perceptive to deep anti-imperialist sentiments among workers and other oppressed strata.
Since Hugo Chávez was elected at the turn of the century in Venezuela, his coreligionists have sought to channel this opposition behind negotiating better terms for national ruling elites in the way profits from US imperialism are distributed. This has been combined with closer trade and political relations with US geopolitical rivals such as China and Russia, as well as promises of increased social spending and limited reforms, which have largely been emptied by falling commodity prices. premiums in 2014.
In the rest of his May Day speech, Petro presented himself and his government as working class, and defended a health care bill that expands local clinics and reduces the role of private insurers. “I do not belong to that ignorant pseudo-aristocracy, dressed as slavers who today do not know the reality of the world, who have separated themselves from reality,” he said demagogically.
In addition to Congress rejecting his limited social programs, Petro has faced very real and growing threats from far-right circles and the military to overthrow his elected government. On Wednesday, he explicitly warned that a “coup” against him would provoke a massive social outbreak.
Described in corporate media as Colombia’s “first left-wing president,” Petro was installed to channel the mass protests and general strikes against social inequality that erupted between 2019 and 2021 behind reformist illusions within the capitalist system. His continued hold on power depends on his ability to keep the class struggle quelled, but this ability has become increasingly limited.
Despite a recent spike, its popularity hovers around 35 percent. His positions on Israel and recent promises of a “constituent assembly” no doubt seek to bolster his support base, which now relies heavily on the discredited union bureaucracy and other sectors of the middle class.
Regardless of his personal aversion to the massacre of Palestinians, which there is no reason to doubt, Petro and his government represent a sector of the capitalist ruling class that depends on US imperialism for access to markets, capital and, above all, protection against any challenge from below.
Any serious fight against imperialism and war requires a mass international workers’ movement to end capitalism. This threat will push all sectors of the local ruling elites towards an open dictatorship and into the arms of imperialism.
As the great Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky wrote already in 1928: “A democratic or national liberation movement can offer the bourgeoisie the opportunity to deepen and expand its possibilities of exploitation. The independent intervention of the proletariat in the revolutionary arena threatens to deprive the bourgeoisie of the possibility of completely exploiting itself.
(Article originally published in English on May 3, 2024)