Colombia and Israel have long enjoyed close ties.Israel provided the South American country with military equipment and training. The late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called Colombia the “Israel of Latin America” for its role as a U.S. proxy and platform for maintaining control of the region.
In 2013, then Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos boasted that “if someone were to call my country the Israel of Latin America, I would be very proud. I admire the Israelis and would consider it a compliment.”
On October 16 last year, Colombia demanded that Israel’s ambassador, Gali Dagan, leave the country. “At least apologize and leave,” said Foreign Minister Alvaro Leyva. It came a day after Israel halted arms exports to Colombia.
“If we have to suspend our foreign relations with Israel, we will suspend them. We do not support genocides,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro said in a message.
The diplomatic row erupted in response to Petro’s harsh criticism of Israel’s ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, in which he compared the Israeli army to the Nazis. That prompted the Israeli Foreign Ministry to summon Colombia’s ambassador, Margarita Manjarez.
Israel did in Colombia what it does best.
It played a key role in transforming the Latin American country into a narco-state terrorized by death squads that, in collaboration with the local army, committed what a Colombian court called a “political genocide” against the Patriotic Union, a political party born out of the 1985 peace negotiations between President Belisario Betancourt and the FARC.
Petro recalled that bloody history when he broke diplomatic ties with Israel.”One day the army and the government of Israel will ask us for forgiveness for what their men did to our country, unleashing genocide. I will embrace them and they will cry for the murder of Auschwitz and Gaza, and for the Colombian Auschwitz,” he said.
The Colombian President put two Israeli names to the slaughter: “Neither Yair Klein nor Rafael Eithan will be able to tell the story of peace in Colombia. They initiated the massacre and genocide in Colombia”.
A colonel in the Israeli army, Yair Klein founded the mercenary company Spearhead, which provided weapons and training to the South American army.Rafael “Rafi” Eithan, already mentioned in another post, was a general in the same army, former Chief of Staff and member of Parliament in Tel Aviv.
Israel adiestró a los escuadrones de la muerte colombianos
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