Colombian President Gustavo Petro signed a decree on Sunday outlawing exports of coal to Israel, the latest in a series of aggressive actions against the Jewish state — a country he has repeatedly compared to Nazi Germany — by his radical leftist administration.
Petro, a hardline socialist who belonged to the Colombian terrorist guerrilla M19 in his youth, dramatically escalated his hostility against Israel in the aftermath of the Hamas massacre of hundreds of civilians on October 7, 2023, which prompted Petro to declare himself a staunch supporter of the “Palestinian” cause. After months of condemnation for his repeated comparison of Israeli self-defense actions against Hamas in Gaza to the Holocaust, Petro cut diplomatic ties with Israel in May, severing a previously uninterrupted positive relationship begun in 1957. Israel has since deleted its informational page on bilateral ties to Colombia.
Coal and crude oil are Colombia’s top exports and Israel has long been a reliable customer. In addition to his vitriol against Israel, Petro is a vocal opponent of fossil fuels, repeatedly claiming oil and coal are more dangerous than cocaine – informally, Colombia’s top export under Petro – and has hinted at destroying Colombia’s fossil fuel industry.
Petro had initially announced in June that he would cut coal exports to Israel “until the genocide ends,” referring to self-defense operations against Hamas terrorists, who themselves follow an explicitly genocidal ideology. The decree signed on Sunday will take effect on August 22, giving time for Colombia’s coal companies to comply, and will reportedly remain in place until “the orders of provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice in the Process of the application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip are fully complied with.”
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), responding to a petition by the government of South Africa, ordered Israel to “immediately halt its military operation” in Rafah, southern Gaza, in May. The ICJ is a non-binding body and Israel does not formally recognize its jurisdiction.
Petro celebrated the decree on Twitter, where he regularly publishes screeds referring to those opposing jihadist terrorism as “Nazis.”
“With Colombian coal they make bombs to kill the children of Palestine,” Petro wrote.
Con el carbón colombiano hacen bombas para matar los niños de Palestina https://t.co/YXqGFSoKC0
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) August 18, 2024
The decree immediately caused outrage and concern in Colombia – a nation that had not elected a left-wing president prior to Petro in its entire history. The Office of the Attorney General of the country, Gustavo Guerrero, issued a statement criticizing the language in the decree as potentially constitutionally unsound.
“Colombia receives royalties for the export of coal to the order of 650 billion pesos [$161.7 million] a year, 100 billion pesos [$24.9 million] invested into the departments [states] of César and La Guajira, and it is not clear in the decree how that income and investment will be replaced,” the attorney general questioned.
Guerrero’s office also said an executive decree should “promote a constitutionally legitimate objective that should be demonstrated as imperative to achieve,” suggesting this decree did not do so.
Voices in Colombian economics condemned the move as potentially devastating for the Colombian market. The coal industry was reportedly worth $450 million in 2023. Banning exports to Israel “not only worsens the judicial uncertainty, but also erodes investors’ confidence,” María Claudia Lacouture, the president of the Colombo-American Chamber of Commerce, lamented on Sunday.
The executive president of the National Foreign Commerce Association, Javier Díaz, also lamented the decree as an “unfortunate measure because if it’s going to affect anybody, it’s Colombia.”
“Colombia will sell less coal now that it needs to grow its exports,” Díaz told Colombia’s Caracol News. “One can’t understand how the government says that it needs resources and then shoots itself in the foot because it bans exports; that means less income.”
Petro has repeatedly prioritized hatred for Israel over a sound foreign policy for Colombia. In the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attack – on October 8 – Petro published an unhinged rant on Twitter comparing Israel to Nazi Germany.
“If I had lived in Germany in 1933 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,” Petro wrote. “Now the neo-Nazis want the destruction of the Palestinian people, freedom and culture. Now the democrats and progressives want peace and freedom for the Israeli and Palestinian people.”
Then-Israeli Ambassador to Colombia Gali Dagan urged Petro to stop comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, declaring the comparison “terrible” and inviting Petro to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance Center in Israel.
“We Jews lost a third of our population in the Holocaust,” Dagan said at the time. “It hurts me in the deepest way. Personally it is very hard, because these are comparisons that have nothing to do with reality.”
Petro responded by expelling Dagan and cutting ties with Israel.
In June, Petro again declared that Israel and its supporters were “Nazis.”
“The Nazis are in power, they ascend through financial capital, they manage to lead the government of the United States – even if it is self-styled Democrat, with progressive currents,” Petro said. “But this youthful, black, Arab, diverse, Latino progressivism, which is there, does not manage to change the will of the state, which continues helping to fire the bombs.”
“That which Hitler proposed is what is being applied in Gaza, but as an experiment for the world. This is how they want to dominate us, how power can end life premeditatedly and in a generalized and massive way,” he continued, “as Hitler proposed, is what we are seeing today; they are experimenting in Gaza.”
Notably, in the same remarks, Petro condemned the use of fossil fuels as linked to the rise of Israel and America’s “Nazis.”
“What is firing is not Israel, it is a means; what is firing is the great global fossil and financial capital against a people who cannot resist, endure,” he claimed, “because they have been resistant, because they have taught all the peoples of the world that there is no other way than resistance, something that we already knew.”
Petro has attacked Israel even when addressing irrelevant topics. Later in June, when he responded to reports that his government may have illegally wire-tapped high-ranking judges, he blamed “Mossad” journalists for following the trail of the story.
“Stop falling into the naiveties that Nazi groups create,” Petro commanded Colombians after the revelation.
“The rumors reach the press and become news. They arrive by WhatsApp to the magistrates and they believe the WhatsApp network. They believe the fake news,” he rambled. “And the press, without investigating, is repeating them. What is Goebbels’ tactic? Repeat and repeat the same lie and something will remain.”
“The Goebbels today are only those who are bombing children in Palestine. What sources are they gathering? Those of the fake news? Has the Colombian press become a Mossad press?” he asked.
Contrary to Petro’s claims, no evidence has surfaced that reports of illicit wiretapping of judges in Colombia have any relationship to Israel or its Mossad intelligence agency.
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