I document in my book, The Palestine Laboratory, how Colombia has long purchased and used Israeli weapons.
Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro announced Thursday his government is suspending purchases of weapons from Israel after Palestinians say Israeli troops fired at people seeking food in Gaza, marking an escalation of tensions between both countries over the Israel-Hamas war.
The Spanish outlet, El Salto, covered the story and referenced my book:
Colombia takes a further step in the condemnation of the State of Israel with the ban announced by President Gustavo Petro on the arms trade with the regime of Benjamin Netanyahu.
The decision has been made after the release of a video in which the Israeli Armed Forces shoot a hundred people who were waiting for food from a humanitarian aid truck. The attack has caused more than a hundred deaths and more than 700 injuries, according to the Ministry of Health of the territory of Gaza.
The attack has taken place in the southwest of Gaza city, in the Nablsi neighborhood, where the population is facing an unprecedented hunger crisis. A crowd had gathered waiting for help trucks with flour. Initially, the Israeli army has blamed the avalanches of people for the massacre, and then argued that its troops have felt besieged and have opened fire. Subsequently, eyewitnesses have reported that Israeli troops have passed with tanks over the bodies killed.
Petro, like other South American presidents such as Gabriel Boric and Lula da Silva, have been important agents of the international condemnation of Israel’s crimes.
On January 10, the Colombian Government welcomed the lawsuit filed by South Africa against Israel in the International Court of Justice. In recent hours, the tension between the two countries has spread with the call for consultations of the Israeli ambassador in the South American country.
Petro’s coming to power in 2022 also meant a turn in the country’s relations with Israel. Reserve of far-right militarism in the region, the change caused by the new cabinet has led to the review of those relations.
As the journalist Antony Loewenstein explained, until well into the 2000s, officers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) formed death squads in Colombia. In one of the countries with the most open conflicts in the world, paramilitarism, linked to drug trafficking, received the training of prestigious elite troops in the military sphere, as well as weapons. “The infamous Israeli-made Galil rifles, once used in the Guatemalan genocide, ended up in the hands of Colombian drug traffickers in the late 1980s. Manufactured by Israel Military Industries, acquired by Elbit Systems in 2018, the weapons were part of a much larger Israeli presence in Colombia,” explained Antony Loewenstein in his book The Palestinian Laboratory (Captain Swing, 2024).