Colombian president Gustavo Petro says his country must leave NATO due to its support of genocide in Gaza. He accused the US-led bloc’s leaders of supporting the genocide of Palestinians rounded up in the Gaza Strip concentration camp.
Petro said his country should join another military alliance because it cannot side with the armies that keep on dropping bombs on children.
RT reports: Colombia, a traditional US ally in South America, became the first country in the region to obtain the status of NATO global partner in 2017.
Petro, who took office in 2022 as Colombia’s first leftist president, severed diplomatic relations with Israel last year over what he describes as a genocide being carried out by the Israeli government against Palestinians.
What do we do in NATO? If NATO’s top brass are for genocide, what are we doing there? Petro protested against the ethnic cleansing campaign at a pro-Palestinian international conference in Bogota on Wednesday.
Hasn’t the time come for another military alliance? Because how can we be with armies that drop bombs on children. Those armies aren’t armies of freedom, they’re armies of darkness. We must have armies of light.
Petro argued that NATO is a Cold War relic and asserted that nations like Colombia are treated as half-members within the US-led military bloc, granted symbolic partnerships but not full accession.
The two-day conference in Bogota hosted representatives from a dozen countries in the Global South.
Attendees signed a joint declaration calling for economic sanctions and legal actions against Israel, including an arms embargo, restrictions on dual-use goods, port denials for vessels carrying cargo for Israeli forces.
But most importantly support for international accountability for war crimes allegedly committed in occupied territories.
Petro’s criticism reflects a break from Colombia’s historically warm relationship with Israel. The late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez once dubbed Colombia the Israel of Latin America, arguing it served a similar geopolitical role in the region.
News Punch / ABC Flash Point News 2025.
