Colombia’s Petro trades barbs with Netanyahu again: ‘Dropping bombs on innocents doesn’t make you a hero’

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Colombian President Gustavo Petro are trading barbs again on social media, a week after Bogota severed diplomatic ties with Israel over the war against Hamas in Gaza.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, addressed to Netanyahu, Petro writes, “Dropping bombs on thousands of innocent children, women and elderly people does not make you a hero. You remain alongside those who killed millions of Jews in Europe.”

“A genocide is a genocide no matter regardless of religion. Try to at least stop the massacre,” he adds.

On Friday, Petro called for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue an arrest warrant for Netanyahu. He has has repeatedly lambasted Israel’s actions in Gaza, refusing to condemn Hamas’s October 7 onslaught — in which some 1,200 people were murdered and 252 taken hostages, mostly civilians. Just three days after the massacre, he likened top Israeli officials to Nazi Germany.

The Colombian president’s comments this morning follow a tweet from Netanyahu last night, in which he wrote, “Israel will not be lectured by an antisemitic supporter of Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization that massacred, raped, mutilated and burned alive 1,200 innocent people on October 7. Shame on you President Petro!”