Following remarks delivered by the President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, during a session of the United Nations Security Council, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, sharply criticized both the content of the speech and the decision to provide such rhetoric with a global UN platform.
During his address, the Colombian President repeatedly invoked comparisons to Nazism and compared contemporary political debates on migration and global affairs to the rise of Nazi Germany. Earlier this week, the Colombian President posted “Heil Hitler" on X, sparking widespread outrage and controversy.
During his speech in the United Nations Security Council, Petro stated: "That's what makes missiles rain down on people, on babies. 20,000 people have been killed in Gaza. Those numbers cannot be hidden. And that is the real red thread of what I'm going to say here: We're going back to the era of the Nazis."
In response, Ambassador Danon stated: “The United Nations Security Council was not created to serve as a stage for bizarre ideological rants and the dangerous distortion of Holocaust history. Giving legitimacy to rhetoric that recklessly manipulates the memory of Nazism dishonors the victims of the Holocaust and undermines the credibility of this institution. There is a profound moral difference between serious diplomatic debate and the casual, repeated abuse of Nazi comparisons for political provocation. When world leaders invoke Hitler and Goebbels to attack political opponents or democratic states, they erode the historical truth of the Holocaust and fuel dangerous antisemitic discourse. Pedro - You should be ashamed of your remarks!"
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar stated in response to Petro: "The disgraced outgoing President of Colombia is a stain on his great nation. This antisemite is systematically trivializing the memory of the Holocaust. He is a communist that ruined his great country. Soon, he will be history."