The Blogs: Colombia Decides

Colombia heads to the polls on May 31, exhausted and polarized. But for Colombian Jews, this election has a dimension that goes beyond the general sense of weariness. What is at stake on Sunday is not just the economic model or internal security. It is Colombia’s diplomatic dignity vis-à-vis the world’s only Jewish state. It is the message this country sends to its own children who have chosen Israel as their home. It is, in short, an election that has a name and a surname for the community.

Gustavo Petro did not merely sever ties with Israel on May 1, 2024. He went further: he compared the Israel Defense Forces to the Nazis, expelled Israeli diplomats, banned the sale of Colombian coal to the Jewish state, and appointed an ambassador to Ramallah. Four years of government that turned Colombia into the most strident voice of anti-Zionism in Latin America. It was not foreign policy. It was anti-Israeli demagoguery with concrete consequences for Colombian Jews, for ties with Israel, and for the country’s international reputation.

Now Petro cannot be re-elected. But he has a successor.

Iván Cepeda Castro, the candidate of the Historic Pact, has promised to build on — not disrupt — the outgoing president’s administration. In concrete terms, this means more of the same: more anti-Zionism, more estrangement from Israel, and more rhetoric about “genocide” for domestic consumption. Cepeda is not a moderate who inherited the candidacy by default. When former President Iván Duque visited Netanyahu in Israel, Cepeda filed a criminal complaint against him for “advocating genocide against the Palestinian people.” The same man who never sued the FARC for decades of terrorism found the legal energy to prosecute the person who met with the Israeli prime minister. That is not human rights activism. It is militant anti-Zionism in a judge’s robe.

Due to his origins in the Communist Youth, Cepeda is seen as part of the most radical sector of the Colombian left. His platform calls for the continuation of Petro’s “total peace,” the model of negotiation with criminal groups. A man educated in communist Bulgaria, the son of the political project that emerged from the civilian wing of the FARC, does not represent an abstract threat to the Colombian Jewish community. He represents the continuation of four years of institutionalized hostility toward Israel.

Against this backdrop, two right-wing candidates are emerging: Paloma Valencia, of the Democratic Center, and the figure who has generated the most enthusiasm among the Colombian Jewish community.

Abelardo de la Espriella met with Gideon Sa’ar, Foreign Minister of the State of Israel, in a conversation that lasted more than two hours, and explained to him Colombia’s “urgent need” to strengthen ties of friendship and cooperation with Israel. It was not a courtesy visit. It was a political statement. De la Espriella promised to establish the Colombian embassy in Jerusalem, asserting that “only by strengthening relations and learning from nations that have successfully confronted terrorism—and that have overcome historical challenges such as the diaspora, the Holocaust, the aridity of their territory, and attacks by their enemies—can we find the keys to defeating our own evils.”

This is not rhetoric. It is conviction.

De la Espriella has been explicit with the Colombian Jewish community: to renew a strategic alliance with the State of Israel to confront narco-terrorism, defend the Judeo-Christian principles that are the foundation of Western civilization, and establish the Colombian embassy in Jerusalem. Like Donald Trump and Javier Milei, De la Espriella understands that recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is not a provocation. It is simply telling the truth.

Those who compare him to Bukele are looking at the wrong role model. De la Espriella is not a technocrat with a digital persona. He is a criminal defense attorney with decades of experience on the front lines, an opposition figure who confronted the Petrista movement without compromise, and a politician who openly admires Golda Meir, Ariel Sharon, and Benjamin Netanyahu. He admires those who governed with firmness when Israel needed it most. His ideological mirror is not the “cool” populism of San Salvador. It is the fundamental conservatism of Trump and Milei: order, sovereignty, and real alliances without apologies.

For the Colombian Jewish community, the May 31 election has a specific meaning that cannot be ignored. A Cepeda government means four more years of Colombia serving as a platform for anti-Zionist agitation at the UN, the OAS, and in international forums. It means the consolidation of the break with Israel as a permanent state policy. It means the silent but unequivocal message that Colombian Jews who chose to live in Israel are second-class citizens on the diplomatic agenda of their country of origin.

A De la Espriella administration means the opposite. Restored relations from day one. An embassy in Jerusalem. A strategic alliance on security and technology. And, for the first time in years, the sense that Colombia is once again a country that does not shame its Jewish citizens before the world.

Resentment proved useful in winning the 2022 election. It was a disaster when it came to governing. And Cepeda represents a commitment to four more years of the same experiment, with the same contempt for Israel and the same hostility disguised as humanitarianism. Colombia has already paid too high a price. For Colombian Jews, that price has a name: the isolation of Israel, the severing of historical ties, and institutional complicity with anti-Zionism.

This Sunday, the Colombian Jewish community has a concrete reason to vote. And a very concrete reason to avoid.