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Monday, June 22, 2026
FM Sa’ar celebrates win of Colombia’s pro-Israel candidate ‘The Tiger’ as outgoing president accuses Jerusalem of interference. All Israel News
Abelardo De la Espriella and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar during a meeting in Argentina in November 2025. (Source: Gideon Sa'ar/X)
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar celebrated the election win of Colombia’s right-wing presidential candidate, Abelardo De La Espriella, also known as “The Tiger,” who has been a vocal supporter of Israel and has vowed to rebuild relations with the Jewish state after his predecessor, Gustavo Petro, severed diplomatic ties amid criticism of Israel’s conduct in the war against Hamas.
Following the defeat of his preferred candidate, far-left Iván Cepeda, Petro took aim at Israel, alleging it had fixed the elections in De La Espriella’s favor.
“The Tiger won, Colombia won! Congratulations to my friend [De La Espriella] for his impressive victory in the Colombian presidential elections. We look forward to working with President-elect De la Espriella to revitalize relations between Israel and Colombia and take them to their highest level ever,” Sa’ar wrote on 𝕏.
“I have invited President-elect De la Espriella to visit Israel and look forward to welcoming him in Jerusalem very soon. Much success, Abelardo, and congratulations to the Colombian people, who embark on a new and promising path toward the future!”
After meeting Sa’ar last November, De la Espriella had vowed to move the Colombian embassy to Jerusalem and embark on a “strategic alliance” with the U.S. and Israel.
“Only by strengthening relations with and learning from countries that have successfully confronted terrorism and overcome historic challenges such as exile, the Holocaust, drought in their land, and attacks by their enemies, can we find the keys to eradicating our own problems,” he wrote.
During the election campaign, President Petro had drawn strong criticism in Israel after comparing a billboard campaign against Cepeda to Nazi propaganda and commenting “Heil Hitler” in a post on 𝕏.
Now, following exceptionally close elections, Petro is disputing the results and blaming Israel for manipulating the outcome.
In a series of posts on 𝕏, Petro argued that the election results are based on faulty registration data, blaming the software used for the registry’s servers and vowing not to recognize the results until the courts verified them.
“Today we have evidence of a change in IP addresses of several servers of the national registry. This means that the software was compromised and others wrote data for polling stations and voting posts,” Petro wrote.
“The only entity in the world capable of doing that is the state of Israel,” he alleged.
Israel and Colombia had maintained good relations under Petro’s predecessor. However, he quickly emerged as one of the world’s foremost critics of Israel in 2023, following Hamas’ Oct. 7 invasion and terror attack.
In May 2024, Petro announced that Colombia was severing diplomatic relations with Israel, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government of being “genocidal” over its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza.
The 47-year-old attorney and millionaire, President-elect De La Espriella, has vowed to orient the country toward the U.S.-led axis in the region, espousing laissez-faire economic principles in the style of Argentine President Javier Milei and vowing to build large-scale prisons as part of a crackdown on crime modeled on the policies of Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio congratulated De La Espriella by phone, saying the Trump administration “looks forward to working closely with your incoming administration to advance regional security cooperation, end illegal immigration to the United States, and strengthen our economic ties. Colombia's best days are ahead.”
Argentine President Milei also praised the result, declaring: “THE LION AND THE TIGER ROAR IN LATIN AMERICA.” declared, “THE LION AND THE TIGER ROAR IN LATIN AMERICA...!!!”
He added, “Today the majority of Colombians chose the path of economic freedom, prosperity, unwavering security, and telling organized transnational crime and drug trafficking ENOUGH ALREADY. Freedom advances across all of Latin America and there is no turning back. LONG LIVE FREEDOM, DAMN IT...!!!”
The All Israel News Staff is a team of journalists in Israel.
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