Bogota, September 23 (RHC)-- Colombian President Gustavo Petro has rejected accusations of being anti-Semitic over his pro-Palestine stance, saying anti-Semitism is manifested in the killing of Gaza children and not in speaking against Israel’s ongoing genocide.

Petro made the remarks in an X post on Sunday, after US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Deborah Lipstadt claimed that Petro's criticism of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza was “harmful” as it “normalizes” anti-Semitism.

"Madam Ambassador, Palestinians are Semites...It is anti-Semitic to kill children by dropping bombs in Gaza and not to oppose it. The most anti-Semitic thing today is to repeat Hitler's holocaust on humanity and especially on the Palestinian people,” he said.

“I am not an anti-Semite. Do not confuse and respect. I am not anti-Jewish.”

The Colombian president also denounced the silence of tens of thousands of journalists in the face of the murder of their colleagues and the massacre of 20,000 Palestinian children by the Israeli regime.

“Anyone who defends this genocide or remains silent in the face of it has destroyed their own human condition,” he added.

According to a June report from the International Committee of the Red Cross, more than 20,000 Palestinian children are missing in Gaza as a result of Israel's assault on the territory. They are either lost, disappeared, detained, buried under rubble or in mass graves.

In his remarks, Petro also condemned the Israeli military’s raid on the office of the Al Jazeera TV channel in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.  Heavily armed and masked Israeli soldiers forcefully entered the office building early on Sunday and ordered it to be shut for 45 days.

Israel waged its brutal Gaza offensive on October 7, 2023, after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out a historic operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

So far, the occupying regime has killed at least 41,431 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in Gaza and injured 95,818 others.