Benjamin Netanyahu keeps models of a Merkava tank and an F-35 fighter jet in his office. Next to them is a Bible.
He explained the arrangement on Wednesday evening at a Foreign Ministry reception marking the opening of Colombia’s embassy in Jerusalem earlier that day.
“Power and faith… That is what governs and protects our future,” the prime minister said. He added that this is what Israel brings to its alliance with Colombia.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Remarks at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Reception Celebrating the Inauguration of the Embassy of Colombia in Jerusalem:
“Thank you to the Ambassador of Israel to Colombia, and the Ambassador of Colombia to Israel. And dear ambassadors, dear friends, in so many countries, in so many continents.I’m going to tell you something that will absolutely shock you. I’ve been prime minister for a while, you know. And in 2017, I discovered an amazing fact. No sitting prime minister of Israel in almost 70 years of our history ever went south of Texas. That’s as far south as we got. And I said, well, that’s impossible. And I checked. It was true. No sitting prime minister of Israel went south of the Rio Grande.
So I decided we have to change that. It’s all of Latin America. It’s a huge chunk of humanity, a huge and important part of the world. And I thought, okay, I’ll go.
And the first place we went to, Sara and I, three places: Colombia, Argentina and Mexico. It was a great visit, very friendly in every one of these countries. And by the way, a year later, I think we went to a small country called Brazil, to the inauguration of President Bolsonaro. Who knows? We may do it again.
And not accidentally, a year later, 2017, I think, or 18, my wife, Sara, led a delegation of the Foreign Ministry, not to an earthquake, which we just did again in Colombia, but to a volcanic eruption in Guatemala. And she led a mission of mercy and assistance to the children of Guatemala, and the creation of a neighborhood called New Jerusalem. Douze points. Exactly.
So there are these deep connections that went awry, they were completely derailed because in Argentina, in Mexico, in Brazil, and I regret to say in Colombia, there was a new pharaoh, pharaohs, who did not know Joseph or Gideon or Benjamin, and it all went down to the global woke alliance. It just went down and down and down.
And now I have to tell you that something remarkable is happening in Latin America. It’s all coming back. It’s all coming back. The great friendship, the great sympathy, the deep sympathy between our peoples. A real friendship. It’s based on, yes, interests. I’ll talk about that in a minute. But it comes from the heart. It comes from values. And I have to say that President Abelardo de la Espriella said it exactly, and you said it, Omar, exactly. It’s a common heritage. A Judeo-Christian heritage that started in this city, this city. The city of the prophets, the king of Israel, the city of Christianity. This is where it all began. and it forms a very strong bond between our peoples. Not only the past, but seizing the future.
We want to seize the future together with security, with agriculture, with water, with AI, with everything, with everything. We want to make it grow, not only the crops, the people, the children. Give hope. This is what we’re about.
We’re about life and hope, and we face, exactly as was said here, a death cult that has gripped parts of the globe. A battle of civilization against barbarism. We stand for civilization. We stand for life. We stand for hope. And we’re willing to fight the barbarians.
And we appreciate those who stand with us. And Colombia stands with us. Great courage, great courage and foresight of your president. Please send him my warmest regards. We spoke on the phone. But yes, I’d love to visit with Sara, Colombia again, Bogota. You have a beautiful country, beautiful people, and you deserve the future that you now will get.
You have no better friend than Israel. We believe that we have no better friend than Colombia.
And some great friends who are here as well. I appreciate the support from countries in Africa, countries in Latin America, countries elsewhere. Our friend, the United States of America, President Trump did a great thing here.
So to have the 10th Embassy, the 10th Embassy, the minyan, is a great thing. That’s a great development.
And Sara and I want to visit. We hear it’s spectacular. We want to visit your embassy. If we can do so in the coming days, I’d appreciate it. We’ll let you know. We want to come.
So thank you. Thank you, Colombia, for this friendship.
And I can say that there’s no better place to celebrate it than in Jerusalem, because it has been the pulsating heart of the Jewish people for three millennia. It’s our past, it’s our future, it’s our hope, it’s our faith.
And I want you to know that in many ways, when people come to my office, I have a map of the world, not big enough because it encompasses only parts of Africa and the Middle East and Europe. I want to give now an instruction to my staff: Please change it. Put a map that includes Latin America. Please do it, all of Africa and all of Asia, because the world is coming back.
But I think that they see two other things below the map. They see a small model of the Merkava tank, an F-35. I call it power. And then they see right next to it a copy of the Bible. That’s called faith. Power and faith. That is what governs our hopes. That is what governs and protects our future. And that is what we bring to our alliance together with you, Colombia.
Thank you, Colombia, and congratulations on a wonderful, powerful move of power, courage, and faith.
Thank you to the ambassador of Israel to Colombia, and the ambassador of Colombia to Israel. And dear ambassadors, dear friends, in so many countries, in so many continents.
I’m going to tell you something that will absolutely shock you. I’ve been prime minister for a while, you know. And in 2017, I discovered an amazing fact. No sitting prime minister of Israel in almost 70 years of our history ever went south of Texas. That’s as far south as we got. And I said, well, that’s impossible. And I checked. It was true. No sitting prime minister of Israel went south of the Rio Grande.
So I decided we have to change that. It’s all of Latin America. It’s a huge chunk of humanity, a huge and important part of the world. And I thought, okay, I’ll go.
And the first place we went to, Sara and I, three places: Colombia, Argentina and Mexico. It was a great visit, very friendly in every one of these countries. And by the way, a year later, I think we went to a small country called Brazil, to the inauguration of President Bolsonaro. Who knows? We may do it again.
And not accidentally, a year later, 2017, I think, or 18, my wife, Sara, led a delegation of the Foreign Ministry, not to an earthquake, which we just did again in Colombia, but to a volcanic eruption in Guatemala. And she led a mission of mercy and assistance to the children of Guatemala, and the creation of a neighborhood called New… Jerusalem. Douze points. Exactly.
So there are these deep connections that went awry, they were completely derailed because in Argentina, in Mexico, in Brazil, and I regret to say in Colombia, there was a new pharaoh, pharaohs, who did not know Joseph or Gideon or Benjamin, and it all went down to the global woke alliance. It just went down and down and down.
And now I have to tell you that something remarkable is happening in Latin America. It’s all coming back. It’s all coming back. The great friendship, the great sympathy, the deep sympathy between our peoples. A real friendship. It’s based on, yes, interests. I’ll talk about that in a minute. But it comes from the heart. It comes from values. And I have to say that President Abelardo de la Espriella said it exactly, and you said it, Omar, exactly. It’s a common heritage. A Judeo-Christian heritage that started in this city, this city. The city of the prophets, the king of Israel, the city of Christianity. This is where it all began. and it forms a very strong bond between our peoples. Not only the past, but seizing the future.
We want to seize the future together with security, with agriculture, with water, with AI, with everything, with everything. We want to make it grow, not only the crops, the people, the children. Give hope. This is what we’re about.
We’re about life and hope, and we face, exactly as was said here, a death cult that has gripped parts of the globe. A battle of civilization against barbarism. We stand for civilization. We stand for life. We stand for hope. And we’re willing to fight the barbarians.
And we appreciate those who stand with us. And Colombia stands with us. Great courage, great courage and foresight of your president. Please send him my warmest regards. We spoke on the phone. But yes, I’d love to visit with Sara, Colombia again, Bogota. You have a beautiful country, beautiful people, and you deserve the future that you now will get.
You have no better friend than Israel. We believe that we have no better friend than Colombia.
And some great friends who are here as well. I appreciate the support from countries in Africa, countries in Latin America, countries elsewhere. Our friend, the United States of America, President Trump did a great thing here.
So to have the 10th Embassy, the 10th Embassy, the minyan, is a great thing. That’s a great development.
And Sara and I want to visit. We hear it’s spectacular. We want to visit your embassy. If we can do so in the coming days, I’d appreciate it. We’ll let you know. We want to come.
So thank you. Thank you, Colombia, for this friendship.
And I can say that there’s no better place to celebrate it than in Jerusalem, because it has been the pulsating heart of the Jewish people for three millennia. It’s our past, it’s our future, it’s our hope, it’s our faith.
And I want you to know that in many ways, when people come to my office, I have a map of the world, not big enough because it encompasses only parts of Africa and the Middle East and Europe. I want to give now an instruction to my staff: Please change it. Put a map that includes Latin America. Please do it, all of Africa and all of Asia, because the world is coming back.
But I think that they see two other things below the map. They see a small model of the Merkava tank, an F-35. I call it power. And then they see right next to it a copy of the Bible. That’s called faith. Power and faith. That is what governs our hopes. That is what governs and protects our future. And that is what we bring to our alliance together with you, Colombia.
Thank you, Colombia, and congratulations on a wonderful, powerful move of power, courage, and faith.
Thank you. Thank you all.”
Video: GPO
— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) October 14, 2026
A reversal two years in the making
Colombia opened its embassy in Jerusalem on Wednesday, becoming the 10th country to do so. New President Abelardo de la Espriella reversed his predecessor’s break with Israel and also restored a free trade agreement between the two countries.
Not long ago this would have been hard to imagine. Former President Gustavo Petro severed ties with Israel in May 2024 over the war in Gaza, then closed Colombia’s embassy in Tel Aviv and recalled the ambassador. Petro later announced plans for an embassy in Ramallah. It never opened.
De la Espriella made the Jerusalem move a campaign promise. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said he met de la Espriella in Buenos Aires in November 2025, before the election, and the future president pledged then to relocate the embassy. Sa’ar noted it opened two months after he took office. His government has also lifted Petro’s coal-export ban, moved to withdraw from South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, and left the Hague Group.
Colombian Foreign Minister Omar Bula Escobar said relations “should never have been broken.”
Netanyahu called the tenth embassy a minyan, the quorum of ten required for Jewish communal prayer.
A view of the entrance to the new Colombian Embassy in Jerusalem, which was officially inaugurated yesterday in a ceremony attended by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and Colombian Foreign Minister Omar Bula Escobar. Colombia became the 10th country to open an embassy in Jerusalem, October 15, 2026. Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90
The tank is not decoration
De la Espriella has said he wants access to new weapons, drones and artificial intelligence from Israel and the United States. During the campaign he also said he would seek greater Israeli cooperation against guerrilla groups funded by drug trafficking. Netanyahu listed security, agriculture, water and AI as areas where the two countries can grow together.
Colombia is not opening an embassy only out of sentiment. It wants what the Merkava and the F-35 represent: a state that can defend itself and helps its friends do the same.
The “faith” half is Jerusalem itself. Netanyahu described the city as the center of Jewish national identity for three thousand years, calling it the Jewish people’s past, future, hope and faith.
Chariots and horses
Some readers will hear that Bibi put tanks and Scripture in the same sentence and think of Psalm 20: “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God.”
But Psalm 20 is a prayer for a king on the day of battle. A battle he and his army must still fight. The psalm asks where the king’s trust rests. And that is indeed a question Israel continues to grapple with.
A closer parallel is Nehemiah. When the Jews returning from exile rebuilt Jerusalem’s walls under threat, Nehemiah wrote: “Nevertheless we made our prayer unto our God, and set a watch against them day and night” (Nehemiah 4:9). The builders worked with one hand and held a weapon in the other.
Evoking similar imagery, Sa’ar told de la Espriella, “You have laid a brick in the walls of Jerusalem.”
Latin America tips the scales
Palestinian officials quickly denounced the inauguration, and point to the fact that most nations still reject Israeli sovereignty over the whole of Jerusalem.
But the scales are tipping. And Latin America is playing a big role in that reversal.
Colombia is the fourth Latin American country with an embassy in Jerusalem, after Guatemala, Honduras and Paraguay. The region now accounts for four of the ten.
It may soon account for more. Argentina’s Javier Milei has promised to move his embassy and says the decision is final. The move was postponed in January over a dispute involving Israeli business in the Falklands. In Brazil, Flávio Bolsonaro has pledged to move the embassy within six months if he wins the October 25 runoff.
If both follow through, half the embassies in Jerusalem would belong to Latin America.
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