BRASILIA.– Israel declare a Lula “persona non grata” and Brazil summons the Israeli ambassador in Brasilia: the diplomatic crisis caused by the Brazilian president’s comments comparing the war in Gaza with the Holocaust it became more sour.
The day before, from the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, where he participated as a guest at the annual summit of the African Union, Lula declared that Israel’s offensive against the Hamas terrorist movement in Gaza was “not a war, but a genocide,” and the compared to “when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.”
These statements resulted in the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs, Israel Katz, classifying them as a “shame” and declaring the Brazilian president “persona non grata” in his country, during a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial center in Jerusalem, where the Brazilian ambassador to Israel, Frederico Meyer, was summoned.
For his part, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Brazil, Mauro Vieira, rHe responded by summoning Daniel Zonshine, the Israeli ambassador in Brasilia, to a meeting in Rio de Janeiro, where he is preparing a meeting of G20 foreign ministers on Wednesday and Thursday.
At the meeting, held in the afternoon in a “harsh, but correct” atmosphere, Vieira “showed dissatisfaction with the treatment of the ambassador and the president today (Monday) in Jerusalem,” a diplomatic source told AFP.
Meyer, who will travel to the country on Tuesday after being called “for consultations” by Vieira, had to listen to a “statement to the press in Hebrew without an interpreter, without knowledge of what was being said,” the source indicated.
After the reaction in Brasilia, Katz reiterated that Lula will be an “undesirable figure” in Israel until he “apologizes and withdraws his anti-Semitic incitements.” “We will remain standing,” he said.
“We will not tolerate leaders around the world trying to give Hamas political or legal cover,” Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy told reporters.
Israel launched an air and ground offensive against the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza after the October 7 attack by the extremist group, which left at least 1,160 dead, according to an AFP report based on Israeli figures.
Lula, who returned to power in January 2023, described the Hamas attack on October 7 as an “act of terrorism” in November. But he also considered the Israeli response “disproportionate.”
“It is not a war of soldiers against soldiers,” the 78-year-old president declared on Sunday. “It is a war between a very prepared army and women and children.”
The statements by Lula, an important representative of the countries of the global south and who holds the rotating presidency of the G20, are the most forceful issued so far on the conflict.
Hamas welcomed the Brazilian politician’s comments in a statement, saying they were “an accurate description of what his people suffer” in Gaza.
Lula’s conservative opponents rejected the comments, which outraged many in the powerful, fervently pro-Israel evangelical community.
“Lula not only showed his ignorance of history, but he showed everyone the hatred in his heart against the State of Israel,” Eduardo Bolsonaro, legislator and son of the former president, wrote in X.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that Lula had crossed “a red line.”
“By comparing Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization, to the Holocaust, President (Lula) da Silva dishonors the memory of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis and demonizes the Jewish State as the most virulent of anti-Semites. They should be ashamed,” he added.
Nazi Germany systematically exterminated six million Jews during the Holocaust, approximately one-third of the world’s Jewish population.
The president of the Yad Vashem steering committee, Dani Dayan, also pointed out that the Latin American president’s statements demonstrated “clear anti-Semitism” and described his comparison with the Holocaust as “unacceptable.”
Source: With information from AFP
