Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is persona non grata in Israel after his comments compared the war in Gaza to the Holocaust, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz announced Monday.
• Also read: Brazil's president accuses Israel of “genocide” in Gaza
“I have informed President Lula that he is persona non grata in Israel until he apologizes and retracts his statements,” Katz said during a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, where he met the Brazilian ambassador in the wake of the comments Israel called in.
Brazil's president on Sunday accused Israel of committing a “genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and compared the Israeli offensive to the Nazi extermination of Jews.
“Brazilian President Lula’s comments comparing the State of Israel’s just war against Hamas, which murdered and massacred Jews, to Hitler and the Nazis are a disgrace and a serious anti-Semitic attack on the Jewish people and the state.” Israel,” said Mr. Katz during the ceremony attended by AFP.
AFP
Government spokesman Eylon Levy echoed that sentiment on Monday when, during a press conference, he denounced “the perpetrators of a real genocide, the Hamas death squads, which on October 7 burned whole families alive, cremated them and turned them into human ashes.” ”
“We will not tolerate leaders around the world attempting to provide political or legal protection to Hamas,” he added.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted sharply on Sunday, denouncing “shameful and serious” comments.
“What is happening in Gaza is not a war, it is a genocide,” Lula told the press from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he was attending an African Union summit.
The comments were among the most vicious ever made by Lula on the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, a prominent voice from the south whose country currently holds the rotating G20 presidency.
Hamas, for its part, welcomed in these comments “an accurate description of what (its) people are suffering in Gaza” and revealed “the enormity of the crime committed by Israel.”
The 78-year-old Brazilian president condemned the October 7 Hamas attack, calling it a “terrorist” act. But since then he has been highly critical of Israel's military campaign of retaliation.
Hamas's unprecedented attack on Israeli soil resulted in the deaths of 1,160 people, most of them civilians, according to a count by the AFP news agency based on official Israeli data.
Israel's bombings and ground offensive in Gaza have since killed at least 29,092 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas Health Ministry.