Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Sunday accused Israel of committing a “genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, comparing the Israeli offensive to the Nazi extermination of Jews.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded sharply by denouncing “shameful and serious” statements and summoned Brazil's ambassador to Israel on Monday, and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant accused Brazil of “supporting” Hamas.
AFP
“What is happening in Gaza is not a war, it is a genocide,” Lula told reporters from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he is attending an African Union summit.
“This is not a war of soldiers against soldiers. It is a war between a well-prepared army and women and children.
“What is happening to the Palestinian people in Gaza has never happened at any other time in history. In fact, this has already happened: when Hitler decided to kill the Jews,” emphasized the Brazilian leader, a veteran of the left.
AFP
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.
“The Brazilian President's statements are shameful and serious” and “I have decided with Foreign Minister Israel Katz to immediately summon the Brazilian ambassador to Israel to forcefully lecture him,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted in the afternoon. Mr. Katz stated on X that the Brazilian ambassador would be summoned on Monday.
“It's about trivializing the Holocaust and trying to harm the Jewish people and Israel's right to self-defense.” “Comparing Israel to the Nazi Holocaust and Hitler crosses the red line,” Netanyahu added in a statement added.
“Israel is fighting to defend itself and secure its future until complete victory and is doing so in accordance with international law,” he concluded.
“Brazil has been on the side of Hamas for years. “President Lula supports a genocidal terrorist organization (…) and thereby brings shame on his people and violates the values of the free world,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant responded to X.
AFP
The 78-year-old Brazilian president condemned Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7 as a “terrorist” act. But since then he has been very critical of Israel's military campaign of retaliation.
The unprecedented Hamas 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 figures.
According to Israeli sources, the attackers also took around 250 people hostage, 130 of whom are still in Gaza, including 30 suspected dead.
Israel's bombings and ground offensive in Gaza have since killed at least 28,985 people, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas Health Ministry.
The Brazilian president also criticized recent decisions by major Western donors to suspend their funding for the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), whose 12 staff members Israel has accused of being involved in the Hamas attack.
Brazil will increase its own contribution to the agency, said Lula, who met Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh on the sidelines of the summit on Saturday and called on other countries to do the same.
AFP
“When I see rich countries announcing that they are ending their contributions to humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, I imagine how great the political consciousness of these people is and the spirit of solidarity that animates them,” he said, quipped he.
“We have to stop being small when we need to be big.”
He reiterated his call for a solution to the conflict based on the coexistence of two states, with Palestine “finally recognized as an independent sovereign state.”