Israel says it is not waging war against civilians living in the Gaza Strip. Disclosure/Israel Defense Forces
The Israeli Embassy rejected the State Department's statement about the attack in the Gaza Strip on Palestinians awaiting humanitarian aid that left 104 people dead. In a note sent to R7Israel's diplomatic mission said that the country's war was “against the terrorist group Hamas” and that it would “continue to work to ensure that humanitarian aid reaches innocent civilians.”
“We reiterate that the State of Israel’s war is against the terrorist group Hamas and not against the Palestinians living in Gaza. Israel will continue to work to ensure that humanitarian assistance reaches innocent civilians in Gaza,” the message said.
“The State of Israel risks the lives of its own fighters to ensure the safety of civilians and comply with the guidelines of international law to avoid innocent casualties. The same cannot be said of Hamas, which constantly exploits Gaza's civilian population, its own citizens, “as human shields in its quest to exterminate all Jews,” he adds.
The distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza became the center of a controversy last Thursday (29). Hamas accuses Israeli soldiers of killing at least 100 people waiting for help. The Israeli government denies that troops fired into the crowd and says people in the crowd were trampled or run over.
The confusion occurred near the city of Gaza, where hundreds of people were waiting for trucks carrying humanitarian aid. According to a statement from the Israeli Embassy, the Israel Defense Forces coordinated the arrival of 38 aid trucks. The cars arrived via Egypt, underwent a security check at the Kerem Shalom border crossing and were handed over to truck drivers who were tasked with transporting them to distribution points.
As these trucks drove, escorted by Israeli soldiers, thousands of Gazans rushed toward them. “Confusion arose when some began pushing and trampling other people to steal supplies, resulting in dozens of deaths and injuries,” the Israeli embassy stressed.
Also according to the institution, during the chaos, the Israeli escort “tried to disperse the crowd by firing warning shots in the air.” “When this failed, the Israeli Defense Forces were ordered to withdraw and did so cautiously to avoid further human casualties at the expense of their own safety,” the embassy explains.
According to the embassy, no shots were fired at the humanitarian aid convoy by defense forces. “On the contrary, they were there to ensure that aid got to the people in Gaza who needed it. Operations of this type have been taking place for four nights without incident. This was the first night they encountered problems.”
In a statement released this week, the State Department said that Benjamin Netanyahu's government “has demonstrated once again through its actions and statements that military actions in Gaza have no ethical or legal limits.” “It is up to the international community to stop and only then prevent new atrocities. With every day of hesitation, more innocent people will die. Humanity is failing the civilian population in Gaza. And it is time to prevent new massacres,” the note from the Itamaraty reads.
“Yet the international community’s inaction in the face of this humanitarian tragedy continues to serve as a disguised incentive for the Netanyahu government to continue to target innocent civilians and ignore basic rules of international humanitarian law. Cynical and insulting statements towards the victims.” “The incident, committed hours later by a senior official in the Netanyahu government, should be the final straw for anyone who truly believes in the value of human life believes,” the statement continued.
Diplomatic crisis
Brazil and Israel have been in a diplomatic crisis since President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva compared Israeli military actions to the extermination of Jews. The PT member's statement prompted the government of the Middle Eastern country to declare him persona non grata. As this shows R7The Brazilian told his interlocutors that the statement was intentional and the idea was to encourage other presidents to take a stand in the face of the conflict.
Members of the Netanyahu government, in turn, demanded an apology from the Brazilian head of state for the statement, but this has not yet happened. Even after the statement that sparked a diplomatic crisis, Lula recently reiterated that Israeli military action in Gaza constituted genocide and again defended the creation of a Palestinian state.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog also condemned the Brazilian president's statement. Herzog said there was an “immoral distortion of history” and called on all world leaders to join him in “unambiguously condemning such actions.”
Corporations and organizations also criticized Lula's statement. Conib (Israeli Confederation of Brazil) rejected the speech and classified the statement as a “perverse distortion of reality that hurts the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and their descendants.”
The majority thinks the president is wrong
A poll released Feb. 19 by the Real Time Big Data Institute found that 83% of respondents disagreed with the president's comparison between the war in Palestine and the Nazi Holocaust. The poll also found that 89% of respondents have followed news about the war and that 57% believe Israel is “right” in the conflict.
The investigation on behalf of RECORDwas conducted with 800 respondents. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points at a 95% confidence level.
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Respondents were also asked what position Brazil should take in the conflict: 54% said the country should remain neutral, while 26% said Brazil should support Israel and 14% said it should support the Palestinian side should. 6% of respondents did not know or did not want to answer.
Of the survey participants, 53% are women and 47% are men. The most represented age group is the 4559 age group, with the majority of respondents (25%). In terms of education, 43% have a secondary school diploma, 41% have a primary school diploma and 16% have a university degree.
Congressional reaction
Lula's statement also led to a motion for impeachment against the president. Led by 134 opposition parliamentarians, the group claims that Brazil's neutrality is at risk after the head of government criticized Israel's behavior in the Gaza conflict.
The text cites the terrorist group Hamas's praise and thanks to the Brazilian government and says that “not even nations that preach the eradication of the State of Israel have been able to carry out such an atrocity.”
“The defendant’s conduct consists in committing a hostile act against the State of Israel, consisting of antiSemitic statements and endangering the neutrality of the country,” the impeachment motion states.
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