(Brasilia) Brazilian President Lula on Monday accused Israel of “killing innocent people without any criteria” in the Gaza Strip, judging the response of the Jewish state “as serious” as the Hamas attacks.
“After Hamas’ acts of terrorism, the consequences, Israel’s solution turned out to be as serious as Hamas’s. They kill innocent people without any criteria,” said Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva during an official ceremony in Brasilia.
The president of Latin America’s largest country also accused Israel of “throwing bombs where there are children, such as hospitals, under the pretext that terrorists would be there.”
“It’s inexplicable. First, you have to save the women and children, then you fight with whoever you want,” Lula insisted.
Representatives of Brazil’s Jewish community, however, denounced Lula’s “erroneous,” “unjust” and “dangerous” comments, who “put Israel and Hamas on the same level.”
They defended the “visible and proven” efforts of the Israeli authorities “to save Palestinian civilians”.
“Our community expects balance from our authorities,” added in a note the Israeli Confederation of Brazil, which claims to represent some 120,000 Brazilian Jews, the second largest community in the region.
On October 7, the attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement against Israel, of a scale and violence never seen since the creation of the State in 1948, left around 1,200 dead, the majority civilians, according to the authorities. .
The Israeli military estimates that some 240 people were also taken hostage in the Gaza Strip.
Since then, Israel has relentlessly shelled Gaza and has been carrying out a ground operation since October 27 with the aim of “annihilating” Hamas. The bombings killed 11,240 people, mostly civilians, including 4,630 children, according to the Hamas health ministry.
Israel denies deliberately targeting hospitals. It accuses Hamas of using these facilities, or the tunnels beneath them, as hideouts, which the Islamist militant group denies.
Lula stressed that the number of women and children killed was unprecedented for a conflict of this type.
The Brazilian president welcomed on Monday, at the Brasilia air base, 22 Brazilians and 10 members of their family evacuated from Gaza on Sunday, via the land border with Egypt, after more than a month of waiting in the area. conflict.
The flight carrying the returnees landed after 6 p.m. Eastern time at Recife (Pernambuco) airport, where they made a technical stopover before continuing their journey to the capital.
“Today is a very happy day for Brazilians,” Lula said earlier in the day. The government was repatriating those who “were able to be released with a lot of sacrifice, it depended on the will of Israel,” he added.
On Thursday, Celso Amorim, a close advisor to Lula who represented Brazil at a humanitarian conference on Gaza in Paris, declared himself in favor of a “ceasefire”, estimating that the deaths of thousands of Palestinian children in Israeli bombings were reminiscent of “genocide”.