(Addis Ababa) Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Sunday accused Israel of committing a “genocide” of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, comparing the Israeli offensive to the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted strongly by denouncing “shameful and serious” remarks and by summoning the Brazilian ambassador to Israel on Monday, and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant accused Brazil of “supporting” Hamas.
“What is happening in the Gaza Strip 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. This is a war between a highly prepared army and women and children.”
“What is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people has not happened at any other time in history. In fact, this has already happened: when Hitler decided to kill the Jews,” insisted the Brazilian leader, a veteran of the left.
These statements are among the most virulent ever made on the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas by Lula, a prominent voice from the South whose country currently holds the rotating presidency of the G20.
“The remarks of the Brazilian president are shameful and serious” and “I decided with Foreign Minister Israel Katz to immediately summon the Brazilian ambassador to Israel to strongly lecture him,” reacted in the afternoon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Katz specified on X that the Brazilian ambassador would be summoned on Monday.
“Comparing Israel to the Nazi Holocaust and Hitler is crossing the red line,” Mr. Netanyahu added in a statement.
PHOTO GIL COHEN-MAGEN, REUTERS ARCHIVES
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
“By comparing Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization, to the Holocaust, President da Silva has dishonored the memory of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis and demonized the Jewish state as the most virulent anti-Semites. He should be ashamed,” Mr. Netanyahu added in the evening, in a speech delivered in Jerusalem to the Conference of Presidents of the Main American Jewish Organizations.
Hamas “welcomed” in a statement Lula’s statements, which it said were “an exact description of what [son] people suffer” in Gaza and reveal “the enormity of the crime” committed by Israel “with the open support of the Biden administration”.
Contribution to UNRWA
The 78-year-old Brazilian president condemned Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel as a “terrorist” act. But he has since 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 an AFP count based on official Israeli figures.
The attackers also took around 250 people hostage, 130 of whom are still in Gaza, including 30 presumed dead, according to Israeli figures.
The bombings and ground offensive since carried out by Israel in Gaza have killed at least 28,985 people, the majority 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 Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), whose 12 employees 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 Saturday on the sidelines of the summit, urging other countries to do the same.
“When I see rich countries announcing that they are stopping contributing to humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, I imagine the extent of the political consciousness of these people and the spirit of solidarity that animates them,” he said. he quipped. “We need to stop being small when we need to be big.”
He reiterated his call for a settlement of the conflict based on the coexistence of two States, with Palestine “definitively recognized as a sovereign State in its own right”.