Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said this Monday to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva “persona non grata” for comparing the current war against Hamas in Ribbon with the Holocaust.
“He is persona non grata in the State of Israel as long as he does not retract his statements and does not apologize,” Katz said, referring to the left-wing leader of the main Latin American power.
The Brazilian head of state said the day before that the conflict between Israel and the Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza was “not a war, but a genocide.”
Speaking from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he was a guest at the annual African Union summit, Lula also compared Israel’s offensive to Adolf Hitler’s campaign to exterminate Jews.
“What is happening to the Palestinian people in Gaza has never happened at any other time in history. “In fact, it happened: when Hitler decided to kill the Jews,” he said.
In response, the Israeli government summoned the Brazilian ambassador to Israel and invited him to a meeting with the diplomatic chief at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.
Nazi Germany systematically exterminated six million Jews during the Holocaust, about a third of the world’s Jewish population.
After the Second World War, the newly founded State of Israel in 1949 took in hundreds of thousands of survivors.
Yad Vashem steering committee chairman Dani Dayan said Sunday that Lula’s comments showed “clear anti-Semitism” and called his comparison to the Holocaust “unacceptable.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in turn, said that Lula, who returned to power in January 2023 as the successor to the right-wing Jair Bolsonaro, had crossed “a red line.”
According to an AFP report based on Israeli figures, Israel launched an air and ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza on October 7 after the terror group attacked its territory, killing at least 1,160 people.
According to Israel, Hamas attackers also captured about 250 people, 130 of whom are still in Gaza, including 30 who were reportedly killed.
According to Hamas, which has ruled the narrow territory since 2007, the Israeli military response in the Gaza Strip has left more than 29,000 dead.
SPRING: AFP