MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Gaza crisis has repercussions in South America

Milei attended a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony in Buenos Aires

Brazil's Foreign Ministry Friday issued a statement urging Israel to abide by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling and prevent the ongoing conflict in Gaza from escalating into genocide, Agencia Brasil reported. Itamaraty also called for the immediate release of all Israeli hostages in the hands of Hamas.

South America's largest country also underlined the binding nature of all ICJ decisions, such as the one in this case filed by South Africa.

“The Brazilian government is convinced that the precautionary measures will contribute to ensuring compliance with the Convention and the protection of the rights of the Palestinian people, as well as the necessary and immediate humanitarian relief, leading to a prompt cessation of hostilities,” the Itamaraty Palace noted.

The document also highlighted the importance of the immediate release of the nearly 130 hostages still held by Hamas while insisting on a two-state solution.

“Brazil reiterates its defense of an economically viable Palestinian state living side by side with Israel, in peace and security, within mutually agreed and internationally recognized borders, which include the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital,” the statement concluded.

Meanwhile, in Argentina, President Javier Milei underlined that his country would not “remain silent in the face of Hamas terror” and joined global pleas for the release of the hostages. Milei, who is in the process of converting to the Jewish faith, also said he would be traveling to Israel “in the coming weeks.”

He also pledged to work to “end the impunity surrounding” the 1994 “aberrant” bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Welfare Association (AMIA) headquarters in Buenos Aires.

The Argentine head of state made these remarks during an International Holocaust Remembrance Day event at the Shoah Museum in the country's capital.

He added said that “the Holocaust and the Nazis are not a thing of the past” regarding the Oct. 7 raids by Hamas into Israeli territory. “Not since the Holocaust has there been a coordinated mass murder of so many Jews on the same day. In a global context of resurgent anti-Semitism, we must be firm in our position of intransigence against terrorism and not look the other way,” Milei stressed.

Milei underlined the “strength and hope and resilience” of the Jewish people who survived the Nazi oppression. “The stories of the survivors we host in our country are testimony to strength and hope. Their life stories are examples and dictate to us the moral imperative to keep [their] memory alive so that atrocities like these are never repeated.”

Holocaust Remembrance Day was established by the United Nations to commemorate the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp by Soviet troops in 1945.