MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Israeli gov't outraged by Lula's likening war in Gaza to the Holocaust

“The words of the president of Brazil are shameful and serious,” Netanyahu said

The Government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has summoned the Brazilian Ambassador after President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva likened the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) response to the Oct. 7 attacks by the terrorist group Hamas to the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany during World War II.

The South American leader spoke of “genocide” during an appearance in Ethiopia at the African Union (AU) summit. “What is happening in the Gaza Strip is not a war, it is genocide,” Lula told reporters in Addis Ababa. He also criticized developed countries for reducing or cutting humanitarian aid to the region and insisted that these things only existed in history “when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.” Netanyahu replied that Lula had crossed a red line.

“The words of the president of Brazil are shameful and serious. It's about trivializing the Holocaust and trying to harm the Jewish people and Israel's right to defend itself,” Netanyahu wrote on X and summoned Brazil's ambassador for a stern rebuke. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz also posted on X that Lula's speech was “shameful” and confirmed that the Brazilian ambassador had been summoned for clarification, Agencia Brasil reported.

Lula's remarks caused a reaction from organizations such as the Israeli Confederation in Brazil (Conib), which issued a statement repudiating the comparison and saying that the president's statement was a “perverse distortion of reality.”

“The Nazis exterminated 6 million defenseless Jews in Europe, just because they were Jews. Israel, on the other hand, is defending itself against a terrorist group that invaded the country, killed more than a thousand people, carried out mass rapes, burned people alive, and advocates in its founding charter the elimination of the Jewish state,” the Conib text continues.

The Palestinian Arab Federation in Brazil, for its part, commented on Netanyahu's statement and suggested that “perhaps it's time to cut relations with Israel.” According to Hamas, nearly 29,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 68,000 injured in Israeli shelling and fighting in the Gaza Strip since the start of an Israeli offensive shortly after the Palestinian Islamist terrorist group Hamas raided Israel from Gaza and killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took some 240 hostages, 130 of whom are still being held in Gaza.

Lula has also said during his current African tour that Israel was indiscriminately killing women and children in defiance of UN mandates. He also underlined that the conflict between Hamas and Israel was “not a war of soldiers against soldiers” but “a war between a highly trained army and women and children.” He also admitted that Hamas had committed “an act of terrorism” in its Oct. 7 attack on Israel. However, he also criticized Israel's “disproportionate response” and defended the existence of a Palestinian state. “The solution to this crisis will only be lasting if we move quickly towards the creation of a free and sovereign Palestinian state,” he stressed.

Lula also met Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh this weekend and said that Brazil would increase its contribution to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (Unrwa). Several Western countries suspended their financial aid to the UN agency after it was determined that some of its workers sided with Hamas.

“When I see the rich world announcing that it will discontinue its contributions to humanitarian aid for the Palestinians, I imagine how great is the political conscience of these people and how great is the spirit of solidarity in their hearts,” Lula said. “We need to stop being small when we need to be big,” he said.

Regarding Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny's death in jail, Lula said he would rather wait for the results of an investigation before jumping to any conclusions. “A citizen died in prison, I don't know if he was sick or had some problem. I hope a coroner will give an explanation as to why the individual died,” he said.