Israel declared this Monday “persona non grata” to the president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio 'Lula' da Silva, who described the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip as a genocide comparable to the Holocaust.
(You can read: At least 90 dead in Israeli bombings in the last hours of this February 19)
“We will not forgive nor forget: in my name and on behalf of the citizens of Israel, I informed President Lula that “He is a personality non grata in Israel until he apologizes and retracts his words,” announced the Israeli Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, after meeting with the Brazilian ambassador in the country.
I informed President Lula that he is an unwelcome personality in Israel until he apologizes and retracts his words
Katz summoned the Brazilian ambassador to Israel, Frederico Meyer, on Sunday, after Lula da Silva accused Israel of emulate Adolf Hitler by committing “genocide” in the Palestinian enclave, where more than 29,000 Gazans have died in 136 days of war.
“This morning I summoned the Brazilian ambassador to Israel at the Holocaust Museum, the place that bears witness more than anything else to what the Nazis and Hitler did to the Jews, including members of my family,” Katz said.
(Also read: Attacks in Gaza: fear grows for patients in a hospital attacked by Israel)
Instead of at the Israeli Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, the meeting with the ambassador was at the Holocaust Museum of the city, where Katz later announced to the media his decision on Lula.
“Brazilian President Lula's comparison between Israel's just war against Hamas and the actions of Hitler and the Nazis, who exterminated 6 million Jews, is a serious antisemitic attack that desecrates the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust,” Katz asserted.
Israel declared war on the Islamist group Hamas after it committed a brutal attack on Israeli soil that left some 1,200 dead and 250 kidnapped, of whom 130 remain held in the enclave.
(Also: The death toll in the Gaza Strip reaches more than 28 thousand after 135 days of war)
“What is happening in the Gaza Strip is not a war, it is a genocide,” Lula declared at an African Union summit in Addis Ababa, where he considered that the confrontation “between a very prepared army and women and children” It had not happened before in history, except “when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Lula's words as “shameful and serious” and argued that they seek to “trivialize the Holocaust” and “Israel's right to defend itself”.
Israel fights for its defense and to ensure its future until total victory and does so respecting international law
“Comparing Israel to the Nazi Holocaust and Hitler is crossing a red line. Israel fights for its defense and to ensure its future until total victory and does so respecting international law,” he stated.
The Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, also attacked Lula in X, and called for the support of world leaders against “such accusations and the immoral distortion of history” it represents.
Just yesterday, I presented to the world at the Munich Security Conference, a book found in Gaza praising and glorifying Hitler's ideology and the Holocaust.
Israeli soldiers are fighting a cruel terrorist organization which has as its stated goal the annihilation of the Jews…
— יצחק הרצוג Isaac Herzog (@Isaac_Herzog) February 18, 2024
(Read on: Israel insists it has no intention of deporting Palestinians from Gaza)
EFE
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