Brazil’s Lula unwelcome till he retracts ‘Gaza war like Holocaust’ remark: Israel

Israel on Monday (local time) told Brazil that its President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva would not be welcomed in the Jewish nation unless he apologised after he compared Israel’s military offensive in Gaza to Adolf Hitler’s campaign to exterminate Jews.

“We will not back down. Until Brazilian President Lula apologises and retracts his antisemitic words of incitement which he hurled at the Jewish people, he will be an unwelcome personality in the State of Israel.” Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz told Brazil’s Ambassador Federico Mayer after he was summoned.

Katz said Israel “will not forget and we will not forgive” until the Brazilian President apologised for his remarks, The Times of Israel cited a statement from the country’s foreign ministry.

On Sunday, Lula told reporters in Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa, where he was attending an African Union (AU) summit, that what was happening in the Gaza Strip “isn’t a war, it’s a genocide”.

“It’s not a war of soldiers against soldiers. It’s a war between a highly prepared army and women and children,” Lula said.

“What’s happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people hasn’t happened at any other moment in history. Actually, it has happened: when Hitler decided to kill the Jews,” he was quoted by news agency AFP as saying.

Meanwhile, Brazil was said to be summoning the Israeli envoy in the country, Daniel Zonshine, over Lula’s comments. But Brazil was not keen to retract the President’s statement on comparing the Israel-Hamas war with the Holocaust, sources told news agency Reuters on Monday.

“Lula’s orders are that there will be no retraction and any answers will be given through diplomatic channels,” sources said.

Earlier, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the 78-year-old Leftist leader’s comments “shameful and grave” and said his government had called in Brazil’s ambassador in protest.

But his comments drew praise from the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which described the remarks as “an accurate description” of what people were facing in the Gaza Strip that it controls.

Israel launched a deadly offensive on Gaza on October 7 last year following surprise attacks by Hamas in the Jewish nation. While around 1,200 people have died in Israel, the ongoing war in Gaza has claimed the lives of over 29,000 and injured around 69,000.