By Palestine Chronicle Staff 
Lula’s remarks infuriated Israel, with Israel Katz saying he would summon Brazil’s ambassador for a reprimand.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and compared its war on Gaza with Adolf Hitler’s campaign to exterminate Jewish people in Nazi Germany.
“What’s happening in the Gaza Strip isn’t a war, it’s a genocide,” Lula told reporters in Addis Ababa where he was taking part in the African Union summit on Sunday.
“It’s not a war of soldiers against soldiers. It’s a war between a highly prepared army and women and children,” the Brazilian President added.
“What is 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.”
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip:
“What is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people hasn’t happened at any other moment in history. Actually, it has happened: when Hitler… pic.twitter.com/npJVAMO9FQ
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) February 18, 2024
Lula has been, throughout the years, supportive of Palestine.
In 2010, as a president, he spoke of his dream of seeing “an independent and free Palestine” during a visit to the occupied West Bank.
He also refused to visit the grave of Theodor Herzl, the father of Israel’s Zionist ideology. Instead, he visited Yasser Arafat’s tomb in Ramallah.
Although he condemned Hamas’ military operation on October 7, he has since then vocally criticized Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
⚡ 🇮🇱 Netanyahu to Brazilian President Lula:
“The words of the President of Brazil are shameful and serious. This is about trivializing the Holocaust and trying to harm the Jewish people and Israel’s right to defend itself.
Comparing Israel to the Nazi Holocaust and Hitler… https://t.co/VW5ryE6kX5 pic.twitter.com/FmP3eHp9qK
— Megatron (@Megatron_ron) February 18, 2024
A ‘Red Line’
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said that he would summon Brazil’s ambassador for a reprimand over Lula’s remarks.
For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the comments as “disgraceful and grave”.
“This is a trivialization of the Holocaust and an attempt to attack the Jewish people and the right of Israel to self-defense,” Netanyahu said in a statement, adding:
“Drawing comparisons between Israel and the Nazis and Hitler is to cross a red line.”
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 28,985 Palestinians have been killed, and 68,883 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
Moreover, at least 7,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
