Israel’s foreign minister said he would summon Brazil’s ambassador to reprimand him over comments that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called “shameful.”
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 to Adolf Hitler’s campaign to exterminate the Jewish people.
“What is happening in the Gaza Strip is not a war, it is a genocide,” Lula told reporters in Addis Ababa, where he was attending an African Union summit on Sunday.
“This is not a war of soldiers against soldiers. It is a war between a highly prepared army and women and children,” added the Brazilian president.
“What is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people has not happened at any other time in history. In fact, this happened: when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.”
Led by Hitler, the Nazis systematically killed six million Jews during World War II.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said he would summon Brazil’s ambassador to reprimand him over the comments.
“No one will compromise Israel’s right to defend itself,” Katz said on X, adding that the envoy would be summoned on Monday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the comments “shameful and serious.”
“This is a trivialization of the Holocaust and an attempt to attack the Jewish people and Israel’s right to defend itself. To make comparisons between Israel, the Nazis and Hitler is to cross a red line,” Netanyahu said in a statement.
Lula, 78, condemned Hamas’ October 7 attack on southern Israel as a “terrorist” act on the day it occurred.
But he has since sharply criticized the Israeli military reprisal campaign in Gaza.
At least 1,139 people were killed in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, most of them civilians, according to an Tel Aviv Tribune tally based on official Israeli figures.
Hamas members also captured around 250 people, 130 of whom remain in Gaza, including 30 presumed dead, according to Israeli authorities.
Israeli retaliation against Gaza has killed at least 28,858 people, mostly women and children, according to Palestinian authorities.
Lula criticized recent decisions by Western countries to suspend aid to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, after Israel accused some of its employees of being involved in the attack carried out by Hamas.
Lula, who met with Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh on the sidelines of the summit on Saturday, said Brazil would increase its own contribution to the agency and urged other countries to do the same.
“When I see the rich world announcing that it is ending its contributions to humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, I imagine how great the political conscience of these people is and how great the spirit of solidarity is in their hearts “, said Lula.
“We need to stop being small when we need to be big. »
He reiterated his call for a two-state solution to the conflict, with Palestine “definitively recognized as a full and sovereign state.”
