2024-02-19T16:52:08+00:00
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/ Israeli Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz on Monday declared Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva persona non grata in Israel, following his comments likening the war in Gaza to the “Holocaust,” according to The Times of Israel.
“I told the Brazilian ambassador that President Lula is persona non grata in Israel until he apologizes and retracts his statements,” said Katz, who invited the Brazilian ambassador to Israel, Frederico Meyer, to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.
On Sunday, the Brazilian President considered that Israel is committing “genocide” against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, likening what it is doing to the Holocaust of the Jews during World War II.
“What is happening in the Gaza Strip is not a war, it is genocide,” Lula told reporters in Addis Ababa, where he was attending an African Union summit. “This has never happened at any other point in history. In fact, it already happened when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.”
For his part, Katz said that the Brazilian president’s statements were “shameful and dangerous… No one will harm Israel’s right to defend itself. I have ordered my staff to summon the Brazilian ambassador for a reprimand tomorrow,” according to his statements reported by the Times of Israel website.
“It desecrates the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust. We will not forgive and we will not forget, in my name and in the name of the citizens of Israel,” the Israeli minister added on Monday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday described the statements as “shameful and dangerous” and as “a belittling of the Holocaust and an attempt to harm the Jewish people and Israel’s right to defend itself,” considering that Lula had “crossed a red line.”
On October 7, Hamas militants launched an attack on southern Israel that left about 1,200 people dead, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data.
Israel responded with a military campaign on the Gaza Strip, which has killed 29,092 people so far, the vast majority of them women and minors, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Israel says 130 hostages are still being held in Gaza, including 30 killed out of a total of 250 people kidnapped on October 7.