Israel declared this Monday "persona non grata" the president of Brazil, Lula da Silva, who yesterday described the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip as a genocide comparable to the Holocaust.
"We will not forgive nor forget: on my behalf 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," the Israeli Foreign Minister announced today. , Israel Katz, after meeting with the Brazilian ambassador in the country.
Katz yesterday summoned the Brazilian ambassador to Israel, Frederico Meyer, after Lula da Silva accused Israel of emulating 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.
Instead of at the Israeli Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, the meeting with the ambassador was at the city's Holocaust Museum, where Katz later announced to the media his decision about Lula.
"The comparison that Brazilian President Lula makes between Israel's just war against Hamas and the actions of Hitler and the Nazis, which exterminated 6 million Jews, is a serious anti-Semitic 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.
"What is happening in the Gaza Strip is not a war, it is a genocide," Lula declared yesterday 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 called Lula's words "shameful and serious" and argued that they seek to "trivialize the Holocaust" and "Israel's right to defend itself."
"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.
