Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
accused Israel this Sunday of committing "genocide" against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and, in his criticism, made a comparison that aroused international rejection: he compared Israeli war actions with Adolf Hitler's campaign "when he decided to kill the Jews", in reference to the Holocaust.
"What is happening in the Gaza Strip is not a war, it is a genocide," declared the president of Brazil before the press in Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia
, where he participated as a guest at the annual summit of the African Union.
Lula addressed the conflict in the Gaza Strip by maintaining that "it is not a war of soldiers against soldiers, it is a war between
a very prepared army and women and children
."
"What is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people
has not happened at any other time
in history," Lula said, but he immediately corrected himself and found a controversial parallel.
"Actually, it happened:
when Hitler decided to kill the Jews
," she added.
The phrase had immediate impact.
In response, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Lula's comments
"shameful and serious
," stating that they constituted
a "trivialization of the Holocaust
," and announced that his government
had summoned Brazil's ambassador to Israel
.
"The comparison between Israel and the Holocaust of the Nazis and Hitler
represents crossing a red line
," the president said in a statement, in which he insisted that Israel is "fighting to defend itself."
About Navalny's death
In the same speech, the Brazilian president made a sneaky defense of
Vladimir Putin
, asking
"why rush to accuse?
" when he was consulted about the death of Alexei Navalny, the main opponent in Russia of the current regime.
Lula refused to enter into "speculation" about Putin's responsibilities.
"If the death is under suspicion, an investigation must first be carried out to find out what he died of," he argued.
"I think it is a matter of common sense (...) if the death is under suspicion,
we must first carry out an investigation to find out what he died of
," declared the Brazilian president in Addis Ababa, in Ethiopia, where he participated as invited at the annual summit of the African Union.
The leader of the main Latin American power asked to wait for the forensic results before expressing any opinion.
Otherwise, "if he now judges and says that I don't know who ordered the murder and that it wasn't him,
then he will have to apologize
," he said at a press conference.
His statements constitute the first reactions to Navalny's death from a member of the Brics, a group of emerging countries that also includes India, China, Russia and South Africa.
Lula has been criticized by Western powers
for having a stance that is too favorable to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The leader, who returned to occupy the Presidency of Brazil in January 2023 after the mandate of the far-right Jair Bolsonaro, criticized the responses of the United States and the European Union (EU) to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and refused to join the Western sanctions against Russia.
Source: EFE and AFP