Brazil Abruptly Cuts All Ties To Israel, Calls Its Ambassador Home

Brazil has withdrawn its foreign ambassador to Israel after a comment made by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil.

The President made a statement where he compared the war in Gaza to the Holocaust.

Lula said, “What is happening in the Gaza Strip and to the Palestinian people hasn’t been seen in any other moment in history. Actually, it did when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned Lula’s comments and stated that he is “non grata” in Israel.

The Associated Press News shares more on the story:

Israel on Sunday condemned Brazil’s president for comparing the war in Gaza to the Holocaust, accusing him of being antisemitic and trivializing the Nazi genocide of European Jews during World War II.

The outcry further strained relations between the countries, which have deteriorated since President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva returned to office last year. Lula has portrayed himself as a leader of the “ Global South,” a loosely defined group of developing countries.

Speaking to reporters at the African Union summit in Ethiopia, Lula said that “what is happening in the Gaza Strip and to the Palestinian people hasn’t been seen in any other moment in history. Actually, it did when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.”

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Such comments strike a raw nerve in Israel, a country established as a haven for Jews in the wake of the Holocaust. Israel rejects any comparisons of its conduct in the war in Gaza to the Holocaust.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Lula’s comments “trivialized the Holocaust” and “crossed a red line.” He also accused Lula of being a “virulent anti-Semite.”

Foreign Minister Israel Katz wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that he had summoned Brazil’s ambassador in Israel for a reprimand. Katz called Lula’s comments “shameful and serious.”

People of Israel. President Lula does not represent the Brazilian people. We feel ashamed to talk about him! Brazil is with Israel and against terrorism.

O pinguço não representa o Brasil ! No máximo o bando de jumentos que segue ele .

— Rona (@XI_VII_74) February 19, 2024

Of course, this has pleased Hamas sympathizers:

BREAKING:

Brazil has withdrawn its ambassador from Israel.

The tide is turning. pic.twitter.com/65AScqeKPp

— Adnan Saifi (@m_idiosyncratic) February 19, 2024

The Times of Israel shares more on the story:

Lula went on to assert that “what is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people hasn’t happened at any other moment in history” except one: “When Hitler decided to kill the Jews.”

Israel is fighting a heavily armed terror group in the enclave in response to the deadliest attack on its population in its history. It says civilian casualties are the result of combatants operating from behind the cover of innocents, and that it makes efforts to minimize the deaths of Gazan civilians, including through evacuations of combat zones.

Hamas’s unverified figures, which do not distinguish between combatants and civilians, point to around 29,000 Gazans killed in the war, or slightly over 1% of the Strip’s total estimated population. Israel says at least 10,000 of those were terror operatives, and that the war would end if Hamas were to release the Israeli hostages it took during its October 7 onslaught, and surrender.

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During the Holocaust, the Nazis, led by Adolf Hitler, systematically hunted down the Jewish population of Europe based on a racist ideology, deprived them of all rights, rounded them up in ghettos and camps and exterminated them, annihilating some two-thirds of the continent’s Jews.

To compare what is happening in Gaza to the Holocaust is not only inappropriate but highly idiotic.

There is no comparing the Holocaust to anything currently happening in Israel.