The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, called his ambassador to Israel, Frederico Meyer, for consultations, after this country declared the president “persona non grata” for comparing the deaths of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip with the Holocaust , reported Folha de Sao Paulo.
Lula made the decision after meeting at the Alvorada Palace, his official residence, with his special advisor for international affairs, Celso de Amorim, who previously told the press that he considered the Israeli measure “absurd.”
For the moment, the Brazilian embassy in Israel will be headed by a chargé d’affaires. The president’s statements opened a diplomatic crisis between both countries and this Monday, the Israeli Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, summoned Meyer to the Holocaust Museum, instead of meeting at the Foreign Ministry, as normally happens. The gesture was described by Brazilian diplomats as a “spectacle.”
«We will not forget nor forgive. It is a serious anti-Semitic attack. In my name and on behalf of the citizens of Israel, tell President Lula that he is persona non grata in Israel until he recants,” Katz said to the diplomat.
“It is not a war between soldiers and soldiers”
On Sunday, at a press conference at the 37th African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Lula said the conflict “is not a war between soldiers and soldiers,” but “a war between a Army [israelí] highly trained and women and children.
The president compared the events in the Palestinian enclave with the moment “when [Adolf] “Hitler decided to kill the Jews.”
According to Brazilian analyst Valdo Cruz, a part of the Executive thinks that the president did not make a mistake. While another wing, composed mainly of diplomats, believes that Brazil lost its role as mediator of the conflict.
A message on platform «The speech referred to the genocidal government and not the Jewish people. Let’s be honest in our analyses,” she asserted.
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