Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's current foreign tour should have been a walk in the park. It has, however, been plagued with scandal and a diplomatic incident following the Brazilian president's statements on Sunday, February 18, concerning the conflict in Gaza.
"What's happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people hasn't happened at any other time in history. Actually, it has happened: When Hitler decided to kill the Jews," said the president at a press conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he was a guest at the African Union summit. "Brazil has condemned Hamas, but Brazil cannot refrain from condemning what the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip," he added.
The parallel between the Holocaust and the conflict in Gaza provoked furious reactions at the highest level of the Israeli government. "He should be ashamed of himself," said Benjamin Netanyahu, going so far as to accuse Lula of having "disgraced the memory of the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis" and "demonized the Jewish state like the most virulent anti-Semite." This charge was echoed by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who denounced an "immoral distortion of history," and by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who believes Lula now "supports" Hamas.
The Brazilian ambassador in Tel Aviv has been summoned by the Israeli authorities for an official "reprimand." Until now, Lula had maintained a balanced position concerning the Middle East. The man who has long dreamed of himself as a mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict immediately described the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, as "terrorist." But he also criticized Israel's "insane" reaction against civilians in Gaza. Having held the presidency of the G20 since December, the Brazilian leader has consistently called for humanitarian pauses and a ceasefire.
But the scale of the tragedy gradually tipped the leader of the Workers' Party toward more radical opposition to Netanyahu's military policy. On November 14, Lula openly accused Israel of wanting to reoccupy the Gaza Strip, before sharply criticizing its prime minister two weeks later. "As a leader, [Benjamin Netanyahu] is a very extremist person. He's the extreme right, with very low human sensitivity (...) to the problems of the Palestinian people," he declared in an interview with the Qatari channel Al-Jazeera on December 1.
His comments on February 18 also earned him a severe rebuke in Brazil. The Brazilian Israelite Confederation, the main organization representing the country's Jewish community, described the statement as a "perverse distortion of reality" and regretted that the president had "abandoned the tradition of balance and the search for dialogue" in Brazilian diplomacy. The same indignation was expressed by the left-leaning association Jews for Democracy: "Lula's speech is a historical disgrace in every respect," it declared in a press release.
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