Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or Lula, caused outrage Sunday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, by comparing Israel’s war against Hamas to the Holocaust, then defending Russian president Vladimir Putin in the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
The Times of Israel reported:
“What’s happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people hasn’t happened at any other moment in history. Actually, it has happened: when Hitler decided to kill the Jews,” he adds.
Lula also says nobody should assume Russian President Vladimir Putin had anything to do with the death of prominent Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, after he died of “sudden death syndrome.”
“A citizen died in prison. I don’t know if he was ill or had any issues,” Lula says. “To make an accusation is to trivialize. I hope that a coroner will provide an explanation for why the individual died, that’s all.”
Lula’s comments provoked an immediate reaction from Israeli leaders across the spectrum.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said (via Government Press Office):
By comparing Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization, to the Holocaust, President da Silva has disgraced the memory of the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis and demonized the Jewish state like the most virulent anti-Semite. He should be ashamed of himself.
President Isaac Herzog said:
Just yesterday, I presented to the world at the Munich Security Conference a book found in Gaza praising and glorifying Hitler’s ideology and the Holocaust.
Israeli soldiers are fighting a cruel terrorist organisation which has as its stated goal the annihilation of the Jewish state, and advocates the suppression of other faiths and communities such as the LGBT community, and brutally continues to hold 134 babies, women, and men hostage in the dungeons of Gaza.
And yet, there are still leaders who atrociously accuse the nation state of the Jewish people of the evil of Hitler’s deeds.
I utterly condemn such accusations and the immoral distortion of history, and call on all world leaders to join me in condemning such actions unequivocally.
Defense minister Yoav Gallant said:
Accusing Israel of perpetrating a Holocaust is outrageous and abhorrent.
Brazil has stood with Israel for years. President Lula supports a genocidal terrorist organization – Hamas, and in doing so brings great shame to his people, and violates the values of the free world.
Lula also recently delivered an anti-Israel rant in which he promised funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which has seen funding cut by donor nations after staff were involved in the October 7 terror attack against Israel.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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