Brazil’s first lady calls Israeli gov’t ‘genocidal,’ denies antisemitism by Lula

Brazilian first lady Janja Lula da Silva on Monday called the Israeli government genocidal and denied assertions that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had engaged in antisemitism by comparing Israel’s war against Hamas to the Holocaust.

“The speech referred to the genocidal government and not to the Jewish people,” she wrote on social media.

Journalists refused to publish graphic images of dead Palestinian children and were hiding a genocide in Gaza, the first lady said.

“I am proud of my husband, who since the beginning of this conflict in the Gaza Strip has defended peace and especially the right to life of women and children, who are the majority of victims,” she said. “I am sure that if President Lula had experienced the Second World War, he would have defended the right to life of the Jews in the same way.”

She called for the world to condemn the murder of Gazan children. 

Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira on Tuesday said Israel’s diplomatic response to President Lula’s remarks was an attempt to create a smokescreen to cover up its actions in Gaza.

'Shameful page in the history of Israel's diplomacy'

“For a foreign ministry to address a head of state from a friendly country in this way is unusual and revolting,” he told Reuters at the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro. “It is a shameful page in the history of Israel’s diplomacy.”

Following a public reprimand at Yad Vashem on Monday, President Lula recalled Ambassador to Israel Frederico Meyer for consultations, the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper reported Monday.

Lula had engaged in a “serious antisemitic attack” for comparing “Israel’s just war against Hamas, which murdered and slaughtered Jews, to Hitler and the Nazi” extermination of six million Jews during World War II, Foreign Minister Israel Katz told Meyer at Yad Vashem.

“We will not forgive, and we will not forget,” he said. “In my name and the name of the citizens of Israel, inform President Lula that he is persona non grata in Israel until he apologizes and retracts his words.”

Brazil said it had no intention of retracting President Lula’s statements, Reuters reported Tuesday.

“What is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people does not exist at any other historical moment,” Lula said at the African Union Summit on Sunday. “In fact, it existed when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.”