Brazilian President Ignacio Lula Da Silva commented on his trip to Ethiopia a few days ago that Israel is doing in Gaza what Hitler did to the Jews in Germany and accused the State of Israel of genocide against the Palestinians.
First of all that accusation is completely wrong. The Nazis besides invading and subjugating many European countries and starting the Second World War created an industry to murder and annihilate all the Jews in Europe with all available means, cold blooded shootings, gas chambers to accelerate the process of the final solution which meant the extermination of all Jews, concentration camps, ghettos, trains to transport people like cattle to the extermination camps, anti-Jewish laws, expropriation of personal property, slavery, scientific experiments, racial laws, total control of the propaganda media and much help from the governments of collaborating countries to liquidate up to 6 million Jews.
Israel was attacked by the Islamic fundamentalists of Hamas who represent and rule the Palestinian population of Gaza, who chose that government, and whose terrorist organization committed in a few hours an unprecedented massacre on October 7, 2023 killing over 1200 innocent people on Israeli soil, wounding thousands, kidnapping women, children, babies and elderly, cruelly raping women and boasting with the approval and celebration of the majority of the inhabitants of Gaza and the Islamic world.
Hamas provoked this war, not Israel. Hamas’ constitution declares the complete destruction of all of Israel.
Israel has no intention of killing children, on the contrary it is Hamas that kidnaps and kills innocent Israeli children. Israel has in various circumstances warned the population in Gaza that a military operation will be carried out in certain areas so that residents can move to safer places. It is not Israel’s fault that Hamas uses its population as a shield to launch missiles from hospitals, schools, kindergartens, mosques and then uses them as political propaganda.
This accusation also demonstrates ignorance in relation to the Shoa (Holocaust). Hitler’s Nazi Germany eliminated all its political opponents, in addition to annihilating millions of Jews, caused the Second World War which generated another impressive and even greater number of millions of non-Jewish dead also in the battles against its enemies, invaded and took over numerous European countries and reached as far as North Africa, suppressed Slavs, political dissidents, Christians who opposed the Nazis, Gypsies, homosexuals, Poles, Russians, Socialists, Bolsheviks, Communists and other ethnic minorities, allied itself with all fascist regimes and its goal of establishing an Aryan master race in control of the world was not only a dream but a goal.
Israel has a regional conflict with the Palestinians who have permanently refused to reach a peace agreement with Israel and started the war when they decided to eliminate Israel between 1947 and 1948 with the help of several Arab countries. They used and use terrorism against Israel instead of dialogue and the desire to reach a real peace agreement to this day.
Israel does not seek to dominate or conquer other countries and here there is freedom of press and democracy even to strongly criticize the government as it usually happens in Israeli society.
It is very important for Lula to read, study and learn more about the Nazi Holocaust.
The third point to understand Lula’s comment is perversity and political opportunism.
He seems to want to alter, modify or manipulate a situation in his favor.
Lula, who supported the policies of the former and late Venezuelan dictator Chavez and is an ally of the current Venezuelan president Maduro, wants to show himself as a leftist international leader and curiously his comments against Israel happen shortly after the Argentinean president Javier Milei visited Israel, who expressed his solidarity and full support to Israel in the war against Hamas terrorism.
Lula is against the Argentinean President Milei who recalled the imprisonment of Lula Da Silva for his indictment in acts of political corruption in Brazil, Lula spent 580 days in jail, the leader of the Workers’ Party had been convicted for the crimes of passive corruption and money laundering.
In this case Lula positions himself as the left of Latin America against the right of Milei.
And also days after Milei’s visit to Israel, Bolivia, which broke off relations with Israel since almost the beginning of the war in Gaza, signed an important agreement with Iran, so there is an Islamist agenda in South America to which we must be attentive.
Perhaps Lula’s comments should not come as much of a surprise since in one of his previous terms in office in 2009 when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the former president of Iran was heavily criticized in the free world and pressured for his atomic program, for his denial of the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews and for openly encouraging the total destruction of Israel, he had the honor of being invited by Lula to Brazil.
In August 2023, President Lula met with Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi in Johannesburg, South Africa, during the BRICS Summit, which is an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The term was initially created as BRIC (without South Africa) by Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill in 2001. The PT (Workers Party) celebrated Iran’s entry into BRICS alongside Raisi, accused of involvement in the execution of thousands of prisoners and dubbed “the butcher of Tehran.”
Raisi’s role in the so-called “death committee” was denounced by Amnesty International in 2018. According to the NGO report, the executions took place between late July and early September 1988. The bodies of at least three thousand victims were allegedly buried in anonymous mass graves.
“The fact that Ebrahim Raisi became president instead of being investigated for the crimes against humanity of murder, enforced disappearance and torture is a grim reminder that impunity reigns in Iran,” said Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is the world’s largest exporter of terrorism, funding terrorist groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Hamas in Gaza, among others, and is engaged in the construction of atomic arsenals and nuclear weapons, its primary goal being the total destruction of Israel.
I hope and wish that the love of the majority of the wonderful and beloved Brazilian people towards Israel reflected in the enormous amount of pilgrims that have visited Israel in the last decades will remain alive and will not be contaminated and will reverse all expressions of anti-Semitism that is affecting Brazil.
Adiel Wajsman
Licensed Tour Guide
Israel
February 25, 2024