Last Wednesday May 29, Brazilian President Lula da Silva officially withdrew his government’s ambassador to Israel, Federico Meyer, and reassigned him to serve as Brazil’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva and to other organizations, as announced in the official government bulletin, Estado de Minas reported. Meyer has actually not been in Israel since February after Lula publicly attacked Israel’s genocide in Gaza, likening it to Adolf Hitler’s extermination of the Jews.
At that time, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz publicly reprimanded Meyer at Israel’s World Holocaust Remembrance Center, Yad Vashem, and subjected him to harassment and humiliation from journalists. Katz also declared Lula persona non grata, until he withdraws his remarks. Last weekend, Lula’s special adviser on foreign affairs Celso Amorim confirmed from Beijing that Meyer would not be returning to Israel. Among other things, he was meeting with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi and President Xi Jinping about the two nations’ proposal to hold an international peace conference to put an end to the war in Ukraine.
“Our ambassador was humiliated and I don’t think he’s going back,” Amorim said. “He’s not going back because he was personally humiliated, and his being personally humiliated means that Brazil was also humiliated, and the intention was to humiliate Brazil.” The organization representing Brazil’s Jewish community, the Israelite Confederation of Brazil (Conib), issued a statement regretting the government’s action. “The two countries have a rich history of cooperation and affection,” it stated. “The Brazilian government’s unilateral action removes the Brazilian diplomatic tradition of balance and dialogue and prevents Brazil from exercising its desired role of mediator and protagonist in the Middle East.”
