“I have never lived in such a dangerous world,” with such a risk of “global conflict,” Celso Amorim, Special Advisor to President Inacio Luiz Lula da Silva, told Brasil 247 on the morning of June 12—and that was one day before Israel began is June 13 bombing of Iran. The 83-year-old career diplomat is no novice, having served two Brazilian Presidents as Foreign Minister and yet another as Defense Minister.
“This is not a theoretical danger. In Gaza, it is genocide. And the number of deaths in Ukraine is also enormous. These are wars with a real risk of escalation,” Amorim said in the interview. He stressed, however, that the greatest risk does not arise from the isolated conflicts one by one, but from the sum of all of them. “They are small water bubbles that, when they come together, form a large bubble. And that large bubble could be the beginning of a global conflict. We are talking about the survival of humanity.”
On June 13 Amorim informed Agência Brasil, the government’s national press agency, that the Lula government is considering severing military ties with Israel in response to its genocide in Gaza. “The escalation of massacres in Gaza—which constitute true genocide, with thousands of civilians killed, including children—is something that cannot be minimized. Brazil needs, through appropriate measures, to act consistently with the humanitarian principles and international law it has always defended,” Amorim told the agency.
