During a joint press conference today with his host, President Emmanuel Macron in France, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva forcefully condemned Israel for carrying out “premeditated genocide” against women and children in Gaza, and called on those who have watched the horrors unfolding there without saying a word, to end their silence. It is time, he said, for the great powers to say “enough” to Israel’s attacks on the Palestinian people, “who cannot be treated like second- or third-class citizens. They are human beings like the rest of us…. We’re seeing this genocide in our faces every single day, and the victims are civilians, not soldiers or members of Hamas.” This is “a highly prepared genocide of women and children against which humanity must be outraged,” he was quoted as saying by UOL Noticias.
At one point, Lula apologized for becoming emotional as he discussed Israel’s war crimes. He declared, “It’s sad, to know that the world is silent in the face of a genocide in which the main victim is not a soldier who is at war, but thousands of children.” He pointedly asked why the IDF’s murder of two Palestinian children carrying bags of flour to bring home didn’t merit the same solidarity as the murder the same day of two Israeli embassy employees in Washington. “Honestly, the day I lose the ability to be outraged, [is the day] I don’t deserve to be the leader of my country,” insisted Lula. He also argued that the war waged by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu goes completely against the interests of the Israeli people. “The Jewish people are not interested in this war either. It’s about peace,” he said.
He continued, “Nor can we allow the speeches of Israel’s President, who says every day that he wants to occupy the Gaza Strip,” and another day says he wants to build a hotel or leisure site, when in reality “this is a territory that a people conquered after much sacrifice and we must ensure that they build the right to live, in harmony with the State of Israel.” Without mentioning the name of Donald Trump, Lula attacked his proposal made earlier this year to remove all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip in order to build a “Riviera of the Middle East.”
