The Israeli Foreign Ministry announced Aug. 25 that it has decided to withdraw its request for approval of a new ambassador to Brazil, eight months after Brazil failed to accept the designated replacement for its existing ambassador. “Relations between the countries are now being conducted at a lower diplomatic level,” the Foreign Ministry said, claiming it was Israel that chose to downgrade relations and complaining about “the critical and hostile line that Brazil has displayed toward Israel.”
Brazilian President Lula da Silva’s Special Foreign Affairs Advisor Celso Amorim explained to O Globo’s Valor International that Brazil had not vetoed Israel’s choice for ambassador; “we simply did not respond. They understood and withdrew…. We want good relations with Israel. But we cannot accept a genocide, which is what is happening. We are not against Israel; we are against what Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government is doing, which is barbaric.”
