Socialist Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva appeared to accuse Israel of “genocide” against the population of Gaza in remarks on Wednesday.
In reality, Israel has slowly organized a defensive response to an unprecedented terrorist onslaught on its own civilians by Hamas, the dominant authority in Gaza, on October 7. The “al-Aqsa flood” terrorist attack killed more than 1,200 civilians in Israel, butchered in their own homes, tortured and killed at a music festival, and taken hostage by the hundreds. Israeli authorities have confirmed the gruesome discoveries of infants as young as newborns burned alive and decapitated, children stabbed to death and left with knives in their bodies, and the mass killing of the elderly and disabled.
Hamas terrorists themselves boasted of the genocidal nature of the attack, calling their parents to brag that they were killing Jews and filming themselves desecrating the corpses of those killed. In some cases, the terrorists used the mobile phones of those they killed to film the desecration of their corpses and upload videos to the victims’ social media accounts.
Prior to his condemnation of Israel’s attempt to protect its people from this violence as a “genocide,” Lula claimed on Tuesday that Hamas’s actions do not justify Israel’s response.
Lula, who became president for a third term in January despite boasting multiple criminal convictions on corruption charges incurred while being president, has longstanding ties to Hamas’s most prolific state sponsor, Iran, and has historically taken pro-Russian, pro-Chinese, and anti-American stances. Despite this, leftist American President Joe Biden welcomed Lula to the White House in February. As a presidential candidate, when conservative Jair Bolsonaro held the presidency of the country, Biden threatened to destroy the Brazilian economy.
U.S. President Joe Biden (R) and Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (L) walk to the Oval Office before a bilateral meeting at the White House on February 10, 2023, in Washington, DC. President Lula da Silva is visiting the United States for the first time since being elected as Brazil’s president. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Lula made his remarks accusing Israel of “genocide” during a press conference in Brasilia on Wednesday.
“What is happening in the Middle East right now is very grave. This isn’t about arguing who is right, who is wrong, who fired the first shot, who fired the second,” Lula told reporters. “The problem is the following: it isn’t a war, it’s a genocide that has killed almost 2,000 children who have nothing to do with this war, who are victims of this war.”
The “2,000 children” Lula mentioned appeared to be a statistic from the Hamas “health ministry,” which claimed 2,055 children had been killed since October 7 in Gaza. Hamas-affiliated groups have a documented record of falsifying such reports; the claim also appears to include incidents such as the bombing of the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza, a product of a rocket misfire by the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad that Hamas blamed Israel for.
This aerial view shows people standing before destroyed buildings at the site of the Ahli Arab Hospital in central Gaza on October 18, 2023, in the aftermath of an overnight strike there (SHADI AL-TABATIBI/AFP via Getty Images).
“I don’t know how a human being is capable of warring knowing that the result is the death of children and innocents,” Lula continued, apparently still referring to Israel rather than Hamas.
Lula made his remarks before holding a phone call with the Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani. During that call, Lula reportedly praised Qatar, which allows Hamas’s leadership to maintain luxurious “offices” in Doha, for its “role in mediating the conflict” and discussed Qatar offering aid in getting Brazilians stranded in Gaza out of the Hamas-controlled area.
Lula’s declaration of a “genocide” against Hamas terrorists follows a radio interview in which he claimed that Israel is not justified in responding to the October 7 terrorist onslaught.
“It’s not because Hamas committed a terrorist act against Israel that this country should kill millions of innocent people,” Lula said on a weekly broadcast called Chat with the President.
“At a negotiating table, no one dies. It costs less and we can find a solution. We need to make sure that there, in the Middle East, Israel keeps the territory that’s theirs, as demarcated by the UN, and that the Palestinians have the right to their land,” Lula continued. “It’s as simple as that, and there’s no need for anyone to invade anyone else’s land.”
“Every day we see Israel invading Palestinian land and the UN does nothing, because it’s weakened. That’s my role, to try to create the conditions so we can get back to the negotiating table,” Lula claimed.
Brazil currently holds the presidency of the United Nations Security Council, which has issued no statements and taken no action in response to the Hamas terrorist attack nearly 20 days ago. Four draft resolutions on the matter have failed at the Security Council: one by Brazil, vetoed by America; one by America, vetoed by China and Russia; and two by Russia, which failed to garner enough support to pass.
While Lula moved fast to accuse Israel of genocide in Gaza, he attracted criticism in his country for failing to immediately condemn Hamas’s actions on October 7 as a terrorist attack. Lula’s office initially claimed that Lula failed to condemn the attack because he was trying to “avoid giving publicity” to terrorists.
Lula ultimately published a statement calling for Hamas to release the upwards of 200 hostages it took from Israel.
Tal Shlomo, 29, reaches out to touch one of the posters showing the names and photographs of the hostages in Gaza on October 21, 2023 (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post via Getty Images).
“Hamas must release Israeli children who have been kidnapped from their families. Israel must stop bombing so that Palestinian children and their mothers can leave the Gaza Strip through the border with Egypt. There needs to be a minimum of humanity in the insanity of war,” Lula wrote.
Editor’s Note: This story was updated to reflect a revised number on the death toll from the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel. The Israeli government estimate of 1,400 was revised to around 1,200, according to Reuters.