FALCON POWERS – A diplomatic source said on Wednesday that the Brazilian authorities have summoned their ambassador to Israel, and will not appoint a replacement immediately, according to a diplomatic source who spoke to AFP on Wednesday.
Brazil’s ambassador to Israel, Frederico Meyer, was initially summoned for consultations with his government after Brazil and Israel exchanged harsh statements in February about the conflict.
The source said on Wednesday: “There were no conditions for his return” to Israel.
The special adviser to the President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Celso Amorim, announced that Frederico Meyer will not return to Tel Aviv. These developments come in the wake of tensions between Brazil and Israel against the backdrop of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, where the Brazilian president has repeatedly accused Israel of committing “genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza. Da Silva had previously stated that “what the State of Israel (in Gaza) is doing is not a war, it is a genocide, because they are killing women and children.”
This was preceded by a statement from the Brazilian president when he likened the Israeli attack on Gaza to the “Holocaust,” and he did not retract his statement, and he repeatedly stressed the term “genocide.”
Lula da Silva had previously described the war in Gaza, saying “this is a genocide. There are thousands of children killed, and thousands missing. It is not the soldiers who are dying, but women and children in the hospital. If this is not a genocide, I do not know what a genocide is.”
In response, Israel declared that Da Silva himself is an “unwanted person” in Israel.
