The Minister of Institutional Relations, Alexandre Padilha (PT), has ruled out any possibility of an apology from President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) to the Israeli government, in the midst of the diplomatic crisis between the two countries.
Premier Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has demanded a retraction from Lula for having compared the attacks on the Gaza Strip to the Nazi Holocaust and declared the president “persona non grata”.
“If there is one thing that President Lula needs to ask Netanyahu for, it is a ceasefire, for peace, to stop the massacre. Other international leaders, other countries and various bodies in the UN system are reinforcing this same request from President Lula,” Padilha said on TV Cultura’s Roda Viva program.
“The president, in his own speech, makes his position clear in relation to Netanyahu and his historic stance, as president of the Republic, of defending Israel, the existence of the State of Israel, and the relationship he has always had with the Jewish community here in Brazil,” added the minister.
The first lady, Rosângela “Janja” da Silva, said she was “proud” of her husband and that he called Netanyahu’s government genocidal, not the Jewish people.
