Blinken meets Brazil’s Lula days after Gaza genocide claims, says US ‘disagrees’
US secretary of state sits down with country’s leader shortly after he compared fighting between Israel campaign against Hamas to ‘when Hitler decided to kill the Jews’
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that the United States disagrees with his controversial remarks comparing Israel’s actions in Gaza to the Holocaust, a US official said Wednesday.
Blinken “made clear we disagree with those comments” in a more than 90-minute meeting with Lula, a senior State Department official told journalists, saying the pair had a “frank exchange” during the sit-down at the presidential palace in Brasilia.
Lula on Sunday called Israel’s war against the ruling Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip a “genocide,” comparing it to “when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.”
“What’s happening in the Gaza Strip isn’t a war, it’s a genocide,” Lula told reporters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he was attending an African Union summit.
“It’s not a war of soldiers against soldiers. It’s a war between a highly prepared army and women and children,” the politician falsely alleged, echoing Hamas propaganda. He went on to assert that “what is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people hasn’t happened at any other moment in history” except one: “When Hitler decided to kill the Jews.”
In response, Foreign Minister Israel Katz summoned the Brazilian ambassador, Frederico Meyer, to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem on Monday, and told him Israel “will not forget and we will not forgive” Lula’s comments.
Katz then declared Lula a persona non grata until he retracts his statements regarding the war against Hamas, which began following the October 7 massacre carried out by the terror group in southern Israel, something which he has said he does not intend to do.
On Tuesday, Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira called Katz’s comments “unacceptable in their nature and lying in their content” as well as “outrageous,” and recalled the country’s ambassador. Meanwhile, Israel’s ambassador to Brazil, Daniel Zonshine, was summoned for a reprimand by Brazil’s foreign ministry.
It was unclear how the move would impact diplomatic ties between the two countries, although the relationship between the two countries is expected to survive.
Blinken “raised the issue and made clear we disagree with those comments,” a senior State Department official said of Lula to journalists traveling with the secretary.
The official said the pair had also discussed “whether there is room for diplomacy” on the war in Ukraine — another issue over which Lula has often been at loggerheads with the United States.
“We don’t see the conditions for [diplomacy] right now,” the official said.
Lula and Blinken also discussed the humanitarian crisis in Haiti, as well as Venezuela, which is locked in a territorial dispute with neighboring Guyana over the oil-rich Essequibo region.
The official said Blinken thanked Brazil for “its efforts to try and reduce tensions between Venezuela and Guyana.”
Lula wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that he and Blinken had discussed issues including a US-Brazilian initiative on helping workers, the environment and the clean-energy transition, in addition to the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
He posted a picture of himself and Blinken smiling and clasping hands.
Blinken said it had been a “very, very good meeting,” in brief comments to journalists as he left the presidential palace.
It is Blinken’s first trip to Brazil since taking office three years ago.
US relations with Latin America’s biggest economy warmed when Lula returned to power in January 2023, replacing Donald Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro.
Lula visited Washington a month after taking office to meet with President Joe Biden.
But independent-minded Lula, 78, a leading voice for the Global South, has pushed back against the United States on issues including the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine.
Blinken arrived later Wednesday in Rio de Janeiro for a G20 foreign ministers meeting, where his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, will also be present.
