Brazil will not label Hamas a terrorist organization because the UN hasn’t, said Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
Brazil’s president has refused to call Hamas a terrorist organization and slams Israel for killing Gazans in the ongoing war, while his parliament supports the Jewish state, showing it by Thursday singing Israel’s national anthem.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, is a socialist who has long supported the Palestinian side of the Middle East conflict. Nothing has changed since Hamas terrorists invaded Israel October 7 and massacred 1,400 men, women, children and babies, and took 239 hostages, including elderly Holocaust survivors, back to the Gaza Strip.
One day after Brazil’s lawmakers had stood in Congress to sing Hatikva in a gesture of support for Israel, he held a press conference to say, “Brazil’s position is as clear as possible. Brazil only recognizes as a terrorist organization what the UN Security Council recognizes, and Hamas is not recognized by the Council as a terrorist organization, because it contested elections in the Gaza Strip and won.”
Hamas has not held an election since its 2006 victory and its violent takeover of the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian Authority. It is designated as a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States, UK, European Union, Japan, and Australia, among other countries.
He did say that what Hamas did was a terrorist act, he reminded the journalists. He then seemed to say that they should not have committed war crimes because of the results, not because it was evil or wrong, and then blasted Israel for its reaction to the largest mass killing of Jews since the Holocaust.
“What we said is that Hamas’ act was terrorist. We said it loud and clear. That it is not possible to carry out an attack, kill innocent people, kidnap people, the way they did, without measuring the consequences of what happens afterwards because, now, what we have is the insanity of the Prime Minister of Israel wanting to end the Gaza Strip, forgetting that there are not only Hamas soldiers there, but women and children, the greatest victims of the war,” he said.
The president did not mention the IDF’s strenuous efforts to warn civilians to leave the potential battle area, nor the fact that Hamas embeds its military sites within the civilian population, and has launched over 8,000 rockets indiscriminately from them into Israel in the last three weeks.
Lula’s sentiments are seemingly not backed by the Brazilian public. In a survey published Saturday, only 10% called Hamas a “resistance organization,” while three quarters (76%) labeled them as terrorists. This included 71% of those who voted for Lula in Brazil’s recent elections.
This did not automatically translate to support for Israel’s actions since October 7, which to date has mostly been a constant aerial bombardment aimed at destroying Hamas’ military infrastructure and killing as many senior terrorists as possible. Only 30% said Israel’s response was justified, with 61% saying it was unjustified.