Brazil: Lula raises Palestinian flag during national celebration

Brazil’s President Lula da Silva has raised the Palestinian flag during the opening of the Fourth National Cultural Conference in the capital, Brasilia, amid warm applause from the audience. Video footage broadcast state television showed Lula carrying the Palestinian flag next to Brazilian poet Antonio Marinho and Minister of Culture Margareth Menezes.

Speaking at the event, Marinho called for “an end to the genocide in Gaza,” declaring his support for the president’s “stance and courage” and his demand for “peace for the Palestinian people, and an end to the genocide committed against them.”

In closing his speech, Marinho said: “Long live the Palestinian people, free and sovereign. Down with genocide. Long live peace and love.”

President da Silva called last Friday for the Group of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) to demand an “immediate end to the genocide in Gaza”, adding that, “The human tragedy in Gaza requires all of us to be able to say, ‘Enough is enough’ with the collective punishment imposed by the Israeli government on the Palestinian people. People are dying in lines to obtain food, and the indifference of the international community is shocking.”

The Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned on 1 March the Israeli massacre of defenceless Palestinian civilians on Al-Rashid Street in Gaza City, as they waited for aid trucks at dawn on Thursday. “Once again,” said the ministry, “the actions and statements of the Israeli government led by [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu appear to have no moral or legal limits to its operation in Gaza.”

Brazil expelled the Israeli ambassador on 19 February and withdrew its own ambassador in protest at Tel Aviv’s rebuke of the Brazilian envoy for President da Silva’s description of the Israeli war in Gaza as a “genocide” similar to “the extermination of millions of Jews by the Nazis led by Hitler”.

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