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Politicians Who Abuse the Holocaust Should Be Sanctioned
Brazil’s new President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva gestures as he is sworn in at the National Congress, in Brasilia, Brazil, January 1, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Jacqueline Lisboa
JNS.org – The Israeli government was absolutely right in its decision last week to announce that Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva—known to the world as “Lula”—is persona non grata in the Jewish state in the light of his disgraceful comparison of Israel’s defensive war in Gaza with the Nazi extermination of 6 million Jews. By the same token, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a grave mistake in proceeding with his meeting with Lula in Brasilia only a few days after the Brazilian leader made his offending remarks.
The key point to bear in mind regarding Lula’s comments is that there was no ambiguity at all; in his view, Israel’s actions in Gaza are a carbon copy of the Holocaust inflicted by the Nazis.
“What’s happening in the Gaza Strip isn’t a war, it’s a genocide,” Lula declared on the sidelines of an African Union summit in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. “It’s not a war of soldiers against soldiers. It’s a war between a highly prepared army and women and children.” There was only one historical parallel appropriate for the current situation, he continued: “When Hitler decided to kill the Jews.”
Frankly, it feels insulting to have to push back against such an outburst. Insulting and demeaning to have to explain that the goal of destroying the “international Jewish conspiracy” lay at the core of Nazi ideology; that before the extermination began, Nazi Germany initiated the legal degradation of the Jews, conferring subhuman status upon them through the 1935 Nuremburg Laws; that the Nazis built an entire network of concentration and extermination camps dedicated, in the main, to the enslavement and murder of Jews from all over occupied Europe; that the Nazis were so obsessed with murdering every Jew under their control that they actually accelerated the killing even when it became clear that the war was lost for them. There is no comparison here with Gaza. Indeed, there are very few historical events that warrant any kind of comparison with the Holocaust—the 1994 genocide in Rwanda might be one, for example—and absolutely none that justify the exact analogy drawn by Lula.
Nonetheless, Blinken went ahead with his meeting with Lula, fully aware of what had been said. Indeed, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller was asked about Lula’s comments ahead of Blinken’s departure for Latin America. “Obviously, we disagree with those comments,” he responded. “We have been quite clear that we do not believe that genocide has occurred in Gaza. We want to see the conflict ended as soon as practical.”
All very well, but the U.S. government should do more than just disagree. It should condemn. It should point about that abusing the Holocaust as Lula did is as morally repugnant as denying the Holocaust together and arguably more insidious since it mocks the historic victimhood of the Jews by casting them as no different from their murderers.
Perhaps Blinken did tell Lula forcefully that what he said was wrong; we will never know, as no record of their discussion has been published. What we have been told by Lula’s adviser, Celso Amorim, is that Blinken opened that part of their exchange with a reminder that his stepfather, Samuel Pisar, had survived the Holocaust.
Again, we can only speculate, but maybe, to offer a more generous interpretation, Blinken felt that Lula would shift his understanding of the Holocaust if only he had a better grasp of its nature and enduring impact on subsequent generations of Jews. If this was the case, then it was hopelessly naive.
Lula is many things, not least a crook who went to jail for corruption before being exonerated on a technicality, without disproving the original accusations against him. However, he is not an idiot. He knows about the Holocaust and has had the privilege of visiting Yad Vashem in Jerusalem—Israel’s national memorial to the Shoah—while on a state visit to Israel in 2010. Yet this was the same visit during which he insulted his Israeli hosts by refusing to visit the grave of Theodor Herzl, the founder of the modern Zionist movement. Whatever he gleaned at Yad Vashem, this was either forgotten entirely or repurposed for his vile comments while in Ethiopia.
If American and Western leaders are serious about tackling antisemitism, they must do so first of all among their peers. Just as we expect university administrations to sanction college professors who abuse the Holocaust for the purpose of attacking Israel, we should demand the same from politicians; after all, Lula was far from being the first offender in this regard. In the last year alone, the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has claimed, “They used to speak ill of Hitler. What difference do you have from Hitler? They are going to make us miss Hitler. Is what this Netanyahu is doing any less than what Hitler did? It is not.” Meanwhile, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, never misses an opportunity to invoke the Nazi analogy. On a visit to Germany last year, he did exactly that while standing next to Chancellor Olaf Scholz at a press conference, sneering in answer to a question from a journalist that Israel had committed “50 massacres, 50 holocausts” since 1947.
At best, we get condemnation. Scholz later declared himself “disgusted” by Abbas’s comments, but he didn’t declare the Palestinian leader persona non grata. Similarly, Erdoğan’s repulsive barbs also meet with rhetorical disapproval, but no more. If anything, those leaders tempted to also make the comparison may well feel emboldened by the knowledge that those who have already done so get away with it!
Just as a university president who can’t offer a simple condemnation of antisemitism doesn’t deserve to be in office, a political leader—whether elected or not—who compares Israel with Nazi Germany doesn’t deserve to be treated as a diplomatic partner. For years now, we’ve allowed Lula, Erdoğan, Abbas and those of their ilk to spit on the graves of 6 million Jews with impunity. Israel, the state built with the blood and toil of survivors, has now said that enough is enough. If there is any decency left in this world, other governments will follow its lead.
The post Politicians Who Abuse the Holocaust Should Be Sanctioned first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Moves Patriot Missile Batteries from South Korea to Middle East

A Patriot missile battery. Photo: IDF.
i24 News – American Patriot missile defense batteries will be moved from South Korea to the Middle East, according to reports in Asian media on Friday, amid speculation over a potential military action against Iran’s nuclear program and escalating bombardments of Iran-backed jihadists in Yemen.
US President Donald Trump threatened Iran on Sunday with bombing and secondary tariffs if Tehran did not come to an agreement with Washington over its nuclear program, and the United States has moved additional warplanes into the region.
Washington and Seoul have reportedly recently agreed on the “monthslong” partial deployment of the Patriot Advanced Capability-3, in what is understood to be the first known case involving the relocation of United States Forces Korea (USFK) assets to the Middle East.
Iran in recent years has largely dropped the pretense of enriching uranium for a civilian atomic energy program, as it’s reportedly teetering on the nuclear precipice. Israel believes that a nuclear Iran represents a grave existential threat, consistent with the exterminationist antisemitism of the Islamic Republic’s anti-Israel rhetoric.
After the election of Trump, a known Iran hawk, the likelihood of an U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities has increased precipitously.
The post US Moves Patriot Missile Batteries from South Korea to Middle East first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Report: Iranian Plot to Assassinate Azerbaijani Rabbi Foiled

The Azerbaijani capital of Baku. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
i24 News – Iran enlisted the services of a Georgian drug trafficker to carry out an assassination of a prominent Azerbaijani rabbi, the Washington Post reported Saturday, citing security officials.
The plot to murder Rabbi Shneor Segal, foiled by the State Security Service of Azerbaijan in early January, also involved a plan to attack a Jewish education center, the officials said.
The plot was set in motion by an officer with Iran’s Quds Force, who met with Georgian criminal Agil Aslanov, handing him a photo of Segal and detailed instructions on how to murder him, the officials cited by WaPo said. Aslanov’s fee for the foiled hit was $200,000.
The State Security Service said the two men “worked to collect information about a member of a religious community, and sent the location of his residence and workplace to a representative of a foreign special service agency via the appropriate mobile phone application.”
Iran is known to be behind multiple plots against Israeli and Jewish targets, many of which have been foiled by Israeli and foreign security services.
However a recent plot saw three citizens of Uzbekistan murder an Israeli rabbi in the United Arab Emirates on Iranian orders. The three were sentenced to death earlier this week for the murder of Zvi Kogan in November.
The post Report: Iranian Plot to Assassinate Azerbaijani Rabbi Foiled first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Netanyahu to Depart for Washington on Sunday Directly from Hungary to Meet with Trump

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem, Feb. 16, 2025. Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool via REUTERS
i24 News – Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will depart to Washington DC on Sunday directly from Hungary—where he is presently on an official visit—to meet with US President Donald Trump, i24NEWS learned on Saturday from an Israeli source.
The visit comes following a phone conversation between the leaders on Friday, and a call with State Secretary Marco Rubio a short while ago.
As a result, the planned visit to Washington of Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz will be postponed once again.
Topics of discussion between the two leaders are expected to include the possible military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Gaza war and the future of the war-ravaged Palestinian enclave, the US bombing campaign against Iran-backed Houthi jihadists in Yemen, and the recent imposition of tariffs on Israeli products.
The post Netanyahu to Depart for Washington on Sunday Directly from Hungary to Meet with Trump first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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