Brazilian President Lula declared Israel “persona non grata” after his comments on the war in the Gaza Strip.

The President of Brazil is not welcome in Israel. On Sunday, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva accused Israel of committing “genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, comparing the Israeli offensive to the Nazi extermination of Jews. “What is happening in the Gaza Strip is not war, it is genocide,” Lula told the press from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he was attending an African Union summit.

The Israeli response was immediate: “I informed President Lula that he is persona non grata in Israel until he apologizes and retracts his statements,” Foreign Minister Israel Katz said during a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, where after these statements he summoned the Brazilian Ambassador to Israel.

“The comments made by Brazilian President Lula when he compared the State of Israel’s just war against Hamas, which killed and exterminated Jews, to Hitler and the Nazis, are a disgrace and a serious anti-Semitic attack on the Jewish people and state. Israel,” added Israel Katz.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu already reacted sharply on Sunday, condemning the “shameful and serious” remarks.

Hamas welcomes Lula’s remarks

The statements are among the fiercest ever made by Lula, a prominent voice from the South whose country currently holds the rotating G20 presidency over the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.

Hamas, for its part, welcomed the comments as “an accurate description of what its people are suffering” in the Gaza Strip and revealed the “enormous crime” committed by Israel.

Brazil’s 78-year-old president condemned the October 7 Hamas attack, calling it a “terrorist” act. But he has since become highly critical of Israel’s military campaign of retaliation.