By Guillermo Alvarado

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva recently expressed a series of blunt truths about what is really happening in the Middle East, in particular in the martyred Gaza Strip, subjected to intense Zionist bombardment and ground attacks.

With characteristic clarity, the former trade union leader and founder of the Workers' Party said Israel is committing "genocide" against Palestinian civilians in Gaza and compared Zionist actions to Adolf Hitler's campaign to exterminate the Jews in Europe.

"What is happening is not a war, it is genocide," Lula told reporters in the Ethiopian capital, where he was invited to participate in the annual African Union Summit.

Moreover, the former metalworker and third time president of the largest country in Latin America and the Caribbean said that something similar had only happened once before in history, when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.

The ruler's words had a remarkable impact on the international media, where they were repeated in the world's major capitals and, of course, reached Tel Aviv.

The Zionist prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, flew into a rage as all liars caught in their own webs do, and sent for his ambassador in Brasilia.

As in these cases, the head of government said that comparing Israel to the Holocaust of the Nazis and Hitler is crossing a red line and insisted on the stubborn falsehood that his country is fighting "to defend itself".

Curious form of defence is killing children, women and the elderly and depriving the sick and wounded of medical care by attacking hospitals as if they were military targets.

Lula, of course, was declared persona non grata in Israel, which in my opinion is a great honour for the Brazilian president, who is usually received with great affection wherever he goes because of his tireless fight for justice and equality.

The Brazilian president, by the way, travelled to Ethiopia to deepen his country's political and economic ties with the African continent, with which there are strong cultural and historical links.

There, he told the continent's leaders that the solution to the Middle East crisis will only be lasting if rapid progress is made towards the creation of a free and sovereign Palestinian state, something that Washington and Tel Aviv viciously and vehemently oppose.