02 February 2007
Brazil’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will attend Sabbath evening services at Latin America’s largest synagogue in São Paolo. In his appearance at Congregação Israelita Paulista in São Paolo, Lula da Silva is expected to denounce anti-Semitism and recent Holocaust denial by Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It will be Lula’s second appearance at the synagogue. Lula will be accompanied by six government ministers, the mayor and state governor of São Paolo and other officials.
The visit, on the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day, also is seen as a rebuke to rising anti-Semitism in neighboring Venezuela, the chief rabbi Henry Sobel. pointed out. “Brazil is not Venezuela, neither is Brazil Bolivia or Ecuador,” said Sobel, referring to South American countries that recently have elected left-wing leaders strongly critical of the United States. “Brazil will not provoke the United States and make alliances with countries in the Middle East suspected of ties with international terrorist organizations. President Lula’s visit to the synagogue speaks louder than words,” Sobel told JTA, adding: “The most important thing that I think will come out of the symbolic visit is that we will not allow Venezuela to contaminate Brazil with its own anti-Semitism.”
