NEW YORK ¨C It¡¯s a long way from Tel Aviv to Brasilia, but the journey just got a bit longer. When Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, Brazil bristled. President Dilma Rousseff, who rarely gets in a lather over foreign policy, called Israel¡¯s move into Gaza ¡°a massacre¡± and recalled her ambassador for consultation.
Israel hit back, with a foreign ministry spokesman snubbing the South American giant as a nation that had become ¡°irrelevant¡± in world affairs.
That stung, in part because it was a familiar slight: former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda once famously slammed Brazil as ¡°a giant that acts like a dwarf¡± for falling silent while human rights were trampled in Venezuela and Cuba.
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