BRAZIL 2001-2

 

Brazil experienced a growth of antisemitic activity, mainly propaganda, in 2001, triggered by anti-American and anti-Zionist expressions after 11 September. Brazil continues to lead the South American continent in terms of numbers of antisemitic websites.

 

THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

Brazil, the largest country in Latin America, has a Jewish population of about 110,000, out of a total population of over 160 million inhabitants. Most of the Jews live in Brazil’s major cities – Río de Janeiro, São Paulo and Porto Alegre – but some live in small communities on the shores of the Amazon River and in other remote locations, such as Bahia, Belém and Manaus.

The central body representing all the Jewish federations and communities in Brazil is the Confederação Israelita do Brasil (CONIB), founded in 1951. This umbrella body includes 200 organizations engaged in promoting Jewish and Zionist activities, as well as Jewish education, culture and charity. Most Jewish activity takes place in the Hebraica Club in São Paulo and in privately-owned social clubs. The University of São Paulo offers Judaic studies. Brazilian Jews publish a number of magazines, newspapers and journals in Portuguese. The economic downturn has severely affected the fortunes of Brazilian Jews, as it has all Brazilians.

 

EXTREMIST GROUPS

According to Ilanud (Instituto Latino Americano das Nações Unidas para a Prevenção do Delito e o Tratamento do Delinqüente), more than 30 carecas groups are active in Brazil, with a total of 1,000 members. Carecas (roughly, skinheads, but differing in origin and ideology from European skinheads) operate mainly in the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Like their counterparts in Europe, the creed of many of them includes neo-Nazism, antisemitism and xenophobia, and almost all are homophobic. The main carecas groups are Carecas do Subúrbio, Carecas do Brasil, SP Oi!, Carecas “White Power” and Poder Negro (see ASW 2000/1). It should be noted that members of a skinhead group arrested in 2000 and whose paraphernalia (CDs, T-shirts, movies and photographs) reflected their admiration for Nazi Germany, belonged to a marginal and anonymous skinhead group operating in the city of Bauru, São Paulo.

The extreme right-wing Terrorismo Nunca Más ([implying leftist] Terrorism Never Again), founded in 1998, a group of some 40 ex-servicemen and civilians in Rio de Janeiro led by Juarez de Deus Gomes, operates an Internet site to spread its ideology.

 

ANTISEMITIC ACTIVITIES

Brazil experienced a growth in antisemitic activity, mainly propaganda, in 2001, triggered largely by anti-Zionist and anti-American expressions after 11 September.

 

Violence and Vandalism

A few incidents of vandalism were recorded, including the tearing of mezzuzahs from two synagogues, from a Jewish hospital and from a Jewish doctor's clinic. Anti-Jewish slogans were scrawled on the walls of Jewish facilities in Porto Alegre in February, and the wall of a Jewish home in Rio de Janeiro was painted with swastikas and abusive slogans on the night of Hitler’s birthday, 20–21 April.

 

Propaganda

Brazil has the largest number of antisemitic websites in South America (see ASW 2000/1). Comments such as “Hitler was right,” “Germany was right,” “Israel must suffer an atom bomb attack and disappear forever,” and “Nazi Sharon and Nazi Israelis must be tortured to death” were reported in chat and discussion forums on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict (such as the Terra server’s news forum Medium Orient). A new server, Cosmo on Line (www.cosmo.com.br), claiming to be the voice of the state of São Paulo, and providing daily news on the Palestinian question, disseminates anti-Israel articles by pro-Palestinian Brazilian intellectuals and Arab experts, such as the piece “Nazisrael” by Professor José Arbex, who accused Sharon of promoting genocide.

The second issue of the literary journal Humanus (see also ASW 2000/1), issued at the beginning of 2001 printed a photomontage of Einstein’s and Hitler’s faces with the caption: “Zionism is Nazism: A Similarity of Opposites” on the first page. When a Jewish law student complained to the judicial authorities, the editor of Humanus said the student was “a fanatic young person, without intellectual stature,” and that 50 percent of the board of editors and 70 percent of the readers were of Jewish descent. The journal, which is anti-capitalist, characterizes Jews (Einstein, Marx and Freud) as the Spirit of Evil. According to the editor, this is not antisemitism but a criticism of the national and international political and economic systems.

 

Anti-Americanism, Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism

The September 11 attacks and their aftermath, particularly the American attack on Afghanistan, sparked an increase in anti-American expressions of leading Brazilian public figures, such as Judge Fabio Konder Comparato and Milton Temer (see General Analysis). Armen Mamigonian, a professor of economic geography opened a public debate by welcoming the September 11 attacks, which, according to him, revealed the weakness of American imperialism. Despite the brutality of the attacks, he said, bin Ladin had demonstrated in a crude way the fragility of the US. Evangelical pastor Antonio Carlos Santos, of the Assembléia de Deus, told a journalist from the São Paulo Folha de S. Paulo that the attacks were the result of America’s diabolical ideology. Americans do not hear God’s word and only think about money, he said.

Anti-America slogans were also expressed by Muslims religious leaders. On the first Friday after the America bombing of Afghanistan, a São Paulo Muslim cleric of Lebanese descent, Salah Sleiman, translated a sermon of the Egyptian Muslim cleric Mustafa Shukri Ismail for 1,300 worshippers. Ismail claimed there was a war between two cultures: that of the Muslims who believed in one God, and taught truth and human values, and that of the other, who believed in gold and preached immorality. Occasionally, criticism of American policy was coupled with anti-Zionist rhetoric and attacks on Israel. Former Minister Luis Carlos Bresser Pereira for example blamed the United States for its position of unreserved support of Israel, which he considered had laid the ground for Islamic hatred of the United States (see General Analysis). Even more extreme was the well-known philosopher José Arthur Giannotti who claimed that the creation of Israel had caused deep wounds in the relationship between the Arabs and the Western world. He suggested that one could not eliminate the terrorist networks without dealing with these wounds, without getting to the root of the frustration that gave rise to terrorism.

Some openly antisemitic critics depicted Israel as the ultimate evil and equated Israel with Nazi Germany. For example, the mainstream publications Correio Brasillense, on 14 April, and O Globo, on 1 May 2002, published a cartoon showing the devil sitting at a table with a flag bearing the Star of David in the background. During anti-Israel demonstrations held on 4 and 5 April 2002 in São Paulo, 400–500 participants, mostly radical Muslims and leftists, shouted antisemitic slogans, such as “The Jews are not part of the human race; they never had a country” and “Hitler was a pupil of the Jews” and waved placards displaying swastikas and equating Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with Hitler.

 

responses to racism and antisemitism

Public Activity

At the beginning of 2001, 100 intellectuals, both Jews and non-Jews, sent a petition to Paulo Ledir, president of the Rio Grande do Sul Book Association (Câmara Riograndense do Livro) demanding that the books of Editora Revisão publishing house, owned by the Holocaust denier and antisemite Sigfried Ellwanger, be banned from display at the Porto Alegre book fair (Feira do Livro de Porto Alegre). Ledir responded that although Ellwanger had been declared persona non grata by the Municipality of Porto Alegre, Ellwanger’s company could not be prevented from selling books at the fair. Luiz Nazário, a specialist in cinema at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, initiated a public debate in Belo Horizonte about the issue. However, according to the editor of the newspaper O Tempo, Greudo Catramby, “if a regime begins prohibiting one thing it eventually forbids everything,” and “ideas have to be fought with other ideas.” The editor opposed banning the books of Editora Revisão, concluding: “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion speak of the power of money. The Jews generally don’t like this book, and are offended. But others should have the opportunity to know it and make their own judgment.”

 

Legal Activity

In 2000 the above-mentioned Sigfried Ellwanger was sentenced to two years imprisonment, or alternatively, one year community service and three years probation, for writing, editing and selling books with antisemitic messages, and inciting to “feelings of hate, contempt and prejudice against the Jewish people.” In 2002 Ellwanger’s appeal before the Federal Supreme Court that he could not be accused of racism because the Jews were not a race, was accepted and he was acquitted.

 

Holocaust Survey

According to the findings of a survey of one thousand Brazilians conducted by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and published in Folha de S. Paulo on 27 July 2001, a majority of Brazilians (89 percent) did not know what the word “Holocaust” means, and almost one-third (32 percent) had never heard of the murder of the Jews during World War II. Nevertheless, 67 percent said that it was important to remember the Holocaust. Regarding attitudes toward Jews, 37 percent said that they would prefer not to have Jews as neighbors, compared to12 percent who would like Jewish neighbors and 47 percent who were indifferent. Similar surveys were conducted in 13 other countries. Brazilians demonstrated the least knowledge of the Holocaust, and the greatest aversion to Jewish neighbors.

 

Anti-terrorism Measures

In conformance with international law, the 1988 Brazilian constitution repudiates terrorism. Brazil participates in regional security agreements, including a tripartite alliance (Comando Tripartito de la Triple Frontera) with Argentina and Paraguay from 1996 intended to guard their triple frontier, and the Reciprocal Coordination and Cooperation Plan for Regional Security, signed by six countries in 1999. At the end of 2001, President Henrique Cardoso signed the UN International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism and declared his willingness to revise the existing Brazilian passport in order to prevent its falsification and curb terrorist infiltration.

It should be noted the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) cooperate with Muslim terrorists and the IRA (Irish Republican Army). Since the FARC already operate in Venezuela and Ecuador, the Brazilian authorities fear they will infiltrate the country via the Triple Frontier.