brazil 2003-4
Although no violent antisemitic incidents
were recorded in 2003, there were several cases of abuse shouted at Jews,
threats and offensive letters. Anti-Israel positions in the media were
frequently mixed with common antisemitic as well as with anti-American motifs.
After ten years of trial, an important legal precedent was set when the Federal
Supreme Court rejected the appeal of antisemite Siegfreid Ellwanger Castan for habeas
corpus, clearing the way for him to stand trial on charges of racism.
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 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 organization includes 200 groups engaged in promoting Jewish and
Zionist activities, as well as Jewish education, culture and charity. Much
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.
political parties and extremist groups
The current government, led by the Partido
dos Trablhadores (Workers’ Party – PT) of President Luiz Inácio Lula
da Silva, has pro-Arab and anti globalization sympathies. Maguito Vilella, of
the government coalition Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro,
for example, called on the UN to proclaim 29 November (the 1947 UN resolution
on the partition of Palestine) as a day of international solidarity with the
Palestinian people.
A number of very
small fascist/neo-Nazi parties are active in Brazil. Both Ação
Integralista Brasileira (Brazilian Integralist Action – AIB), which also
uses other names, and Cruzada de Renovação Nacional are
fascist organizations which have been active since the 1930s. The Partido
Nacionalista Revolucionário Brasileiro (PNRB) operates, under leader
Armando Zanine, Jr., in Rio de Janeiro, while Partido Brasileiro Nacional
Socialista, is based in São Paulo. Partido Nacional Socialista is
a clandestine organization operating in the southern state of Rio Grande do
Sul, where, notably, a number of neo-Nazi groups are active.
More than 30 carecas
(roughly, skinhead) groups are active in Brazil, mainly in the cities of Rio
de Janeiro and São Paulo. Like their counterparts in Europe, many of
them are neo-Nazi, antisemitic and xenophobic, and almost all are homophobic
(for more details, see ASW 2001/2).
Many of Brazil’s
left-wing organizations are extremely anti-American, anti-Zionist and
anti-Israel; some are also antisemitic. They include Partido do Movimento
Democratico Brasileiro, Circulo Bolivariano de Sao Paulo, Partido
Socialista dos Trabalhadores Unificado (PSTU) and Partido Comunista do
Brazil (see also below).
It is suspected that a
group of neo-Nazis who assaulted a 24-year-old punk student in the wealthy
neighborhood of Moinhos de Vento, Porto Alegre, are linked to the
White Sul Skins, a neo-Nazi movement whose CDs are sold in two outlets in Porto
Alegre. One of its CDs is called “88,” symbolizing ‘HH’ – ‘Heil Hitler’ (‘H’ being the eighth
letter in the alphabet). The music is preceded by a lecture eulogizing Hitler.
Neo-Nazis traditionally attack blacks, Jews and homosexuals.
ANTISEMITIC activity
Threats and Insults
Although no violent antisemitic
incidents were recorded in 2003, there were several cases of abuse shouted at
Jews, threats and offensive letters. For example, on 29 March an individual
marched through the local Synagogue Monte Sinai of São Paulo shouting
“Heil Hitler” and other anti-Jewish expressions (“Heil Hitler,
judeus filhos da puta [Jewish sons of a bitch]”). On 31 March, following
the death of an American woman in Gaza, a letter, signed by ‘Arminio Saad’ and
filled with swastikas and abuse, such as “Jews, you are pigs,” “You will pay
for that,” “Hitler was right,” and “Death to the inhuman and cowardly Jews” was
sent to the former Israeli consulate of Rio de Janeiro.
Several threats
were received, including a letter dated 18 June to the Jewish Federation of Rio
de Janeiro (Federação Israelita do Rio de Janeiro), which warned
that a bomb would be sent to “the Jewish club of ‘Itanhangá’” in order
“to get rid of all the Jews.” The Itanhangá Golf Club has very few
Jewish members. The Eleiezer Steimberg/Max Nordau School in Copacabana, Rio de
Janeiro, received an anonymous phone call in June ordering closure of the
school.
Propaganda
The dynamic of the Israeli-Arab
conflict, and specifically the period since the onset of the second intifada,
has had a major impact on the mass media in Brazil. Anti-Israel attitudes in Brazil
are widespread and aggressive in the mass media in general, and in the
left-wing press in particular. Right-wing organizations and publications were
less visible in 2003. Anti-Israel positions in the media are frequently mixed
with common antisemitic stereotypes. Moreover, left-wing demonization of Israel
is often linked to traditional anti-Americanism (historically, the US is
perceived as the main enemy of Latin American countries), particularly among
intellectuals in these countries (see General
Analysis).
In the
anti-Zionist discourse Israel is always the aggressor and its argument of self-defense
is regarded as a pretext for this ‘artificial state’ to launch new fascist and
racist attacks. There is no mention made of Palestinian suicide bombers or
terrorism; the Palestinians are depicted as an unarmed people, mere children
trying to defend themselves with stones against the most powerful army in the
world. In these images, the physical appearance of Sharon plays a fundamental
role: typically he is shown as a fat, evil, powerful Jew, recalling the
stereotypes found in Julius Streicher's Der Stürmer. Vapt-Vupt,
the journal of the Workers’ Syndicate of the Federal Fluminense University (in Niteroi,
Rio de Janeiro), with a circulation of 5,000 copies, publishes anti-Israel
and pro-Palestinian cartoons in this vein, many of them by popular
anti-American and anti-Zionist caricaturist Carlos Latuff. In order to arouse
sympathy for the Palestinian cause, some of the cartoons compare the Middle
East conflict to struggles in Latin America; one such image shows Che Guevara
in Arab garb (see, for example, http://www.granbaol.org/dahome/num61/vignetta5.htm;
http://filipe.linefeed.org/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=latuff;
http://jerusalem.indymedia.org/).
Bush, Blair and
Sharon are linked in various ways. For example, on 4 April many people received
e-mail with the text: “If there is an American, an Englishman or a Jew living
in your city, he is a spy. Kill him! This Trinity is
killing everywhere.” Three days later two large graffiti signs appeared in the
streets of São Paulo, saying: “Bush, Blair and Sharon are terrorists of
the XXI century.” and “Jews eat Palestinian children.” The Jewish organization
FISESP (Federação Israelita do Estado de São Paulo –
Israeli Federation of the State of São Paulo) complained to the police,
who opened an investigation.
Demonization of Israel
by the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSTU) is particularly blatant. Its
organ, Marxismo Vivo, labeled Israel “a fascist and racist state, and
therefore a Nazi state” (see General
Analysis; also Marxismo Vivo, 3 May 2001 and 24 April 2002; http://www.marxismalive.org/toledo3esp.html).
The Internet site
of Hora do Povo, the organ of the Partido Comunista do Brazil
(Communist Party of Brazil), describes Sharon as “a pig, a Nazi a terrorist, a
monster of nature,” who is forming ghettos like those the Nazis built in Poland
during the Second World War” (see, for example, the articles: “USA and Israel
Paid Hamas to Kill Jews and Blame Arafat, 10 Oct. 2003; Prime Minister Sharon Defends the Burning of Beirut and
Damascus, 14 Oct. 2003 – http://www.horadopovo.com.br/).
The Third World
Social Forum (III Fórum Social Mundial –
FSM), which met in Porto Alegre in January 2003, brought together 40,000
representatives of 5,500 NGOs from 126 countries. The Palestinian delegates
wore T-shirts equating the Star of David with the swastika, and distributed
flags and antisemitic leaflets calling for the destruction of Israel, comparing
Zionism with racism, demonizing the State of Israel and relativizing the
Holocaust. This campaign was prepared by the Palestinian Social Forum, which in
the previous month had hosted 23 delegations in Ramallah.
The Palestinians
were assisted by celebrities such as the Portuguese Nobel Prizewinner in
Literature José Saramago, movie director Oliver Stone, the US academic
Noam Chomsky, and Pakistani British writer Tariq Ali. In return for the support
of FSM delegates, the Palestinians took up the anti-globalization cause. The
FSM also launched an international solidarity movement with the Palestinians,
with representatives in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa. On the Brazilian
site www.palestina1.com.br (group
behind it unknown), a map of Palestine covered the entire territory of Israel.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center was the only Jewish NGO that participated in the
FSM event. Its representatives, Dr. Shimon Samuels and Sergio Widder,
expressed their concerns about the security of the small Jewish community of
the city to the governor of Porto Alegre.
Saramago, who has a major influence on
intellectual circles and is the most widely read Portuguese writer in Brazil, gave
a lecture in Sao Paulo in October 2003 at the opening session of the First International
Congress of Education (I Congresso Internacional de Educação em
São Paulo), which was published in O Globo. He said that the Jewish people had
not learned anything from the Holocaust and that “the Jewish people don’t
deserve the sympathy of the world any more because of their suffering, since
they were perpetrating the same crimes on the Palestinians” (see General Analysis).
T-shirts emblazoned with a Star of David and a
slaughtered Palestinian girl against a background of a large swastika were sold
at a Partido Comunista do Brazil rally
on 16 June, in Cinelândia, the center of Rio de Janeiro. The T-shirts were produced
jointly by leftist parties and the Movement of Solidarity with the
Palestinians.
Islamic/Arab Antisemitism
President of the Muslim Beneficent Society
Mohamed Nassib Mourad, a Brazilian of Lebanese origin considered one of the
leading Islamic figures in Brazil, created a link between Israel and the US
invasion of Iraq during a sermon he gave at a Friday prayer meeting (Folha
de S. Paulo, 22 March 2003), in the mosque in Sao Paulo (one of the oldest in
Latin America; built in 1927), attended by about 2,500 worshippers. Referring
to Israel as an “artificial” state, he
claimed that the invasion had nothing to do with petroleum but was carried out
to please Israel, which wanted to control the Middle East. The Jews had been “the cancer
of the world” since its beginning, he said, and the actions of Hizballah were
the only way “to liberate Palestine
from Zionism.” He repeated the canard that Israeli agents had carried out the
September 11 attacks, ‘proved’ by the fact that 4,000 Jews who worked in the
Twin Towers had allegedly not been harmed.
In March the journal Veja revealed that
according to an official of ABIN, the Brazilian intelligence agency, Usama bin
Laden had visited the Brazilian city of Foz do Iguaçu, on the Triple
Frontier (see Chile), in 1995 and met
with the representatives of the large Arab community there. The meeting was recorded on video (Bin Laden esteve em Foz do
Iguaçu e até deu palestra em mesquita, in: O Estado de S.
Paulo, 16 March 2003).
Antisemitism of the far right, although on a
smaller scale than that of other sectors of Brazilian society, was mostly in
the form of Holocaust denial. German-born journalist Norberto Toedter published
the second edition of his book E a guerra continua (And War Goes On), which
purports “to liberate the German people from the horrors of the war” and “from
60 years of brainwashing.” He explained to journalist Luigi Poniwass (O
Estado do Paraná, 31 May 2003)
that as the son of Germans he had no appreciation for his roots. “Why do they
have to give a prize to [the movie] The Pianist?” Why the persistence on
this topic, he asked. Toedter praised Hitler as “ingenious” and justified the
persecution of the Jews because they held all the strategic positions in Germany. He expressed doubts about the
mass murder of Jews in gas chambers.
The journal Humanus (published by Sama
Multimedia Educação e Arte of the esoteric religious sect Oaska),
continued to publish articles with antisemitic and Holocaust denying/minimizing
content (such as “Judas, a Repentant Zionist” and “Brasilia and Hitler’s Architecture”). A
suit lodged by law student José Fernando Steinberg against Humanus (Feb. 2001 issue), which showed on
the cover a face that was half Hitler’s and half Einstein’s – equating Zionism with Nazism – was shelved by a judge in the
city of Campinas before it went to trial on the grounds that the image was not
discriminatory.
Holocaust denial is also disseminated by the Centro de
Estudos Históricos e Políticos in São Paulo.
An important legal precedent was set in August/September
2003 when the Federal Supreme Court (STF) rejected the appeal of antisemite and
Holocaust denier Siegfried Ellwanger Castan for habeas corpus, clearing
the way for him to stand trial on charges of racism (see also, for example, ASW 1997/8, 2000/1,
2002/3). After 10 years of trial,
the majority of the tribunal accepted that the word ‘racism’ has to be
understood in a wider social context, in accordance with the spirit of the
Constitution, and not only in connection with the black race. It should
include, inter alia, the Jews because Hitler categorized them as an
inferior race.
In October 2003 the Federal Public Ministry
and the Federal Police raided the premises of the Imperial Klans of Brazil in
Santo Amaro, southern Sao Paulo.
They removed two computers and detained a representative of the North America
Ku Klux Klan (KKK). The equipment had been used to send racist messages and to
build the site www.kkkk.net/brazil. The
Committee for Minorities of the Deputy Chamber of the Congress had asked that
the group be investigated. The police also found more than 400 printed computer
pages with racist content, as well as books on the KKK ideology. According to
the journal Revista Consultor Jurídico (10 Oct. 2003), the probe is being extended to
include, among others, a police investigator.
