After the sad period of Bolsonarism, Brazilian Jews, most of whom are progressive, were looking forward to a new term under Lula. But the new president’s virulent anti-Zionism seems to have disappointed them. Renan Antônio da Silva and Eric Heinze guide us through this affair, from the long history of Brazilian Jewry to the open secret of the elites’ longstanding antisemitic wanderings.
In February 2024 Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was speaking from an African Union summit and declared: ‘What is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people has no parallel in other historical moments.’ He then swiftly corrected himself: ‘In fact, it did exist when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.’[1]
With these words the president of a major world power had pushed the red button for many Jews who, while not necessarily supporting Netanyahu, have long felt committed to Israel’s existence. According to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, ‘[d]rawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis’ can rise in some contexts to the level of antisemitism[2] although such contexts remain disputed[3]. As in dozens of other countries, the Israel-Hamas conflict has played no serious role in the lives of ordinary Brazilians, yet it incarnates a Kulturkampf extending far beyond the confines of Israel or Palestine. Brazil, a nation laden with contradictory attitudes toward Israel and Jews, mirrors all the ambiguities that Jews have long witnessed across the globe. Most Brazilian Jews had supported Lula’s presidential bid, leaving many outraged by his pronouncement, yet comparisons between Jews and Nazis had circulated long before the conflict that began in October 2023.
From Lula to Bolsonaro – and back again
In 2022 Brazilians returned Lula to the presidency, which he had previously held from 2003 to 2011. This comeback spurred expectations that he and his Workers’ Party would restore the country’s reputation as a bulwark of inclusive politics, yet the Israel-Gaza conflict tripped him up as it has tripped up other politicians around the world.
Born into a modest family in the country’s rural northeast, Lula had begun his career as a manual worker then became a union activist, sparking public attention as a grassroots leader by the 1970s and increasingly eyed as an up-and-coming political leader. After these presidential terms, he was succeeded in office by his protégée Dilma Rousseff, who pursued his policies from 2011 to 2016. Yet political infighting and a sluggish economy led to a hiatus for the Workers’ Party as the far-right Jair Bolsonaro swept into office from 2019 to 2022, praising Netanyahu’s far-right government.
Bolsonaro’s ultra-Zionism scarcely chimed with countless Brazilian Jews who looked back on a history of progressive politics and support for Middle East peace.
During Bolsonaro’s 2022 re-election campaign, many supporters waved Israeli flags at public rallies[4] and on election day in October 2022 first lady Michelle Bolsonaro was photographed casting her vote in a T-shirt emblazoned with the Israeli flag[5]. Bolsonaro vowed to move the nation’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, following US President Donald Trump who had taken that step in 2018, and flattering Netanyahu’s ambition to retain Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital.[6]
Bolsonaro scarcely mentioned Palestine, except to claim that it was not a country at all and therefore should not have an embassy in the country’s capital city Brasília.[7] Denying Palestinian nationhood and the existence of a Palestinian people has counted among the tactics of extreme Zionists. Indeed, Bolsonaro’s ultra-Zionism scarcely chimed with countless Brazilian Jews who looked back on a history of progressive politics and support for Middle East peace. For example, Rabbi Henry Sobel, who had settled in Brazil in 1970 and became a passionate human rights defender[8], and the Argentinean woman rabbi Tati Schagas has long lived in Brazil where she fights for LGBTQ+ rights and takes stands against all forms of prejudice.[9] During Lula’s 2022 presidential campaign Jews for Democracy, a São Paulo-based organization, launched a manifesto attracting more than a thousand signatures supporting Lula’s candidacy along with his vice-presidential running mate Geraldo Alckmin of the Socialist Party.
Given Brazilian Jews’ solid backing for Lula, their shock was palpable when he drew the Hitler comparison.
The signatories declared themselves ‘on the side of democracy and Jewish ethical values’ and hoped for a ‘policy aligned with social justice and the guarantee of the Democratic State of Rights to Life (Estado Democrático de Direitos à Vida), ironically turning one of Bolsonaro’s anti-abortion slogans against him. The text blamed Bolsonaro for malnutrition afflicting 33 million people,[10] for the dismantling of policies to combat poverty,[11] for setbacks in combatting infant mortality, and for the loss of almost 700,000 lives during a mismanaged COVID pandemic. It charged that Bolsonaro had used public funds ‘for electoral purposes and private interests,’ and it condemned increases in deforestation, persecution of indigenous people, attacks on African-based religions, and neglect of public education.[12] Given Brazilian Jews’ solid backing for Lula, their shock was palpable when he drew the Hitler comparison.
Some of Lula’s declared priorities such as curbing Amazon deforestation, strengthening South American integration, and finalising a trade agreement between Mercosur and the European Union, had become unthinkable under a Bolsonaro government that had flaunted its isolationism, contempt for international norms, and disdain for traditional values of liberal constitutionalism. Clearly, many experts predicted a 180-degree shift in foreign policy following Lula’s return to office. In 2023 Foreign Affairs published an article trumpeting ‘The Restoration of Brazilian Foreign Policy,’ confident that ‘after the tumult of the Bolsonaro years, Brazil can reassert itself as a valuable force on the international stage.’[13] Brazil has become an increasingly important trading partner for several Middle Eastern states, including Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, so the question now was whether and how Lula could or would bring about substantive change. Admittedly, since resuming office he has restored the country’s earlier support for a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians – although Bolsonaro had never officially abandoned it.
Zionism in Brazil
Approximately 93,823 Syrians and Lebanese arrived in Brazil between 1884 and 1933, at the time often called ‘Turks’, loosely recalling these cultures’ Ottoman histories, whilst more than 50,000 Jews, Ashkenazi as well as Sephardic, also came to Brazil. An estimated 16,000 were denied visas on racial grounds yet Jews nevertheless continued to arrive.[14] Jewish and Arab communities left their marks in part through their economic contributions and played leading roles in Brazilian urban and cultural life, displaying their ethnic-cultural characteristics in part through civic associations that highlighted their origins.
Starting with a wave that arrived from 1913 to 1918 the Brazilian Zionist movement gradually expanded albeit with divisions echoing those in Europe.
Zionist ideas had long been familiar to Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews in the north and further spread with arrivals from Eastern Europe toward the country’s south and southeast from the 1910s through to the 1930s. Starting with a wave that arrived from 1913 to 1918 the Brazilian Zionist movement gradually expanded albeit with divisions echoing those in Europe: some activists wanted to focus on transforming the circumstances of Jews while others wanted to transform all of society.[15]
In what we might describe today as a ‘classical’ or ‘orthodox’ Marxism, the anti-Zionist left prioritised assimilationism. In their view, antisemitism was nothing more nor less than capitalist exploitation, meaning that the ‘Jewish Question’ would be resolved under the dictatorship of the proletariat. In an egalitarian society everyone would share in access to the means of economic production with profits collectivized. This would eliminate intergroup rivalries characteristic of capitalist modes of production and antisemitism would vanish. On that view, Jews’ only future lay in assimilating socially and culturally into their host societies, where their overweening task was to overthrow capitalism in a struggle waged against systems of nations and classes. Meanwhile, other progressives aimed to merge nationalism with socialism without the former wholly dissolving into the latter. Accordingly a socialist society could maintain rights of cultural autonomy for Jews, defending Yiddish culture along with Jewish historical and cultural identity – a view that could follow both Zionist and anti-Zionist paths.
For fully fledged Zionists, any future triumph over antisemitism needed a national State. Along with the creation of Israel the prospect for an end to the diaspora was desirable at least in principle. By contrast, for ‘Yiddishists’ victory would occur through the recognition of greater or lesser degrees of cultural autonomy rights for minorities in the countries where they lived.[16] Indeed, anti-Zionists favored a continuing diaspora, defending the integration of Jews into Brazilian society while safeguarding their autonomy based on Yiddish culture. Yet Bernardo Sorj has observed that a focus on Yiddish culture among the Ashkenazim overlooked deeper bonds that united Jews around the world, including Jews who spoke Ladino (or ‘Djudio’), Arabic, or some other local language unrelated to Eastern European Yiddishkeit. In Sorj’s view, this divergence between ‘Hebraists’ and ‘Yiddishists’ deepened splits between Jewish Zionists and Jewish progressives.[17]
Around the time of the creation of the Israeli state and Arab backlashes from 1947 – 1949, Brazilians of Jewish, Lebanese, and Syrian origin became targets of suspicion by a government often inclined view them as aliens.[18] Israeli-Arab conflicts flared up again in 1956, 1967 and 1973, yet in Brazil, coexistence between Muslims and Jews remained generally cordial. Many constructive debates have been held within higher education along with books published between leaders of the respective religions and communities. This peaceful coexistence illuminates the roles of Muslims and Jews within Brazil’s broader social dynamics, sometimes likened to cultural pluralism in medieval Spain.
Brazilian Government Policy Toward Israel
In 1947, when the UN was only two years old, Brazil’s UN delegation was headed by João Carlos Muniz, who concluded his inaugural speech to the General Assembly on a sceptical note reflecting burgeoning Cold War tensions: ‘We must admit […] that the United Nations has failed to achieve the main objective for which it was created: ensuring security and peace. […] A tragic insecurity weighs on the world and is translated into different forms of fear.’[19] Muniz’s warning echoed government pessimism about possibilities for the UN to achieve the objectives set out in its Charter. Since those days, countless tomes have emerged about the creation and subsequent conduct of the Israeli state, and much analysis can also be found about Brazilian foreign policy. By contrast, little has been written on Brazil’s specific stances toward Israel, and yet these mirror our more broadly fractured world.
To make some headway, we can divide the fifty years of Israeli-Brazilian relations at the UN into two main phases. The first phase ran from the partition of Palestine in 1947 until the oil crisis of 1973. Israel owed its creation in 1948 to the UN, which helped the new state to be recognised internationally, have its domestic and foreign policies legitimated, consolidate itself as a state, and assume its role as an international actor. This international and multilateral organisation enabled Israel to approach countries other than hostile Arab neighbours. In 1947, when the vote on the partition of Palestine was voted on, Brazilian foreign policy aligned with that of the United States. This trend continued into the mid-1,970s, at least in relation to urgent issues involving ‘the adoption of measures to defend the Western coalition against Soviet expansionism,’[20] as in January 1954, when Israel’s diversion of water from the Jordan River sparked regional tensions. Brazil actively participated in proceedings at the General Assembly as well as the Security Council where, from 1946 to 1968, it served five biannual terms as a non-permanent member (1946-1947, 1951-1952, 1954-1955, 1963-1964 and 1967-1968).
In response to global oil shortages, Brazilian rhetoric increasingly exuded realism, pragmatism, and bolder nationalism as witnessed in its more staunchly pro-Arab positions.
That first phrase was characterized by a policy of equidistance vis-à-vis Middle East governments. Albeit geographically distant from the region with modest commercial interests in both Israel and the Arab world, Brazil aimed to promote trade on all sides. Given its prominent Jewish and Arab minorities, state diplomacy was guided by a balancing of interests. Brazil recognized Israeli statehood shortly after Israel’s Declaration of Independence in 1948, while it also formed diplomatic ties with several Arab countries, including Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria. During these years, Brazil often supported resolutions at the United Nations aimed at promoting peace and stability in the Middle East – sometimes supporting resolutions critical of Israel yet also advocating negotiations and dialogue. But the second phase, running from 1973 to the present, exhibited clear shifts. In response to global oil shortages, Brazilian rhetoric increasingly exuded realism, pragmatism, and bolder nationalism as witnessed in its more staunchly pro-Arab positions. An arch-manifestation was Brazil’s General Assembly vote favouring the notorious 1975 Zionism is Racism resolution.[21]
Brazil’s Antisemitic Past
Another piece of the puzzle arises from manifestations of antisemitism, particularly since the oil crises of the 1970s and gaining momentum after 1995 with the opening of various state archives. These included the Foreign Office Historical Archive housed in Rio de Janeiro, along with a collection of the State Department of Political and Social Order under the Public Archive of the State of São Paulo. Several disclosures fuelled controversies about antisemitism in the governments of Getúlio Vargas (1930-1945) and General Eurico Gaspar Dutra (1946-1950). Researchers have since faced hostility from families craving laudatory biographies about their ancestors, such as Oswaldo Aranha, Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Vargas government (1937-1944), and Jorge Latour, chargé d’affaires of Brazil in Warsaw and Rome (1936 and 1938), among others.[22] (As Elias Canetti once quipped, Der Berühmte sammelt Chöre. Er will nur seinen Namen von ihnen hören: ‘The famous man collects choirs. All he wants is to hear them say his name.’[23])
Despite new histories uncovering the country’s antisemitic past, and the antisemitism of political figures between 1933-1948, many Brazilians maintain a conspiracy of silence.
Similarly, in Les Tabous de l’histoire (The Taboos of History) Marc Ferro explains how breaking taboos disrupts the order of things.[24] Some in Brazil wanted to maintain silence around pasts that risked sullying their national heroes. Taboos become myths, which, in turn, foster factional interests.[25] Clearly, evidence of Nazi sympathies in the 1930s and 1940s would prove embarrassing for any nation or public figure, hence the suspicions faced by scholars who have shown that much Brazilian diplomacy endorsed Nazi-style antisemitism, which underscores the importance of new digital versions of these state archives to make them widely and easily available to the public, as is now being done by the Arqshoah project known as the Virtual Archive on the Holocaust and antisemitism.[26]
To be sure, some Brazilian Jews, despite having been victims of Brazilian immigration policy, insist that in Brazil there has never been antisemitism, recalling that Brazilian Jewish organizations rescued refugees in the 1930s and 1940s and assisted them in their arrival and adaptation to the country. Yet the sad fact is that the Brazilian government never offered shelter or extended any humanitarian aid to Jewish refugees. To the contrary, the Vargas and Dutra governments maintained covert antisemitic policies between 1937 and 1948 to deny visas to Jewish refugees and concentration camp survivors. Yet the political mythologies have maintained images of Vargas as a great statesman, the ‘Savior of the Nation,’ and of Brazil as a welcoming country, receptive to all ethnicities and religions. According to the official version, the Brazilian government between 1933 and 1948 invested in saving Jews persecuted by the Nazis yet these myths lack any hard evidence.[27] Despite new histories uncovering the country’s antisemitic past, and the antisemitism of political figures between 1933-1948, many Brazilians maintain a conspiracy of silence.
Denialism and Memory Politics
Given the tensions around the Gaza conflict, Lula’s Hitler comparison might at first have seemed an unfortunate slip of the tongue, yet he took no subsequent steps to recant or modify this statement, which arguably revived left-wing antisemitism in Brazil.[28] The Brazilian Confederation of Jews (Confederação Israelita do Brasil) slammed Lula’s slur as ‘extreme,’ a ‘perverse distortion of reality,’ and offensive to Holocaust victims, survivors, and their descendants. Lula had abandoned the ‘tradition of balance and search for dialogue in Brazilian foreign policy.’[29] According to a public denunciation issued by the Jewish Federation of the State of São Paulo (Federação Israelita do Estado de São Paulo [Fisep]), Lula was proving to be ‘increasingly extremist, biased and dissociated from reality.’ Fisep defended Israel’s rights of ‘self-defense’ against ‘a terrorist group that goes to great lengths to murder Israelis and Jews.’ Fisep’s rebuke concluded: ‘We condemn yet another unfortunate statement by the president and we hope that [Brazil’s Foreign Ministry], which has made us so proud in the past with its impartial and balanced positions, will once again be worthy of praise.’[30]
In November 2011, the first Holocaust Museum in Brazil was opened in Curitiba to remind society of the importance of combatting antisemitism. The local Jewish community which had earlier provided sanctuary to Holocaust refugees and survivors, charged that Lula ‘feeds antisemitism.’ According to a Museum statement: ‘At a time when antisemitism has been propagated and applauded by top members of his political party, we hoped that the President of the Republic would understand the perversity of statements like this and alleviate this form of racism within his own country.’[31] This response echoed those of the President of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, Dani Dayan who branded Lula’s remark as a ‘scandalous combination of hate and ignorance,’ calling it a ‘clear antisemitic expression.’ According to Dayan: ‘Comparing a nation that fights against a murderous terrorist organization with the actions of the Nazis in the Holocaust deserves total condemnation. It is sad that the president of Brazil has sunk to such a low point and has become involved in an extreme distortion of the Holocaust.’[32]
Jews in Brazil, as elsewhere, had good reason to wonder whether they had any future in national politics given the choice between Bolsonaro’s provocations and Lula’s incomprehension. All attempts to amend Lula’s statement only poured fuel on the fire. His wife Janja, a well-known figure in her own right, snapped back that ‘the speech referred to the genocidal government and not the Jewish people,’ insisting: ‘Let’s be honest in our analyses.’[33] This retort scarcely appeased Brazilian Jewish groups, although they by no means supported attacks on innocent Gazan civilians. The prominent jurist and former foreign affairs minister Celso Lafer writing in Estadão posed a question we are now hearing every day around the world: ‘Today, many criticisms of Israel’s actions in Gaza go beyond the heated controversies over the application of norms of humanitarian law or the very serious humanitarian situation in Gaza. They slip into denying [Israel’s] existence. In this context, the question arises: in what way is an anti-Zionism that is very present in criticism of Israel, a contemporary form of antisemitism?’[34]
A former student of Hannah Arendt, Lafer recalled that Zionism had ‘sought the construction of a State as a response to the persecution that the Jews suffered as a discriminated minority,’ in accordance with the principle of self-determination of peoples. For Lafer, the denial of Israel’s right to exist, familiar for decades but amplified since the 2023 war, wreaked of selectivity given that there were no other manifestations of denial of the existence of any other State as a result of its policies: ‘this denialist selectivity makes anti-Zionism a manifestation of antisemitism. It bears an analogy with the revisionist denialism of the denial of the factual truth of the Holocaust.’ As Lafer and others have explained, modern antisemitism differs from earlier forms, ‘which is why we can speak more appropriately of antisemitisms in the plural. One of the current forms of antisemitism is anti-Zionism.’[35]
“In my name, and in the name of all Israeli citizens,” Foreign Minister Israel Katz declared to the Brazilian ambassador during a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, “tell President Lula that he is persona non grata in Israel until he retracts his statements.”[36] Lula responded by calling the ambassador back to Brazil and summoning the head of Israel’s representation in Brasília, Daniel Zonshine, to a meeting at the Foreign Ministry. But then adding further fuel the fire Lula stated that he did not use the word ‘Holocaust’ when comparing the deaths, indicating that this term was merely part of the Israeli interpretation: ‘I did not say the word holocaust, that was the interpretation of the Prime Minister of Israel, it was not mine.’[37] Nevertheless, according to the executive president of the Israelite Federation of the State of São Paulo (Fisesp) Ricardo Berkiensztat, reports of antisemitism in Brazil increased by 236% following Lula’s remarks.[38]
Maduro gleefully mirror-imaged longstanding threats by Iran, Hizbollah, and others to eliminate the Jewish state.
These incidents point toward the distinctiveness of leftist hostility, which largely avoids overt anti-Jewishness, instead opting to impeach Israeli statehood. A few weeks into the 2023 Israel-Hamas conflict the Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, successor to the leftist icon Hugo Chavez, branded Zionism as an ‘ideology . . . more dangerous than Nazism.’[39] Maduro spoke these words after Israel’s ultra-right Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu advocated dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza,[40] an obviously hideous idea immediately condemned by Jews in Israel and worldwide, and for which he was quickly suspended. Yet Maduro gleefully mirror-imaged longstanding threats by Iran, Hizbollah, and others to eliminate the Jewish state, adding that ‘the racists and supremacists of Zionism want to destroy the Palestinian people, and all the Arab people, Muslim people. They have sown an ideology of hate, of pillage […], they will go after the Arab peoples and all the Muslim peoples.’[41]
Of course, anti-Zionism and antisemitism cannot be altogether separated and remarks like Lula’s and Maduro’s also echoed a more established antisemitism in the region, as in 2015 when Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner urged that school children should read about ‘[u]sury and the bloodsuckers’ in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, a remark presumably calculated to deflect attention from the country’s debt crisis implicating her government’s chronic economic mismanagement.[42] A few years later Alejandro Biondini of the far right Patriotic Front Party launched his 2019 presidential campaign tweeting ‘I define myself as a clear defender of the Palestinian State’ adding ‘I said to the DAIA [Argentina’s Jewish political umbrella organization] that this is Argentina … this is not Israel,’ reportedly ‘to applause and shouts from the crowd.’ In 1988 Biondini had led chants of ‘Death to traitors, cowards and Jews’ among extreme-right demonstrators in Buenos Aires, followed in 1991 by a televised interview in which he boasted: ‘We vindicate Adolf Hitler.’[43]
Renan Antônio da Silva & Eric Heinze, 2024
Ph.D., University of Warwick, London campus; Ph.D., UNESP, Brazil; Professor of Education Sciences, Universidade Federal de São Carlos; renan@ufscar.br
Maîtrise, Paris; JD, Harvard; Phd, Leiden; Professor of Law and Humanities, Queen Mary University of London, e.heinze@qmul.ac.uk
Notes
| 1 | See, e.g., James Gregory, ‘Israel condemns Brazil’s Lula likening Gaza war to Holocaust.’ BBC, 19 Feb. 2024, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-68332821. |
| 2 | International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, ‘What is antisemitism?’ (n.d.), https://holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definition-antisemitism. |
| 3 | See, e.g., Neve Gordon, ‘On antisemitism and human rights.’ 28 The International Journal of Human Rights (2024) 578-597. |
| 4 | Gabriel Huland, ‘From Bolsonaro to Lula: Understanding Brazil’s Passive Neutrality on Palestine and Israel.’ Journal of Palestine Studies (2024), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/0377919X.2024.2311043. |
| 5 | Lazar Berman, ‘Wife of Brazil’s Bolsonaro casts vote wearing Israeli flag T-shirt,’ Times of Israel, 30 Oct. 2022. |
| 6 | See, e.g., Mark Landler, ‘Trump Recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital and Orders U.S. Embassy to Move.’ New York Times, 6 Dec. 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/world/middleeast/trump-jerusalem-israel-capital.html. |
| 7 | Mariana Haubert, ‘Bolsonaro promete retirar embaixada da Palestina do Brasil’, 7 Sep. 2018. https://www.estadao.com.br/politica/bolsonaro-promete-retirar-embaixada-da-palestina-no-brasil/. |
| 8 | Jayme Brenner, ‘Morre um justo, o rabino Henry Sobel, herói dos direitos humanos.’. Instituto Humanitas Unisinos, 24 Nov. 2019. https://www.ihu.unisinos.br/categorias/594592-morre-um-justo-o-rabino-henry-sobel-heroi-dos-direitos-humanos; Matt Sandy, ‘Rabbi Henry Sobel, 75, Dies; Defied Brazil’s Military Rulers.’ New York Times, 23 Nov 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/25/world/americas/rabbi-henry-sobel-dead.html. |
| 9 | ‘Conversas sobre a pauta LGBTQIA+ marcam o Mês do Orgulho na CIP’, Congregação Israelita Paulista, 1 Jul. 2021. https://cip.org.br/conversas-sobre-a-pauta-lgbtqia-marcam-o-mes-do-orgulho-na-cip/. |
| 10 | See art. 6 of the Constitution of the Brazilian Federation, guaranteeing minimum social protections. See also Title VIII ch. 2. |
| 11 | Under art. 3(III) of the Constitution, the ‘fundamental objectives’ of the Brazilian federation include the duty ‘to eradicate poverty.’ |
| 12 | Marcelo Brandão, ‘Geraldo Alckmin confirmed in presidential ticket with Lula,’ Agência Brasil, 1 Aug. 2022, https://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/en/politica/noticia/2022-08/geraldo-alckmin-confirmed-presidential-ticket-lula. |
| 13 | Hussein Kalout and Feliciano Guimarães. ‘The Restoration of Brazilian Foreign Policy.’ Foreign Affairs, 15 March. 2013. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/south-america/restoration-brazilian-foreign-policy. |
| 14 | See table on immigration by nationality. Brazil (1884-1933) (REIS, 2008, p. 33). Valentina Candido, ‘Como é ser um refugiado do Holocausto no Brasil’, Nexo, 28 Dec. 2023. https://www.nexojornal.com.br/expresso /2023/01/26/como-e-ser-um-refugiado-do-holocausto-no-brasil/. |
| 15 | See, e.g., Léon Poliakov, De l’antisionisme à l’antisémitisme. Paris: Calman-Lévy (2017 [1969], ch. 1. |
| 16 | See, e.g., Bernardo Sorj, Judaísmo para o século XXI: o rabino e o sociólogo. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 2001, 232. |
| 17 | See generally, Sorj, above note 15. |
| 18 | Júlia Calvo and Pedro Henrique da Silva Carvalho, ‘Sírios, libaneses e judeus – paradoxo entre o grupo e a nação: participação e restrição em Belo Horizonte nos anos 1930 e 1940’, 17(26) Cadernos de História (2016), 198-220. |
| 19 | Luis Felipe de Seixas Corrêa, Brazil in the United Nations: 1946-2011, Fundação Alexandre de Gusmão (2013). |
| 20 | Ieda Gutfreind, A imigração judaica no Rio Grande do Sul. São Leopoldo: Editora Unisinos, 2004, 45. |
| 21 | See, e.g., Roney Cytrynowicz, “Além do Estado e da Ideologia: Imigração Judaica, Estado-Novo e Segunda Guerra Mundial,” Revista Brasileira de História 22 (44) (2022) 65. |
| 22 | See, e.g., Maria Luiza Tucci Carneiro, ‘Rompendo o silêncio: a historiografia sobre o antissemitismo no Brasil.’ Cadernos de História, 13:18 (2012) 79-97. |
| 23 | Elias Canetti, Masse und macht: Wesentliche Zusammenhänge zum Verständnis unseres Zeitalters. Hamburg: Claassen Verlag, 1960, 267. |
| 24 | Marc Ferro, Les Tabous de l’histoire. Paris: Nil, 2002. |
| 25 | Cf. Eric Heinze, ‘Theorising Law and Historical Memory: Denialism and the Pre-Conditions of Human Rights,’ 4 Diritto Penale Contemporaneo (2019) 175-191; Eric Heinze, ‘When the Establishment No Longer Calls the Shots in Writing History,’ New Lines, 27 May 2022. https://newlinesmag.com/essays/when-the-establishment-no-longer-calls-the-shots-in-writing-history/. |
| 26 | Arqshoah, Arquivo Virtual sobre Holocausto e Antissemitismo, http://usp.br/leer/projeto/arqshoah-arquivo-virtual-sobre-holocausto-e-antissemitismo/. |
| 27 | Lauren Derby. ‘The Dictator’s Seduction: Politics and the Popular Imagination in the Era of Trujillo.’ Durham, NC: Duke (2009), 323. |
| 28 | See, e.g., Stêvão Limana, ‘Federação Israelita registra aumento de 263% de denúncias de antissemitismo após fala de Lula.’ CNN Brasil, 28 Feb. 2024 https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/politica/ federacao-israelita-registra-aumento-de-263-de-denuncias-de-antissemitismo-em-escolas-apos-fala-de-lula/. |
| 29 | Gabriel Toueg, ‘A perverse distortion’: Brazil’s Jews slam Lula’s comparison of Israel to Nazis.’ The Times of Israel, 18 Feb. 2024. https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-perverse-distortion-brazils-jews-slam-lulas-comparison-of-israel-to-nazis/. |
| 30, 31, 35 | Id. |
| 32 | See Yad Vashem, ‘Yad Vashem Chairman Reacts to Statements made by Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.’ 18 Feb. 2024 https://www.yadvashem.org/press-release/18-february-2024-21-22.html. |
| 33 | See Toueg, above note 29. |
| 34 | Celso Lafer, ‘Antissionismo como antissemitismo.’ Estadão, 18 Feb. 2024, https://www.estadao.com.br/opiniao/celso-lafer/antissionismo-como-antissemitismo/ |
| 36 | Lazar Berman, “Israel declares Brazil’s Lula persona non grata for comparing Gaza war to Holocaust.” Times of Israel, Feb. 19, 2024. https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-declares-brazils-lula-persona-non-grata-for-comparing-gaza-war-to-holocaust/ |
| 37 | ‘Brazil’s Lula says he did not compare Israel’s conduct to the Holocaust.’ Jerusalem Post, 28 Feb. 2024 https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-789276 |
| 38 | https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/politica/federacao-israelita-registra-aumento-de-263-de-denuncias-de-antissemitismo-em-escolas-apos-fala-de-lula/ |
| 39 | ‘President Maduro: Zionism is More Dangerous Than Nazism,’ Orinoco Tribune, 7 Nov. 2023, https://orinocotribune.com/president-maduro-zionism-is-more-dangerous-than-nazism/ |
| 40 | See, e.g., Nicolas Camut, ‘Israel minister suspended after calling nuking Gaza an option.’ Politico, 5 Nov. 2023. https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-minister-amichai-eliyahu-suspend-benjamin-netanyahu-nuclear-bomb-gaza-hamas-war/ |
| 41 | Above n. 36. |
| 42 | See, e.g., Jonathan S. Tobin, ‘Kirchner’s Jew Hatred Casts Cloud on Argentina.’ Commentary, 8 July 2015, https://www.commentary.org/jonathan-tobin/kirchner-jew-hatred/. |
| 43 | ‘Anti-Semitic Argentine politician kicks off campaign.’ Times of Israel, 28 May 2019. https://www.timesofisrael.com/anti-semitic-argentine-politician-kicks-off-campaign-vows-to-expel-israel-envoy/?__cf_chl_tk=l2nwoiV5.ztsl0.TRFN.ycxdgU6jeZm2bCpg4kprcM0-1714724846-0.0.1.1-1791 |
