The fight to confront Israel’s policy of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, has reached new levels in Brazil, including among a growing segment of Brazil’s Jewish community.
The latest increase in public identification of ongoing genocide, follows three important actions by President Lula da Silva and his government: 1) Lula’s speech opening the July 6-7 BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro, in which he called out Israel for “genocide”; 2) Brazil’s decision two weeks later to officially join the South African court case charging Israel with genocide, at the International Court of Justice (ICJ); and the Brazilian decision to withdraw from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), confirmed by the Israeli government July 24. The IHRA is an enforcer of the “definition” that “anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.” Brazil has also cut off arms sales to Israel, and has not replaced its Ambassador to Israel, who was withdrawn last year.
Its withdrawal from the IHRA, which it had joined as an observer in 2021 under the Jair Bolsonaro government, leaves only Uruguay as an observer nation in South America, and Milei’s Argentina as a full member. Argentina has just assumed the rotating presidency of the IHRA.
The Israeli government and a Jewish umbrella association in Brazil called CONIB decried the Brazilian decision. The Israeli Foreign Ministry issued a post on X: “Brazil’s decision to join the legal offensive against Israel at the ICJ while withdrawing from the IHRA, is a demonstration of a profound moral failure….”
The Brazilian Senate, responding to pressure from Bolsonaro forces had passed a resolution in May decreeing a special annual “Brazil-Israel Friendship Day,” to protest Lula’s government’s increasingly open confrontation with Israel over its genocide policy.
An independent book festival in São Paulo, which was to feature a talk by Ilan Pappe, an eminent Israeli historian of Israeli ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians, suddenly found its permission to use public facilities in the city withdrawn by the Bolsonarista city government this week. It will continue in private facilities.
But as in Israel itself, notable voices and actions in the Jewish community have been stirred to speak out more openly against Israeli genocide and in favor the Lula government’s actions. On Saturday, Aug. 2, which this year marked Tisha B’av, a solemn Jewish day of remembrance of past sufferings, Rabbi Alexandre Leone of the Beit Midrash Massoret synagogue in São Paulo, condemned Israel’s policy of creating famine in Gaza, and invited a leading Muslim cleric, Sheikh Rodrigo Jalloul, to join him at the podium. The congregation gave hearty applause.
In Rio de Janeiro, Michel Gherman, Jewish professor of social history at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and researcher of anti-Semitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he earned his master’s degree and has taught, told Brazilian star reporter Mônica Bergamo, in a long interview in Folha de São Paulo, that “accusing Lula of anti-Semitism” because of the IHRA decision is “absurd.”
He further states that Israel “can and must be criticized” and says that the genocide in Gaza threatens the country’s legitimacy. In addition, he believes that the rhetoric of Israeli politicians such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich can be compared to that of Nazis who participated in the Holocaust.
