JOURNALfor the STUDYof ANTISEMITISM

2011] ANTISEMITISM IN BRAZIL 161
Ahmadinejad’s visit to Brazil, the evangelic groups were the main partners
on this kind of initiative.
ANTISEMITIC MYTHS OF THE LEFT
Traditional Jewish stereotypes are part of Brazilian culture. Before her
election, Rousseff told a group of leaders in the Jewish community that she
thinks her family was crypto-Jewish because all of her uncles had a
“hooked nose.” So there is a lot of educational work to do, particularly in
the higher echelons.
The left is very strong in the country. Most of its members think the
Palestinians are the “victims.” Israel, the Jews, and the United States are
perceived as the same group, and are the “perpetrators,” the Empire, the
colonialists, and the genocides. The general Brazilian public follows the
global population in the process of considering Israel the villain and the
Palestinians the weak and frail people, an oppressed minority. The community
leadership agrees that everybody has the right to criticize Israel, and
lots of Jews do this, but when we analyze some positions it becomes clear
that the border between anti-Zionism, being against Israel and its government
and antisemitic point of views, is blurred. And this applies especially
to the critics that come from the left.
In Sao Paulo, the Jewish Federation went to Justice against a union of
workers in the University of Sao Paulo that accused Israel of genocide
against the Palestinian people, and the legal way was to show that they
publicly made this accusation against the Jews, and this for Brazilian law is
discrimination. To say this against a country is protected by the right to free
speech and is seen as a political expression. Therefore, the discussion
becomes very tough when the more leftist groups in the government party
or some unions need something to unite their workers against a common
enemy—and the Jews are always the best candidates. But the understanding
of these kinds of mechanisms between those who work against antisemitism
or study it is not enough to avoid the use of them.
Dilma Rousseff said recently, in a meeting in the Jewish Federation of
the State of Sao Paulo, that her government will continue Lula’s foreign
policy—which means to be friendly to Iran and to Venezuela. But Rousseff
shows an independent way of thinking and because of this, Brazil began to
separate the Iranian nuclear aspirations from the human rights situation in
Iran.
CLOUDY BORDERS
There are cloudy borders between the critics to Israel and antisemitism