“The Israeli people and their army have become rentiers of the Holocaust” – José Saramago I return to a topic that has caused much discussion. What is the essential point of the debate about antisemitism and anti-Zionism in the world? Perhaps it is the dishonest and dangerous confusion that Zionists — a powerful transnational lobby — try to make between the two phenomena. The confusion is great and has been manipulated to persecute and legally harass critics of Zionism and Israel. False accusations of antisemitism abound, made with the purpose of shielding Israel and Zionism from criticism that is not only legitimate but also necessary. Saramago, to cite an illustrious example, was accused of antisemitism for the phrase cited in the epigraph. In Brazil, there are many intellectuals who write with great competence on this topic – among others, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, Reginaldo Nasser, Cláudia Assaf, Arlene Clemesha, Breno Altman, Glenn Greenwald and Bruno Huberman. The latter three are of Jewish origin. Relying in part on the contributions of these intellectuals, I will try to didactically clarify the difference between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, even if running the risk of bordering on the obvious. Repeating the obvious may seem unnecessary and offensive, I admit. But, as Nelson Rodrigues used to say, the obvious must be cultivated, as it has always had and will always have implacable enemies, reflecting a mixture of stupidity, ideology, and ulterior motives. What is antisemitism? It is one of the many forms of racism or discrimination, directed against the Jewish people, understood as a race or ethnicity. An entire people is condemned, pointing out the vices and violence of a part. Even if this part is numerous and influential, generalization can be unjust and even constitute a crime. Anti-Zionism is something essentially different. It is the condemnation of a political project, Zionism, which originated in Europe at the end of the 19th century, with the German Jew Theodor Herzl, and which would result in the establishment of Israel in Palestine in 1948. A land for the "wandering Jews", it was asked. Even if this meant, as it did, stealing the lands of the Palestinians and committing against them, from the beginning and even before 1948, all sorts of violence, terrorism, and discrimination. It should be noted, incidentally, that before Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel, Arabs and Jews lived in a certain harmony in North Africa and the Middle East. In general, Jews were better treated in the Islamic world than in Europe. Certain distinctions are important. First: not all Jews are Zionists. There is a very important overlap between Jews and Zionists, but there are many exceptions. The three Brazilian Jews mentioned above, for example, are viscerally anti-Zionist. Abroad, we have the political scientist Norman Finkelstein and the historian Ilan Pappé, among many other prominent people, who are also anti-Zionist Jews. Finkelstein, for example, has pointed out that the problem is not just the Netanyahu government, nor even just the State of Israel, but the Israeli society itself — characterized by him as sick and predominantly committed, or at least negligent, in the face of the heinous crimes committed against Palestinians, Lebanese, and other peoples. Second distinction: many Zionists, sometimes influential ones, are not Jewish. For example, Christian Zionists, especially Pentecostals and neo-Pentecostals, politically represented in Brazil by the deplorable figures of Jair Bolsonaro, his sons, and Tarcísio de Freitas, who are not ashamed to embrace the flag of Israel and fraternize with the genocidal Benjamin Netanyahu. These politicians maintain closeness with Zionist Jewish entities located in our country, some of which are true Bolsonaro strongholds. Despite these distinctions, Zionist Jews probably constitute the majority of influential and wealthy Zionists in the world, which facilitates the confusion that the Israeli lobby wants to promote between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. In Brazil, they have managed, for example, to have congresswoman Tabata Amaral present an infamous bill that attempts to criminalize criticism of Israel and Zionism as antisemitic. Behold the scandalous paradox. Who is the main anti-Semitic force today? None other than Israel! For at least two reasons. First, because it promotes the greatest genocide against Semites since Nazi Germany. We cannot forget that Palestinians and Arabs as a whole are Semitic peoples. In this sense, Netanyahu is the greatest anti-Semitic genocidal since Hitler. Second reason: Israel's criminal behavior, supported by the Zionist lobby in the rest of the world, has given new life to antisemitism, understood as discrimination and even hatred against Jews. Those who practice and defend the mass murder of children and women in Palestine by Israel, broadcast in real-time, have ironically become the main propagators of antisemitism. Israel, it must be said, is not the only country, far from it, to have systematically practiced genocide. Israel is in reality the late continuation and unfolding of something larger — European genocidal colonialism, one of humanity's worst plagues. No region of the world has escaped the criminal rage of Europeans. Not North America, Central America, South America, Africa, Australia, or Asia. Nor Jews themselves. There are so many examples that I won't even begin to mention them. Israel continues this dark tradition. It is no accident that, in general, American and European governments have given and continue to give so much support to Israel's criminal project. The truth is that world history would have been much better without the expansion of Western or European civilization, especially after the Industrial Revolution, which placed powerful weapons in the hands of relatively primitive peoples, starting with the English. Civilization? When once asked what he thought, after all, of Western civilization, Mahatma Gandhi replied: “It would be a good idea”.
