Bolsonarism and Zionism

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By LEONARDO SACRAMENTO*

The convergence between the Israeli and Brazilian extreme right is the epitome of fascist universalization due to the coherence of political trajectories separated by thousands of kilometers

In June 2021, Benjamin Netanyahu sent a proposal to Jair Bolsonaro through the Brazilian ambassador to Israel.[I] The Israeli Prime Minister, leader of the Israeli fascist extreme right, proposed a pact to Jair Bolsonaro, President of Brazil and leader of the Brazilian fascist extreme right. Benjamin Netanyahu warned Jair Bolsonaro about the risk of being tried at the International Criminal Court for crimes of genocide against indigenous peoples. He was concerned and proposed a pact. In exchange for protection, he asked Jair Bolsonaro for the same, as Benjamin Netanyahu also had his genocidal sins long before Israel's infamous “reaction” (sic!). Who of establishment Israeli does not have them?

The pact involved a protective network between the two leaders, in which one would be responsible for defending the other in the event of continuation of accusations in the Court, all for genocide and crimes against humanity against Arabs and Yanomami. Yes, Benjamin Netanyahu attacked the Gaza Strip in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021, with large numbers of murders in the year following each attack, making it possible to link the noun “reaction” to Hamas, as the Palestinian organization only attacked in October 2023.

In 2018 alone, 31.558 Palestinians were killed. Between 2008 and 2020, 120 Palestinians were killed. The use of the term “reaction” presupposes an analytical infantilization of whoever uses it, as if it were a 5th grade teacher breaking up a fight in which each person steps forward to explain who started it.

The prohibition of using the term for Palestinians reveals a supremacist political vision, since implicitly and today explicitly killing Palestinians is normal, as the data proves. History and facts confirm that the term “reaction” belongs to the colonizer. When the colonized react, it is not a reaction, but a terrorist attack, as colonization is “normal”. The colonizer's attack is never terrorism.

Even the Haganá, Irgun and Lehi, far-right militias that worked to kill and expel Palestinians between 1920 and 1948, were classified as terrorists by the British. In 1948, the three militias were transformed into the Israeli Armed Forces (IDF) and today, at least from the British, they do not receive the classification of terrorists, although they have the same practices, now amplified by military power donated by the USA. Today they are, just as Bin Laden was for the The Independent in 1993, defenders of Western values, “warriors” of the “freedom road”.[ii]

The fact is that Benjamin Netanyahu gave broad support to Jair Bolsonaro. Not just political support, but logistical support through former ambassador Yossi Shelley, who didn't think twice about taking a photo of an encounter with a lobster covered in a crude blur. Israel, to a large extent, was an architect of the construction of Bolsonarism in the evangelical milieu and among the Jewish-Israeli community based in Brazil, a great supporter of the myth. But there are exceptions, left-wing Zionists would say. True, but exceptions so small that they look like needles in front of a camel. And in capitalism, the rich always go to paradise, as “prosperity theology” openly preaches.

Israel's support for Jair Bolsonaro began early, in the electoral process itself, with great engagement from Jewish-Israeli institutions in Brazil, corroborated by the Hebraica event in Rio de Janeiro, in which Jair Bolsonaro compared black Brazilians to cattle with the Israeli flag fluttering in the background, to the delight of the audience, made up mostly of club members.

The Jewish community, somewhere around 100.000, proportionally the same number as the Jewish community in Iran, the country that would persecute Jews on every corner, was hugely engaged in the fascist campaign, offering incredible hospital support at the Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein to Jair Bolsonaro when stabbed in Juiz de Fora, with the right to confidentiality beyond the doctor. We cannot forget the incredible treatment given to Queiróz, who paid R$133 in cash.[iii] Poor socialist physicist who was openly anti-Zionist and anti-fascist, who probably wouldn't agree with the “Israeli” before his name, if he were alive.

But which religious vision did the Jewish-Israeli institutions in Brazil, at the behest of the Israeli embassy, ​​take advantage of? That Jews would be the chosen people because they would descend directly from Shem. The African people would be cursed because they would descend from Ham. In this theological equation, the Palestinians would be descendants of the Philistines and must be decimated, that is, Palestinians would not be Semites, but invaders in divine Israel . This vision takes advantage of European Zionism, according to which the Semites would only be Jews, turning Arabs and the like into peoples decimable by the hand of God or American bombs. Or were the American bombs the hand of God?

This fundamentalist vision of the theocratic State of Israel dialogues with a version of European Jewish, or white Jewish, manifest destiny. For this operation to be successful, the history of racialization and neocolonialism in the 300th and XNUMXth centuries, the German experiences in Namibia, the English in Kenya, India and China, the Belgians in Congo, the North Americans in the Philippines, the Japanese in almost all of Asia close to the Pacific, the hundreds of millions of deaths in total, all the genocidal experiences, must be treated as a forgettable atypicality compared to the Holocaust on the European continent. In this way, the Holocaust on the European continent comes to be portrayed as the greatest crime in the history of homo sapiens (XNUMX thousand years).

It doesn't matter that in Congo three times as many human beings were decimated in concentration camps and all the country's wealth was used to supply Europe and Belgium. But how to visit Brussels and post a photo on Instagram with such a souvenir? How can Brussels, the capital of European institutions, be treated with such a reminder? How can we expose that Europeans produced nothing, just stole through genocide and pillage? Nothing more symbolic than Brussels being the capital of the European Union and the seat of the European Parliament, whose institutions are located in the Instagrammable “European neighborhood”.

But the operation doesn't end there. The construction of Nazism and its relations with Jim Crown in the USA[iv] and racial immigration legislation on the American continent, with avant-garde protagonism in Brazil in 1890, are erased. Liberal defenses about private property over enslaved non-human objects or inferior humans, scientific racialization and the link between Nazism and English utilitarian liberalism are buried.

What remains is a fetishized Holocaust, in which the Jews would have been killed by collective madness, by the rise of human evil and even as a product of Hitler's artistic resentment mixed with national humiliation for having been the object of a “too heavy” treaty after the First World War. World War. Anti-Semitism is mystified by Europeans as if it were ahistorical, transforming in the second half of the XNUMXth century into the ideal type of racism for the West: an anti-Semitism that would be meta-historical, as anti-Semitism would be universal, and no longer European, at the same time that racism would be restricted to a people now considered completely white and bearers of Western values. Racism against blacks, indigenous people, Arabs and others (non-whites) would depend on the analysis of the Western and white ruling class.

For Germany, this supremacist construction is convenient, since it treats the Holocaust in a way that is disconnected from German political and cultural history, leaving it to be a kind of servant of the colonialist and supremacist interests of Israel in an absolutely uncritical way, in search of a forgiveness for a “failed act”. For Europeans, ditto, since anti-Semitism can be worked on at will, throwing it on the backs of people who have never engaged in mass institutional persecution of Jews, such as Muslims. What war of extermination between Muslims and Jews occurred in the last 1000 years? When Jews were expelled from the Islamic world as they were from Christian countries and territories? On the contrary, historically Jewish communities have found good refuge in the Islamic world against Christian persecution.

With this operation, Germans and Europeans no longer become the historical producers and carriers of modern anti-Semitism, but the great “protectors” of the (white) Jewish community. White Jews, once executed for not being considered European and for being phenotypically classified as intruders to a racially pure nationality, became carriers of European Westernity, especially in the Middle East, forming a kind of geopolitical instrument of Anglo-Saxon intervention. .

Therefore, paradoxically, the fetishization of the Holocaust transforms the formerly non-European Jew into a bearer of Europeanness and whiteness, at the same time that it exempts European countries, including Germany, from the genocides committed against Jewish communities, notably those living to the east (near the USSR) and were mixed into the Nazi narrative of a Jewish-Slavic communist plot.

The use of the antithetical pairs animals/humans, barbarism/civilization and Arab/Jew by Benjamin Netanyahu are based on this fascist aesthetic – and aesthetics here has the sense of perception of reality. The sharing of these pairs by liberals reveals the proximity of this philosophy to fascism. The sharing of these pairs by evangelical fundamentalists materializes the popularization of fascism through a biblical predetermination that secularizes Israeli colonization of Palestinians.

For evangelicals, a kind of prophecy recorded in Zacarias (9:5-7): “Ascalon will see and be afraid, Gaza will tremble greatly, and Acharon will also, because his hope has been frustrated. The king will disappear from Gaza, Ascalon will not be inhabited and a bastard will inhabit Azotus. I will destroy the pride of the Philistines, I will tear the blood from their mouths and the abominations from their teeth. He will also be a remnant for our God, he will be a family in Judah, and Acharon will be a Jesuit.” It is important to remember that Zacarias introduces the figure of the priestly messiah before the dispersion of Judah (2:1-4).

The Jews, thus, become those chosen by God against the Philistines, or the white Westerners with a “civilizing” (in practice, exterminating) mission against the animals that need to be trained through colonization, in favor of North-American capital. Americans and Europeans. If not trained, exterminated. If exterminated, for evangelicals at the command of God. This was the ideological fabric worked by Israel and the Jewish-Israeli institutionality in Bolsonarism, including the advancement of a neo-Pentecostal tourism network in Israel. Consistently, Benjamin Netanyahu gave a friendly shoulder to a brother without failing to ask for one in return.

It is an imaginary Israel, with an imaginary Jew. But it is prudent to highlight that the imagination was financed by a real, colonialist and genocidal Israel, with very real political interests in capturing a country with geopolitical ascendancy in South America and, whether liberals like it or not, with a leading role in the Global South, the heel of Achilles of Israel. If there is a place on the planet where the Palestinian issue had great solidarity in some key moments of the 75 years of occupation, sometimes more than in the Arab world, as shown by the pusillanimous and subservient behavior of Qatar, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, it was in the South Global, especially Africa and Latin America.

The fundamentalist imagination of evangelicals is the result of political work, financing, exchange of favors and political-military alignment. It is far from being a mere daydream. More than that, it is the work of an incredible convergence of trajectories between the extreme right. However, this convergence transformed the Holocaust into an idyllic simulacrum of the global far right, including segments with links to neo-Nazi groups, such as Bolsonarism and Trumpism (and Republicans). By decontextualizing the Holocaust, ahistoricizing it through anti-history, the far right fetishizes it and captures it to justify and naturalize a genocide against Palestinians.

This is what can be seen from the indiscriminate use of the accusation of anti-Semitism, precisely by those who probably laughed at Bolsonaro when he compared black people to cattle. This game, for now, removes the Palestinians from the spectrum of Semites, which for evangelicals is coherent, since they would be philistines. How can we not remember Netanyahu's famous defense exempting Hitler from “persecuting Jews”, as he would have merely followed a request from Haj Amin Al Husseini.

Benjamin Netanyahu was consistent with the fetishized construction of the Holocaust, exempting Europe because he considered himself a product of European Westernity, with a “civilizing” mission over Arabs and animals. The speech given by Netanyahu was at the World Zionist Congress, another incredible consistency, as he was not interrupted and, at the end, he was applauded.[v]

It is common to see an odd comparison – and dangerous for Jews – between what they call anti-Semitism, when criticizing Zionism, and the Holocaust. By transforming mere criticism of Zionism into anti-Semitism, even with the racist operation of removing the Palestinians by the imaginary Semitic ethnic group, it transforms real anti-Semitism into something mundane and subject to criticism – the opposite operation of the fetishism of the Holocaust and the transformation of the European Jew into mirror of western white. By linking anti-Semitism to Zionism and Israel, which uses it as a scarecrow for any and all criticism, it relegates the Holocaust to a secular position in opposition to the conservative ahistorical construction.

It leaves the speech bare and without Parnassian adornments that would deceive self-proclaimed intellectuals who consider the Palestinian genocide a “complex conflict”, or that would allow them to deceive themselves in the name of good coexistence with research funding funds and publishers, leaving them to face the images of buried children and members of people grouped in white cloths, the sepulchral silence of political mediocrity. Something similar applies to the national leadership of left-wing institutional parties (PT, PC do B and PSOL), with an eye on evangelical votes in the 2024 election – which, demonstrably, will not bring any votes in this segment.

But the convergence between the Israeli extreme right and the Brazilian extreme right is the epitome of fascist universalization due to the coherence of political trajectories separated by thousands of kilometers. The applause for Jair Bolsonaro when he compared black people to cattle is a synthesis. The Haganá, a murderous far-right militia that killed and expelled Palestinians, became the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), a former defense of Jair Bolsonaro over the Rio militias in terms of public security.

The Irgun, a dissent from the Haganá, more sectarian and fundamentalist, also forming the IDF, received repudiation from Albert Einstein and others in a famous manifesto that denounced the supremacism and colonialism of its actions, back in 1948. Its founders were involved in the formation of the Herut , a party that would result years later from Likud, Benjamin Netanyahu's fascist party. Lehi, the other dissent of the Haganah, was responsible for the carnage of Deir Yassin, in which 120 unarmed Palestinians were exterminated in April 1948, approximately like the massacres under Cláudio Castro, which left 141 executed in 2023 alone – the year did not end.[vi]

The Rio militia consists of an identical paramilitary format, whose main tributary was Jair Bolsonaro, becoming, like Benjamin Netanyahu, president of the country. The extreme right embedded in the State, especially in Rio's institutions, such as the police and even the Army, financed militia groups, focusing fire on the Red Command and opening space for militia police to take parastate control of the territories.

Benjamin Netanyahu attacked the UN, barred employees and refused to grant humanitarian visas. He attacked all institutions, as shown by the crisis with the country's judiciary, something done by his Brazilian partner, who accused the UN of “globalism”. Israel sold spying programs to Jair Bolsonaro to monitor and persecute the opposition. Jair Bolsonaro almost moved the Brazilian embassy to Jerusalem, opening a diplomatic office. Benjamin Netanyahu propagandistically sent a brigade to tour Brumadinho on top of Brazilian bodies.

Benjamin Netanyahu and Jair Bolsonaro are products of the radicalization of European Westernity at the same time that they are camouflaged by the mythification of the “conflict”, just as Hitler was while he was politically asylum (as Bibi did) through the mythification of Nazism and the fetishization of the Holocaust . The Israeli fascist envisions Arabs exclusively in a final solution while the Brazilian fascist considers blacks and indigenous people capable of being targeted by urban and rural militias. As I said, the applause of Jews for Jair Bolsonaro in the Jewish-Israeli club is a synthesis, not an accident. The Jewish community in Brazil belongs to the Brazilian ruling class and the traditional middle class. He doesn't live in Jacarezinho and, at least the communities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, he doesn't go near a suburb or hill. It's class synthesis!

The support, or rather, the pact made perfect sense, which was explained by the current Israeli ambassador in a didactic and coherent manner – appointed by the former government. He called a meeting with parliamentarians in a Brazilian public building, all Bolsonaro supporters, and invited Jair Bolsonaro, meeting soon after behind closed doors.

On the same day, an operation carried out by the Mossad arrested two Brazilians who had links to Hezbollah – which is not classified as a terrorist organization in Brazil. The accusation: they would attack synagogues in Brazil. The baseless story was publicly assumed by the Mossad, the embassy and Benjamin Netanyahu, causing institutional crises even in the Americanized Federal Police. The Globe, in an editorial, took the opportunity to accuse Iran and demand that Brazil stay away, in a clear move by Israel and the USA to friction the BRICs.[vii]

The Mossad is not a police force. It is not the Israeli namesake of the Federal Police. The Mossad is a force for espionage and intervention in other countries, killing people.[viii] Any Mossad information is not institutional. The Mossad represents Israeli geopolitical interests, which do not find protection in a figure (unreal, but existing in legal form) of republican neutrality.

Mossad is a foreign force on national territory, which follows direct orders from Benjamin Netanyahu. It is possible that we are witnessing one of the biggest attacks in the history of the Federal Police, which will try, as it did in Operation Hashtag, in which it arrested an alleged “terrorist” group that would act in the 2016 Olympics, to maintain the conviction under the collusion of the press based on no objective act.[ix]

But the ambassador didn't stop. He was floating “in the air as if he were a bird.” He accused the two alleged terrorists of being helped inside the country, implying that it would be from the federal government. Memes, robots and artificial engagements have taken over social media. Jair Bolsonaro, at the end of the day, claimed that he asked the ambassador for the Brazilians kidnapped in Gaza by Israel to be released. Of course, nothing stuck, due to the roughness of the frame. Even the media that propagated the rocambolesque police operation fake he avoided speaking prominently in the following days about the “terrorist attack” in Brazil. The pressure turned against the ambassador and, miraculously, the order for Brazilians to be included on the list was given by Israel, which controls the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.

Bolsonarism works with the prospect of Israeliizing Brazil once and for all, promoting militias and religious fundamentalists, if not both in one, as proven by the Israel Complex,[X] which expanded under militia protection.[xi] In this case, the narco-militia prohibits religious manifestations of African origin, expelling fathers and mothers of saints. The evangelical drug traffickers were politically coherent in choosing the name. It is impossible to dissociate the Israeli militias expelling Palestinians from the Rio de Janeiro drug militias expelling (African) fathers and saints.

From an evangelical perspective, there is nothing more fair than being called Israel. I insist: the applause of Rio's Jews for Jair Bolsonaro when he compared quilombolas to cattle was a synthesis. Afterwards, some went to a beach in the south, where the Hebraica club is located. They avoid going to Barra da Tijuca, a semi-southern area full of “new rich people, militiamen and sub-celebrities” that architecturally resembles Miami. There needs to be some distinction.

Leonardo Sacramento is a teacher of basic education and pedagogue at IFSP. Author, among other books, of Discourse on White: Notes on Racism and the Apocalypse of Liberalism (Mall).

Notes


[I] Available in https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2021/06/12/netanyahu-ve-risco-que-bolsonaro-seja-investigado-por-genocidio-de-povos-indigenas-diz-ex-embaixador-do-brasil-em-israel-em-carta.ghtml.

[ii] For a critique of the use of the term “terrorism”, see https://dpp.cce.myftpupload.com/sionismo-etapa-superior-do-colonialismo-anglo-saxao/.

[iii] Available in https://g1.globo.com/rj/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2019/05/24/queiroz-pagou-cirurgia-em-hospital-de-sao-paulo-com-r-64-mil-em-dinheiro-vivo.ghtml.

[iv] WHITMAN, James Q. Hitler's american model: the United States and the making of Nazi Race Law. New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 2017.

[v] Available in https://pt.euronews.com/2015/10/21/netanyahu-defende-hitler.

[vi] Available in https://valor.globo.com/politica/noticia/2023/10/05/fogo-cruzado-mapeou-12-chacinas-em-area-no-rio-onde-medicos-foram-mortos.ghtml.

[vii] Available in https://oglobo.globo.com/opiniao/editorial/coluna/2023/11/operacao-da-pf-que-desbaratou-plano-terrorista-foi-trabalho-exemplar.ghtml.

[viii] Available in https://g1.globo.com/mundo/blog/sandra-cohen/post/2020/12/01/por-que-o-assassinato-do-principal-cientista-nuclear-iraniano-e-atribuido-a-israel.ghtml.

[ix] For a review of Operation Hashtag, see https://outraspalavras.net/sem-categoria/o-estrondoso-fracasso-da-operacao-hashtag/. A “convict” was killed in prison by beating.

[X] Available in https://g1.globo.com/rj/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2020/07/24/traficantes-usam-pandemia-para-criar-novo-complexo-de-favelas-no-rio-deixam-rastro-de-desaparecidos-e-tentam-impor-religiao.ghtml.

[xi] Available in https://extra.globo.com/casos-de-policia/traficantes-evangelicos-fecham-pacto-com-milicia-para-expandir-complexo-de-israel-24821015.html.


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