Break with Israel now!

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By FRANCISCO FOOT HARDMAN*

Brazil must uphold its highly meritorious tradition of independent foreign policy by breaking with the genocidal state that exterminated 55 Palestinians in Gaza

“The 20th century, which was born announcing peace and justice, died bathed in blood and left a world much more unjust than the one it had found. The 21st century, which was also born announcing peace and justice, is following in the footsteps of the previous century. Back in my childhood, I was convinced that everything that was lost on Earth would end up on the moon. However, the astronauts did not find dangerous dreams, nor betrayed promises, nor shattered hopes. If they are not on the moon, where are they? Could it be that they were not lost on Earth? Could it be that they hid on Earth?” (Eduardo Galeano, Mirrors: an almost universal story).

1.

At the time of writing this appeal, the news coming from the main international newspapers reports on the air strikes by Israel on Iran, which have been trumpeted for the past two days by the wicked Donald Trump, using false arguments such as those used in the US invasion of Iraq in 2003: Tehran accumulates “weapons of mass destruction” that seriously endanger the State of Tel Aviv and that are a “significant threat to the entire world”.

Furthermore, the genocidal Benjamin Netanyahu said a short while ago, once again using the political-military protection offered to him by the current far-right US government: that having successfully concluded his first air offensive against Tehran, such operation “will continue as long as necessary”.

There is no need to go into the roots and risks of yet another war adventure that the Zionist regime is now unleashing, after having directly exterminated 55 people in Gaza, and having – on several occasions – announced the intention to completely decimate the Palestinian population in Gaza and also in the West Bank, whether through direct, daily and indiscriminate bombings, or through the expulsion from the territory, the advance of armed settlers and the orchestrated production of hunger and disease to all survivors of this open-air Holocaust, live and in color, to the delight of those nostalgic for Adolf and his cronies, yesterday and today.

We call on the Brazilian government to uphold the highly meritorious tradition of our independent foreign policy and its current leadership position within the BRICS. This means saying no to the genocide of the Palestinian people perpetrated by a regime of exterminating angels led by the bloodthirsty Bibi.

2.

Break with Israel Now! This Sunday, June 15, in São Paulo, at Roosevelt Square, our response to the enormity of the tragedy that has spread throughout Palestine and is now extending its threatening tentacles to Tehran, putting the fragile pillars of world peace at real risk, will not be a mere ethno-national demonstration.

No, this is not a partisan or ideological appeal: we call on you, Jews of good will (and, fortunately, there are still millions of you here and around the world) to come to this demonstration of empathy, the simplest for humanity, to say no to war, to say no to the continued and targeted massacres of women, children, teachers, doctors, journalists, volunteer workers and accredited employees of the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), in operation since 1949.

Among so many Israeli voices that are repeating their condemnation of Israel's war crimes against Palestinians and Arabs – most recently aggravated by the use of a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, created and used by the State of Israel to supposedly distribute food to the multitudes of starving people, but who, in practice, are attracted to areas where the army continues its murderous attacks – let us remember and applaud two courageous positions that indicate, as could not be otherwise, that Bibi's exterminating rhetoric is losing its power to convince, both in his country and in the rest of the world.

Among them is the former Prime Minister of Israel, between 2006 and 2009, Ehud Olmert, a conservative and former member of Likud, who, in an opinion piece in the newspaper Haaretz, published on May 27, stated that “thousands of innocent Palestinians are being killed, as well as many Israeli soldiers” and that: “Never since its creation has the State of Israel waged a war like this… The criminal gang led by Benjamin Netanyahu has also set a precedent unparalleled in Israel’s history in this area.”

Ehud Olmert also considered that the “useless victims among the Palestinian population” were reaching “monstrous proportions” in recent weeks.

Another voice we would like to highlight is that of the historian and researcher on the Holocaust and genocide at the respected Brown University in the USA, Professor Omer Bartov, an Israeli citizen and former soldier in its army in the 1970s. After much study and reflection, Bartov said that, as of May 2024, he no longer had any doubts about the genocidal nature of Israel's operations in Gaza, in the sense of making that territory completely uninhabitable, exterminating and expelling all its inhabitants from there. His long interview with BBC News Mundo, on June 11, is truly enlightening and convincing.[I]

How long will we endure this empire of lies at the service of deadly machines under the command of a “criminal gang” (Olmert)? How long will we accept the unsustainable hypocrisy that takes the Holocaust of the Jewish people as a license to kill without end? How long will we allow contemporary barbarity to follow the path of openly racist, colonialist, militaristic leaders who cultivate the death instinct, who only know how to continue on the path of self-celebratory carnage?

3.

Break with Israel Now! That is: no commercial or military relations with the genocidal state. Palestine is here and now. And it will live. Because, as already demonstrated in the moving and realistic Oscar-winning documentary/2025, In the Other Land (Without Ground), when a people is denied land, they simply cling to life. No matter how tragic it may seem, it is to life and not to death that the Palestinians cling. Quite the opposite of their tormentors. And the same will be true for the Iranian people who are now being attacked and threatened.

Which, after all, Bibi and his henchmen cannot or do not want to understand, because their principle has always been to praise death, remaining attached to it like soulless vultures. Outside of any religion, outside of any history.

Because, quite simply, this band of criminals has long since abandoned, in the image and likeness of so many other tyrants, among them a certain Adolf, any attachment to life, any simple babble of humanity. For this reason, they are, even if they do not know it or claim ignorance, condemned to disappear sooner than they imagine. For life, for history, for the common home of humans.

*Francisco Foot Hardman is a full professor of Literature and Other Cultural Productions at Unicamp. Author of, among other books, My Tropical China: Travel Chronicles (unesp).

Nota


[I] Cf. 'What Israel is doing in Gaza is unprecedented in the 21st century', says Israeli historian and Holocaust expert. BBC News Brazil, June 11, 2025.


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