Message to the Jews

Olavo de Carvalho
O Globo, March 20th, 2004

For some time, I have been closely studying the question of anti-Semitism. Some Jewish organizations in Brazil have heard me talk about it and thus know that I am no freshman in this subject, much less a naïve, thoughtless busy-body. Whoever dedicates a long time to study a specific problem ends up raising questions that would not occur to the newcomer and sometimes finds answers which might seem incomprehensible and shocking to him.

In May 2002, when the leftist media clamored against the anti-Semitic threat personified by Jean-Marie Le Pen, I wrote: “Why should the Jews trust those who warn them against an unarmed enemy and who at the same time help an armed enemy? Why would the world left be so anxious to protect the Jews against a future and hypothetical danger in France, while at the same time it strives to deliver them right into the claws of a real and immediate danger in their own land?”

But Le Pen’s anti-Semitism, though unarmed, was at least explicit and undeniable. Mel Gibson, on the other hand, proclaims that the Jews were not guiltier of the murder of Christ than he himself is. Nevertheless, according to the enlightened media, there are reasons to fear him as if he were the Inquisition revived.

I shall leave it for later to analyze the film that raised such uproar. For the time being, I would like to draw your attention to the following aspect: have you noticed nothing strange with the sudden outbreak of philo-Judaism that overtook the world leftist intelligentsia? The same people who supported a sham as the “massacre of Jenin”, the same people who compared Ariel Sharon to Adolf Hitler, now appear with their hearts overflowing with fraternal zeal, selling to the Jewish people protection against the fearsome genocidal Mel Gibson. Will you really buy that? The Pope, who has always been your loyal friend, says there isn’t any danger: “The Passion of the Christ” does not instill anti-Semitic feelings in anyone, what has also been demonstrated by recent surveys conducted by the Institute for Jewish Research. Yet, would you rather listen to those same people who at the UN conference in Durban plotted to condemn Zionism as a “racist ideology”? Abraham Foxman has already admited that the film in itself is not anti-semitic, and Zionist intellectuals such as David Horowitz assure us that Mel Gibson is innocent. Yet, would you still be willing to give more credit to those wonderful creatures who took to the streets of New York screaming against the war in Iraq, hand in hand with Louis Farrakhan and David Duke? Would you rather seek protection against a farfetched hypothesis while exposing yourselves to the visible danger of accepting the services of untrustworthy protectors, among which we find, in Brazil, some closely linked to the Forum of São Paulo¹ and, through it, to Islamic terrorism? Would you let yourselves be manipulated, as Spanish voters were? Deceived by your enemies, would you then turn against your friends? Something in my heart tells me that this will not happen, that such a fabricated tragedy will not reach its dreadful intended end.

But the leftist media knows how to match the deliberate suppression of facts with factoids. The official statement of the Pope in favor of the film was either omitted or deliberately downplayed in almost all Brazilian newspapers. Pro-Gibson opinions by American-Jews were totally suppressed, creating a false sense of hostile unanimity. On the other had, a major newspaper saw it fit to publish a long interview with the leader of an ultramontane group from São Paulo, endorsing the hereditary guilt “of the Jews” for the murder of Christ. You might read that and consider it proof that “the” Conservative Catholics are indeed anti-Semitic. What nobody tells you is that the mentioned leader is an isolated character, equally detested by all the traditionalist organizations – which the newspaper misleadingly said he represents – such as the TFP (“Tradition, Family and Property”) and the S. Pius X Society.

So my message to the Jews is simple: no evil will come to you from the Christians. Today, the enemies of Israel are the enemies of Christianity. If you really want to know where the danger comes from, you should read the book by Rabbi Marvin S. Antelman, To Eliminate the Opiate (Jerusalem, The Zionist Book Club, 2 Vols.).

There is no need to endorse his diagnosis in detail. But you will see that in a general way he is on the right track – and that track lies many leagues away from Mel Gibson.

NOTES:

1. The Forum of São Paulo is a Communist organization, founded in the early 1990’s, co-chaired by Fidel Castro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the current president of Brazil. Its main objective is to coordinate the leftist movement in the region in order to “win in Latin America what was lost in Eastern Europe” (Castro). It gathers several leftist parties from all over Latin America, including the Brazilian Worker’s Party (PT) and guerrilla-terrorist groups, such as the “FARC” and Chilean “MIR”. Back