The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Arab-Jewish Relations in Brazil

• In Event: Diaspora Jewry and Israel/Palestine in Transnational Perspective

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Arab-Jewish relations in Brazil. With the historiography of Arab-Jewish relations in Latin America has stressed conviviality and common occupational and socio-economic profiles, the reality of these relations has often been more tempestuous. Through an examination of Brazilian Jewish and Arab responses to the Palestine Liberation Organization’s attempt to establish an office in Brazil in 1979, I explore how Palestinian and Israeli diplomatic officials in Brazil influenced Brazilian Arab-Jewish relations during the last decade of military rule (1975-1985). Drawing on the Brazilian press, intelligence files, and the institutional records of international Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress, I argue that both Brazilian Jews and Arabs attempted to use the idea of Brazilian cordiality as an intrinsic national characteristic to discredit their political adversaries. Brazilian Jews claimed that they enjoyed cordial relations with their Arab neighbours, relations that foreign PLO agents threatened to disrupt, while PLO emissaries and Arab-Brazilians accused Brazilian Zionists of embracing a discriminatory ideology that was both disloyal to Brazil and fundamentally at odds with the Brazilian national doctrine of racial democracy. This dispute had implications not only for Brazilian Arab-Jewish relations, but also for Brazilian foreign policy, Israeli and Palestinian international diplomacy, and Brazilian Jews and Arabs’ notions of Brazilian national belonging. This paper will contribute to a broader understanding of the influence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on diasporic Jewish and Arab politics during the second half of the twentieth century in Latin America and beyond.

Author

• Michael Rom, Yale University