Israel: Bolsonarists accuse teachers of being pro-Hamas – 10/12/2023 – World

Since Hamas’ attacks on Israel, right-wing militants have been articulating themselves on the internet to associate the left with the terrorist group. Now, university professors have become their targets. Since Wednesday (10), messaging groups and Bolsonaro profiles have been working to compose a list of academics they accuse of supporting Palestinian extremists.

Bolsonaro supporters circulate a form asking for the name, educational institution and link to the Lattes curriculum, as well as images and files associated with teachers.

The movement was identified by researchers who follow the radical right on the networks and deepened after Wednesday, when a debate at the Institute of International Relations at PUC-Rio resulted in a discussion between professors and students.

On that occasion, historian and UFRJ professor Michel Gherman, author of “The Jewish Non-Jew” (ed. Fósforo), even left the meeting, accusing some students of promoting an attempt to silence and assassinate his reputation against him. “It is not possible to accuse a Jewish and Zionist professor of supporting Hamas,” he says.

Both his name and that of Professor Mônica Herz, mediator of the debate, have been circulating in Bolsonarist networks as supporters of the terrorists — which they are not.

“At some point I talk about the need to create a Palestinian State. And, according to Bolsonarist grammar, saying this is supporting Hamas”, says Gherman, who classifies the group’s actions as terrorist. “They accuse us of what makes us offended, until one of us explodes. Then they say we don’t respect their speech. It’s almost a manual for Bolsonar’s war against academic freedom.”

He also states that he believes that the action of the PUC students was planned in advance. A video of the debate published on social media shows a moment after the teacher left the room. Then, law student Gabriela Sznajderman, 20, takes the microphone to criticize Gherman’s speeches and say that he did not represent the Jewish students present.

At this point, she is interrupted by Mônica Herz, who says that the historian did not go there to represent anyone and demands that the student ask a question.

“What displeased us, among many statements, was the relativization of the attacks by the terrorist group Hamas and the reference to the attacks as a ‘response’ by one of the teachers”, says Sznajderman, in reference to Gherman, accusing the debate of not having plurality of ideas.

The university student claims that she went to the event only as a student, not as part of any organization, and that the students did not plan any prior confrontation with Gherman. “We don’t interrupt the teachers, we wait our turn for an hour and politely ask for space,” she says.

“No one defended Hamas, on the contrary, everyone is outraged by the operation [contra Israel]. I’m Jewish and I lived in Israel, I have an emotional relationship with the country”, says Mônica Herz. “What happened was an attempt to silence this type of vision that seeks to understand the conflict in a broader context, with humanist references.”

One of the researchers who noticed the articulation of right-wing profiles after the episode is anthropologist David Nemer, from the University of Virginia, in the United States. He says he notified the Ministry of Justice about the existence of the list of teachers.

“The list tactic is dangerous because it has been used before, which has made teachers targets throughout Brazil, especially outside the big cities,” he says. “It’s worrying, because it puts the teacher’s safety at risk. They try to create conceptual confusion to say that everyone on the left supports terrorists.”

The movement also raised the alarm at the Center for Jewish Studies at UFRJ. There, researchers have been monitoring the conversation on the networks — especially on X, the old Twitter — and have already come across messages threatening Gherman. They have also noticed the circulation of edited videos of the lecture both in groups at PUC-Rio and in the Jewish community.

“The macabre list of academics is an attempt by the extreme right to impose a cognitive dissonance, saying that there are people who support Hamas in Brazilian academia,” says Gherman. “The accusation that I am a supporter of theirs puts my family and me at risk.”

It is not only in Brazil that the war has mobilized academic circles. In the USA, students from prestigious educational institutions published texts in which they claim that the attacks carried out by the terrorist group Hamas on Israel over the weekend are legitimate acts of Palestinian resistance against the years of occupation in their territory.

A group of Harvard students, for example, published a statement over the weekend stating that the Israeli government was “completely responsible” for the violence that hit the country.

At New York University, NYU, Ryna Workman, president of the law school’s student association, wrote in an organization newsletter that she refused to condemn the Palestinians because, according to her, it was the regime of violence promoted by the State of Israel that created “the conditions that made resistance necessary.”

Both communiqués generated wide repercussions, inside and outside the American Jewish community. In the case of Harvard, for example, billionaire Bill Ackman stated that several fellow businesspeople asked for a list of the letter’s signatories so that students could be prevented from working at their organizations in the future.

Former university president Lawrence H. Summers, in turn, criticized the university’s current management for not immediately repudiating the text in an interview with The New York Times. He added, however, that he believed punishing individual signatories was problematic.

Meanwhile, NYU’s Workman lost a job offer from a famous law firm.