11/2/2003  A jolly good fellow

*Jayme Brener, São Paulo

Brazilian President Lula da Silva starts to conquer the once resistant Jewish community

The name of Brazil´s newly elected Luís Inácio Lula da Silva has been enough to produce itches in the vast majority of local Jewish community during the last 20 years, mainly for the traditional links between Lula´s leftist Workers Party (WP) and the PLO. But a screen on his Cabinet, named last December, shows two Jews – Jacques Wagner (Labour) and Italian born Guido Mantega (Planning), apart of President spokesman, André Singer. Much more important, there are clear signs of mutual simpathy between the community and its leadership, and the new government.
“There was an important meeting between Lula and 60 Jewish leaders shortly before November elections, when the now President expressed his admiration to Israel and to our community in Brazil”, says Jayme Blay, President of São Paulo Jewish Federation (Fisesp), the most important in the country.
In spite of a long tradition of Jewish leftism in Brazil (see box) that drove many activists to the WP – or PT, for Partido dos Trabalhadores, in Portuguese –, the overwhelming majority of Brazilian 120.000/150.000 strong community had identified itself with former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and his centrist Social Democratic Party (PSDB). During his eight years of government, Cardoso had several Jewish aides, including Foreign Affairs minister Celso Lafer. Cardoso (who has Jewish family ties) and his PSDB also kept strong links with Jewish business circles. As a natural consequence, Cardoso´s candidate against Lula, José Serra, was supported by most of Brazilian Jews, including community leadership and rabbi Henry Sobel who is a very popular character for his commitment to human rights.
But Lula´s skills to sew a broad political alliance and set up a new productive economic cycle, reducing Brazilian dependence toward international finance had seduced a good bunch of Jewish businessmen and professionals. Leading industrialists Ivo Rosset (textiles) and Eugenio Staub (electroelectronics) had openly left José Serra´s campaing for Lula, who also received a more discret support of steel magnate Benjamin Steinbruch. “Yes, I voted for Lula, since the last government drove our economy to a stalemate”, explains oil tycoon German Efromovich, owner of the Maritima Petroleum group. “We hope that the new government could promote changes for the best; otherwise, we´re sure that any change will be done inside democratic frames”, agrees Gerson Keila, chairman of the powerful Brazilian Franchising Association (ABF), who represents US$ 8 billions/year in business.
Even the traditional links between the PT and the PLO don´t seem to haunt Jewish leadership in Brazil. “Lula has clearly stressed his commitment both to a Palestinian State and to the safety of Israel”, grants Fisesp´s Jayme Blay. “There´re no expectations of a major change in Brazil´s international policy”, adds Claudio Camargo, Foreign Affairs analyst at IstoÉ weekly magazine. “The new government will try to increase dramatically the country´s exports, what could lead to new initiatives toward Arab markets. Lula should also oppose an international military operation against Irak. But his major efforts, in the international arena, will be consumed by complicate negociations to revigorate the Mercosul (the common market linking Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay) and to reduce US influence in a future Free Trade Area for the Americas (FTAA)”, finishes Camargo.


A long track
The honeymoon that Lula da Silva and the Jewish community are now enjoying has been prepared by a long flirt, since the very birth of the WP in 1979, melting new rank-and-file tradeunionists, former extreme left organizations and the catholic gauche. The party´s central slogan during its first electoral campaign, in 1982 (when Lula runned – and was defeated – for the São Paulo State government), was a reddish “workers shall vote for workers”, challenging the reformism of the old Communist Party.
Some leaders of the Palestinian community, openly identified with the PLO, had then runned under the Partido dos Trabalhadores banner. But several jews were among the first representatives elected by the party, including now minister Jacques Wagner (a petrochemical tradeunionist), Carlos Minc (former guerrilla fighter converted to environmentalism) and Clara Ant, a trotskyite leader.
Yes, there were some frictions between the WP and Jewish community along the last two decades. Ms. Luiza Erundina, then mayor of São Paulo, has caused tensions in the kehilá in 1989, when she named a square after State of Palestine. Incidentally, Yasser Arafat hadn´t already formally declared the independence of his State. When she saw the gaffe, Erundina called Jewish aides asking for names of Zionist leaders, to baptyze other areas of the city. One of the founders of the Workers Party, former representative Ayrton Soares, acted as a lawyer for Lamia Maruf Hassan, a Brazilian girl that was enjailed in Israel for taking part in the killing of a soldier. Soares had then splitted with the WP, but Lula and his entourage defended Lamia´s liberation also criticizing terrorism.
While gaining force in every election and reaching new government responsabilites in local and State governments, Lula da Silva and the majority factions of the WP have been approaching to social democrat international giants – like the socialists in France and the German SDP – then enlarging the gap toward revolutionary organizations. Representatives of Israeli Labour and Meretz started to pop up in party congresses, dividing space with PLO old friends. The own Lula da Silva has visited Israel, following an invitation by Labour leaders. Former labour prime minister Shimon Peres was one of the forefront international politicians in Lula´s possession ceremony.
A group of selected matchmakers has played a very important role for this long engagement between Lula/PT and Brazilian Jewish community. Among them were former trotskyite leader Clara Ant, nowadays one of Lula´s closest informal aides; Israeli born businessman Oded Grajew, who is very active in social initiatives and works as a major WP´s fundraiser; and Argentinian born Felipe Warmus. Known by his “war name”, Luís Favre, this shadowy former trotskyite leader, who has close connections with French socialists, spreads jealousy over WP´s leaders for the influence he gained after marrying one of the party´s top stars: the mayor of São Paulo, Martha Suplicy.
If Jewish community is in growingly good terms with President Lula da Silva and his majoritary faction in the Partido dos Trabalhadores, the same cannot be said of the fringe far left groups inside the party. The WP is one of the stars of the Porto Alegre Forum, a broad coalition of antiglobalization groups, set up to counterbalance the Davos Forum high finance yearly meeting. The Porto Alegre Forum was named after a WP stronghold in Southern Brazil, that shall host over 100.000 leftist militants next January for its yearly meeting. Terms like Israel and Zionism are some of the favourite blanks for those rank and file militants. “Extremist factions, I imagine, will not play a decisive role in the new government” evaluates economic analist André Friedheim. “Radical voices have been put apart of the decision inside of the party, which is showing an enormous common sense”, adds Fisesp´s president Jayme Blay.
Wishfull thinking or not, the fact is that monthly magazine Caros Amigos, that usually voices the Forum de Porto Alegre visions, has recently published an article written by a pro-Palestinian activist, melting criticism to Israeli government with open racial offenses. The article says, for instance, that Israel was created by the Nazis and that Zionists were close collaborators to Hitler. The magazine has refused to publish the rainfall of critics received nor apologized to its readers, what motivated Human Rights organizations to take legal actions. Many of those protests against Caros Amigos came from non-Jewish and Jewish activists of the Lula da Silva´s Workers Party. Pure zeitgeist, spirit of the times.


Die roitn: a tradition
Simpathy towards Communism and the Soviet Union was majoritary among Ashkenazim Jews in Brazil until the 1950s. The Jewish Section of the pro-USSR Communist Party was even larger than the Workers Section in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the country´s largest cities during the 30s. There were two Jews in the CP 8 strong São Paulo City Councilmen elected in 1946, including Elisa Kauffmann, one of the first women elected for this post in the country.
The birth of Israel and the anti-semite campaigns led by Soviet strongman Josef Stalin had splitted the Jewish community – even institutions, like schools and clubs – between roitn (reds) and sionistn (zionists). Although the economic progress of the vast majority of Brazilian Jews had pulled them to the center-right, leftist parties had always had many Jewich activists. Last CP general secretary, for instance, was Salomão Malina, a veteran of the Brazilian forces which fought Nazis in Italy, during the 2nd World War.
Several Jews had died fighting the military dictatorship (1964-1984), including Maurício Grabois, one of the commanders of the Maoist guerrilla warfare in the Araguaia (Northern Brazil), in the 70s, and Yara Yavelberg, wife of Carlos Lamarca, leader of urban guerrilla forces. Chael Charles Schreier, then a Medical student in his early twenties and a guerrilla sympathiser, died during brutal torture.
The upsurge of a new wave of students and trade union protests, in the end of the 70s, with Lula as the big star, also produced a new layer of Jewish activists, mainly of Trotskyite origin. Those roitn kinder and Jewish survivors of the antidictatorship fight – like historian and former guerrilla ideologue Jacob Gorender – were among the founders of the Workers Party.