Hosting Ahmadinejad Diminished Brazil’s Standing in the World: Folha, Brazil

Much to the consternation of Brazilian Jews and many of Brazil’s Western allies, Brazilian President Lula has been hosting the much-reviled Iranian President Ahmadinejad according to the theory that he’ll be able to get his holocaust-denying counterpart to change his nation’s nuclear course.

According to this article by Sergio Malbergier of Brazil’s Folha newspaper, “Lula’s deranged foreign policy advisers lied by saying that Washington supported his mediation with Iran” and furthermore, he has outraged the “tens of thousands of Jewish Brazilians and millions of Brazilians of other faiths who deplore the atrocities of the Nazis and those of the Iranian Islamic theocracy against its own citizens.”

For Folha, discussing his family members that were murdered during the Holocaust, Malbergier writes in part:

“It’s painful to imagine what my grandmother (if she were alive) would feel watching the country that had given them refuge and where she was brought up with a joy she has passed on to her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, extending the red carpet to Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an international pariah that denies and promotes the denial of the Holocaust, a denial of the history of humanity and, on a more personal level, of my grandmother and her immense suffering. Hers, mine, and that of tens of thousands of Jewish Brazilians and millions of Brazilians of other faiths who deplore the atrocities of the Nazis and those of the Iranian Islamic theocracy against its own citizens.

“The pariah of Tehran is barred from Western capitals that practice responsible foreign policy due to his extensive criminal record of torturing and killing hundreds of his regime’s opponents; because he was the winner of a contested election (probably stolen) in which opposition protests were repressed with bullets and which Lula irresponsibly likened to a battle between rival fans; his promotion of international terrorism; and his bloody oppression of religious minorities; his persecution of homosexuals (executed in public plazas) and of political parties, especially those from the left.

“Actually, the negotiations with Iran that Lula is calling for began the day Obama took over at the White House. The talks, led by the U.S., China, the United Kingdom, Russia, France and Germany, are going nowhere, precisely because Tehran wants The Bomb – and Lula and Itamaraty [Brazil's ministry of Foreign Affairs] just pretend not to notice.

“By receiving Ahmadinejad, Lula stained Brazil and made me embarrassed to be Brazilian.”

By Sérgio Malbergier*

Translated By Brandi Miller

November 24, 2009

Brazil – Folha – Original Article (Portuguese)

My great-grandfather, concerned about anti-Semitism and poverty, left his small village in southern Poland on his way to America at the beginning of the last century. Like many of his countrymen, he found a job in New York – at a garment factory. Religious Jews, however, couldn’t accept working on Saturdays, which is the day of rest in Judaism, so he returned to Poland.

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