Zé Maria responds to attacks in the Folha do S. Paulo

Below, we publish an English translation of an attack against Zé Maria authored by Demétrio Magnoli in the major Brazilian newspaper, Folha do S. Paulo, followed by a response from Zé Maria published in the same paper. Original links to the Portuguese articles in the Folha are included.

Freedom for antisemitic opinion

By Demétrio Magnoli

First published here in Portuguese on 1 May 2026

— The Brazilian left has no moral right to contest the conviction of the PSTU leader for his call for the elimination of the State of Israel.
— ‘Progressive’ Brazil has invented several legal subterfuges to repress political opinion, criminalizing speech.
“Freedom is always, exclusively, the freedom of those who think differently from us” (Rosa Luxemburg). The Brazilian left, which preaches judicial repression of the “wrong” word, has no moral right to contest the conviction of José Maria de Almeida, leader of the PSTU, for his call for the elimination of the State of Israel. I do, because I am among those who agree with the German communist revolutionary.
Yes: José Maria’s speech was antisemitic, no matter how much he invests in the vulgar trick of dressing it in “anti-Zionist” clothing. The accusations he uses against Israel (“racist,” “colonialist,” “genocidal” state) are not his true motivations for crying out for its extinction. His problem is that Israel is a Jewish state.
Israel, a “racist” state? False. But even if it were? Why was the extinction of the US never demanded, which maintained racial discrimination laws until 1967?
“Colonialist” state? High-school-level simplification. And if it were? No one ever suggested wiping the US off the map — again — along with Canada, Australia, Brazil, and several other settler nations implanted on the ruins of indigenous peoples.
Does Israel practice “genocide”? Valid debate. However, no one has had the idea of removing Turkey, Germany, Cambodia, or Rwanda from the planet, which carried out the greatest genocides in contemporary history.
Zé Maria’s accusations, which are those of the antisemitic left in general, single out Israel, describing it as a synthesis of unparalleled perversity: the rotten fruit of an original sin. The “sin,” for them, is its Jewish nature.
The Jewish State is not Netanyahu, but a national contract that guarantees political and civil rights for its 10.1 million citizens. By what moral authority does a non-Israeli cry out for the cancellation of others’ contracts?
An Israeli citizen, Jewish or Arab, would exercise their right by proposing to their fellow citizens a plebiscite to replace Israel with the improbable “secular and democratic Palestine” invoked by José Maria. I doubt the initiative’s success — but that’s their matter. On the other hand, when a foreigner (even if Jewish!) calls for the suppression of the Jewish state, they are beating the drum for a war of national annihilation.
Zé Maria did not protest against the occupation of Palestinian territories to demand the partition of the Holy Land into two states. He did not argue that if Israel rejects partition, only one democratic solution would remain: granting full citizenship to all Palestinians in the occupied territories. Instead, he chose to unfurl the flag of Hamas on Paulista Avenue: “ Palestine from the river to the sea.” Even so, he must retain the freedom to express abominable ideas.
“Progressive” Brazil has invented several legal subterfuges to repress political opinion, criminalizing speeches that can be interpreted as racist, homophobic, or misogynistic. Criminalization obviously fails to teach society good manners — and sometimes triggers a short-circuit, provoking the conviction of a “progressive” antisemite accused of racism.
The judicial decision is a mistake, contrary to the law. Freedom for Zé Maria! Let antisemitism come out of its hole, show its right and left faces, so that we can combat it in broad daylight.

A response to Demétrio Magnoli

By Zé Maria

First published here in Portuguese

— It is the State of Israel, not an abstract contract between individuals, that is responsible for the carnage in Gaza.
— Accusing those who protest against this atrocity of being racist is Zionism’s last, desperate resort.
Columnist Demétrio Magnoli published an article in this Folha (“Freedom for antisemitic opinion,” 5/1) in which he accuses me of racism against the Jewish people and reiterates the thesis of the sentence that condemned me to two years detention for denouncing the atrocities committed by the State of Israel against the Palestinian people: the false equation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
“Semites” are people who share a common linguistic root, among which are the Hebrews/Jews and the Palestinians themselves. Antisemitism is, therefore, racism, which I repudiate with all my might.
“Zionists” make up a political movement — Zionism, whose racist and colonialist ideology is the basis of the State of Israel, which in 1948 began a war of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people to occupy their lands. Anti-Zionism opposes all of this, and I lend all of my strength to this struggle.
This is not an isolated opinion. The Jewish historian Ilan Pappé documents this process in “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.” Hundreds of Jewish organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) in the US, or “Vozes Judaicas pela Libertação” in Brazil, also denounce the racist and colonialist character of the State of Israel and reject the fallacy of this equation.
It is true that colonialism and racism still exist in the world. Currently, in the form of the spoliation carried out by imperialism against countries like Brazil. And from the past with consequences to this day, such as the crimes against humanity committed against African peoples kidnapped and enslaved, or the genocide of indigenous peoples, as occurred in Brazil and the US, for example.
Humanity will still settle accounts with that history, with due reparation, when the working class frees it from decadent capitalism. But the interesting thing here is to see how this journalist uses these barbaric examples from the past to dilute and justify the barbarism of the present: the genocide of the Palestinian people by the State of Israel.
It is the State of Israel, not an abstract contract between individuals, that is responsible for the slaughter of women and children by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip. And no state has the right to establish itself in a region by murdering and expelling the population that lived there.
Accusing those who protest against this atrocity of being racist is the last desperate resort left to Zionism.
Defending an end to these atrocities is a right, or rather, an obligation. Just as almost all of humanity defended the end of racist, colonialist apartheid in South Africa, it is necessary to defend the end of the racist and colonialist State of Israel. To put an end to the genocide of the Palestinian people and allow the return of those expelled from their land.
Only then can a secular, democratic, non-racist Palestine flourish, where Palestinians, Jews who accept living in peace, and other ethnicities of the region can coexist just as whites and blacks coexist in South Africa.
Magnoli did not write his article to defend my right to free expression. He did it to defend Zionism, its State, and the atrocities it practices against the Palestinian people. As can be seen, I disagree with Magnoli. But I think it is good that Zionism shows its face to defend its opinions openly. That way, we can fight it in broad daylight.
They will not silence us. And Palestine will be free, from the Jordan River to the sea.