Voices for Palestine will not be silenced!

Voices for Palestine will not be silenced! No to Tabata Amaral's bill and to Zionist criminalization!

SORAYA MISLEH is a Palestinian-Brazilian journalist, an organizer of BDS Brazil, and author of the book “Al Nakba – The Catastrophe of the Palestinian People.”

A piece of news as surprising as it is outrageous highlights the fundamental importance of mobilizing against Zionist persecution in Brazil: the comrade Zé Maria’s sentencing to 2 years detention by the 4th Criminal Court for speaking at an event in October 2023 in solidarity with the Palestinian people, amid the ongoing genocide and opposing the racist and colonial state of Israel. This conviction, in a way, anticipates the contents of Bill 1.424/2026, authored by Congresswoman Tabata Amaral (PSB-SP), which conflates anti-Zionism (opposition to Zionism, a colonial project) with antisemitism, which has nothing to do with it.

The congresswoman’s bill provides for two to five years in prison, plus fines, even for criticism of the racist state of Israel, according to paragraph 2 of article 1, “considered as a Jewish collectivity.”

Presented under the argument of equating antisemitism with the crime of racism, it is fully based on the controversial definition of IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance), widely rejected by anti-Zionist Jews and experts on the subject, and which, moreover, has been rejected by dozens of countries.

Brazil withdrew from IHRA in July 2025 — it had been an observer member of the international organization supported by Zionist lobbying since the Bolsonaro government in 2021 — a symbolic gesture in the face of the genocide in Gaza and growing pressure on Lula to break economic, military, and diplomatic relations with Israel.

Although it represents non-adherence to IHRA, failing to provide an institutional basis for the parameter used by Tabata Amaral in her bill, Zé Maria’s conviction makes it clear that this gesture remains insufficient. The demand for a break in relations with Israel remains urgent, both to stop the Zionist offensive against activists in Brazil and because it is already overdue, given the ongoing genocide.
Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.

Although the Zionist attempt to falsely equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism is nothing new, and Israel has long invested heavily in promoting this narrative, there has been an escalation in this lobbying to silence the voices rising up for Palestine, especially during the current genocide in Gaza, which began in October 2023 and has already killed more than 72,000 Palestinians, as which also includes the advancement of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.

The criminalization and persecution of solidarity with the Palestinian people has been expanding, and the “Gag Bill” aligns with this, as does a process led by the Brazilian government to define within six months a “Strategy to Combat Antisemitism,” mobilizing at least eight ministries. As part of this process, a seminar was held at Itamaraty on April 16 in which anti-Zionist representatives were not given a voice.
Those organizations denounced this silencing and withdrew from the seminar, further emphasizing that Brazil already has an adequate law to combat racism, “especially Law No. 7.716/1989, which covers antisemitism.”

“This movement [to create said Strategy] raises concerns about the possible exceptionalization of the issue, creating categories or interpretations that confuse criticism of states, governments, or ideologies with racism,” they said in a statement from the collectives Arabs and Jews for Democracy (Árabes e Judeus pela Democracia), Arabs and Jews for Peace (Árabes e Judeus pela Paz), Jewish Left Organization (Articulação Judaica de Esquerda), and Jewish Voices for Liberation (Vozes Judaicas por Libertação).

It is also worth reinforcing that Brazil is a signatory to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which also already covers the fight against antisemitism.

However, the effort to erase the Palestinian people from the map requires making the crimes against humanity committed by the racist and colonial state of Israel invisible and silent.

That is the intention behind these mechanisms, when global support for Zionism is at its lowest and declining, when it exposes to the world its brutal colonial face, advancing in its search for a final solution to the ongoing Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe whose cornerstone is the formation of this racist and colonial state on May 15, 1948, through planned ethnic cleansing, covering 78% of historic Palestine.
The construction of the “Gag Bill.”

In an article published in Carta Capital on April 9, the anti-Zionist Jew Bruno Huberman, professor of International Relations at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), calls the presentation of Tabata Amaral’s “Gag Bill” “a carefully staged theater.”

He recalls that two days earlier, on March 24, Bill 472/2025, which sought to institute the IHRA definition nationally and was authored by Bolsonaro-allied congressman General Pazzuelo, was withdrawn from the agenda by its author. “The army reservist general stated that he had acted, from the beginning, in coordination with the Israeli Embassy,” Huberman describes.

Also, according to his article, it is no coincidence that when the bill began to be publicly debated at the end of last month, the Israeli Confederation of Brazil (Conib) presented its “Antisemitism Report,” aligned with the IHRA definition. Conib, unsurprisingly, has been diligent in the criminalization and persecution of activists like Zé Maria.

They won’t silence us!

Beyond blocking the arbitrary conviction of our comrade — an absurd and dangerous precedent — it is necessary to expand the campaign to throw the “Gag Bill” and the ongoing Zionist initiative with the Brazilian government’s seal of approval into the dust bin of history. Moreover, we must strengthen mobilizations throughout Brazil on the occasion of Nakba Day this May.

Palestinians have much to teach. In the history of colonization, our motto is: “When one of us falls, ten others rise.” For inspiration, with every attempt at silencing, every criminalization and persecution, we must raise even higher the voices in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

We resist, we exist, we will not be erased from the map! They won’t silence us! Free Palestine from the river to the sea!