José Goulão
A Portuguese forum led by settlers from the occupied West Bank aimed to combat anti-Semitism, but critics saw pro-Israel propaganda echoing historical disinformation tactics.
It was called the "IBEX 2026 Forum" and took place in Lisbon and Porto, Portugal, between 4 and 7 May. IBEX stands for Iberia Middle East Exchange, a Zionist propaganda organisation for the Iberian Peninsula, particularly active in Portugal.
The most visible faces of the organisation - which seeks to persuade us that Judaism and Zionism are one and the same - are two Portuguese Jewish citizens, Yosef and Elisheva Santos, who have also been granted Israeli citizenship. They live in the illegal settlement of Neve Daniel, in the occupied West Bank, a Palestinian territory which Israeli colonialism insists on renaming "Judea".
What brought these advocates of genocide to Portugal while their country wages three wars simultaneously - against Palestine, Lebanon and Iran ? To provide, they claimed, "accurate information, initiatives for responsible dialogue and actions promoting truth, respect, justice and human dignity".
You read that correctly: "truth, respect, justice and human dignity" - matters on which Israel supposedly has much to teach the world.
We know that Zionist terrorist groups later involved in the atrocities that accompanied the creation of the State of Israel were trained within Mussolini's fascist Italy. Such was the case of Irgun, whose best-known leader, future Prime Minister Menachem Begin, even served within the Duce's naval forces.
It should therefore come as no surprise that Zionist propaganda still bears traces leading directly back to Hitler's chief propagandist, Joseph Goebbels. The methods employed by today's agitators may appear cruder, but at least in Portugal they benefit from an atmosphere of indulgence carefully cultivated by governments and much of the media through a close alignment between Lisbon's political class and Israeli interests.
What, then, was the declared aim of the settlers promoting the "IBEX Forum" ? To "combat anti-Semitism in Portugal".
Even written in English, the phrase requires translation.
What these propagandists truly seek is to wage a campaign against every current within Portuguese society that exposes and opposes the crimes of Zionism and the Israeli state.
To achieve their aims, the Israeli agents promised to "bring the best of Israel to every showcase in the country, from north to south - television and radio, cultural centres, theatres, cinemas, galleries, universities. Nothing will be left out."
A genuine propaganda blitzkrieg.
In practice, what they imported was a programme of ideological intoxication aimed above all at a Portuguese middle class still intellectually fragile, easily manipulated by technocracy, by techno-feudalism itself, and vulnerable to cultural and artistic references built more on superficiality than substance.
Back in the 1970s, Abba Eban, Labour foreign minister in the governments of Golda Meir, had already anticipated the kind of propaganda now brought to Portugal by the Santos couple. One of the principal tasks of dialogue with the world, he argued, was to prove "that there is no distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism".
In other words: anyone opposing the criminal policies of Israel must automatically be anti-Semitic.
This deliberate confusion of concepts is one of Zionism's central pillars. Yet Zionism itself is profoundly anti-Semitic, for it persecutes and massacres Semitic peoples such as the Palestinians. Moreover, many of the principal historical leaders of Zionism were not themselves Semitic in any ethnic sense connected to the Middle East. The settler communities that founded and continue to direct the State of Israel originated largely in Europe, North America, later Africa and southern Arabia.
This is the great deception advanced by the Santos emissaries: they are not Semites, yet they claim the right to accuse all opponents of Zionism of anti-Semitism. It is equally abusive to suggest that followers of Judaism throughout the world are necessarily Zionists. Many Jews reject such manipulation because they refuse to be associated with acts as cruel and repellent as wars of aggression, genocide, extermination and ethnic cleansing.
None of this is surprising when Israel is involved. One should remember that the Santos settlers arrived in Portugal to explain how Zionism promotes "truth, justice and human dignity".
And yet what we continue to witness in Palestine, Lebanon and Iran is apparently the supreme expression of respect for "human dignity".