Brazil: university cancels lecture by Israeli professor after student protest

November 7, 2024 
Middle East Monitor –

Palestinian and Brazilian students protesting at a lecture by Israeli-Brazilian Professor Michel Gherman [Eman Abusidu]

by Eman Abusidu

Palestinian and Brazilian students have protested against a lecture by Israeli-Brazilian professor Michel Gherman at the Federal University of Ceará (UFC) in Brazil. The lecture was cancelled as a result.

Gherman is an associate professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and a researcher at the Centre for Studies on Anti-Semitism at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He describes himself as a “left-wing Zionist” and has shared videos on social media where he attempts to justify Zionist ideology, which underpins the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

A social media post shows pro-Palestine students interrupting the lecture on the university campus. They claimed that the lecture “supported the genocide of Palestinians,” portrayed “Israel as the victim,” denied “reality,” and undermined the “standards that public universities should uphold.”

Walking in an orderly fashion to the front of the lecture room, the students’ chants expressed the solidarity of the youth of Latin America with the youth of Yemen and Palestine.

The lecture was titled “Between Barbarism and Messianism: Perspectives for the Day Ahead in the Current Crisis of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict”. Pro-Palestine students argued that it helped to promote the idea that one can criticise the Israeli genocide in Gaza while still advocating for the existence of the occupation state. They also claimed that it identified “moderate Zionism” as “a political and ideological movement that defends the creation of a Jewish national state” in Palestine and spread misinformation about legitimate Palestinian resistance against the occupation of Palestine.

‘Palestine and our country. Together we will win. Anti-Imperialist League’

“Palestine and our country. Together we will win. Anti-Imperialist League”

According to Fábio Gentile, the coordinator of the UFC’s postgraduate programme in Sociology and one of the lecture’s debaters, “A group of students entered the room carrying pro-Palestine posters and an image of [Yahya] Sinwar, shouting and calling for the lecture to end.”

He added: “Zionism is one of the worst and most bloodthirsty human creations. It is unacceptable that, while Zionism is committing acts of genocide and barbarity in Palestine, the Federal University of Ceará (UFC) is colluding with this [lecture].”

Gentile pointed out that the protest follows more than a year of the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip, which has killed 43,000 Palestinians and wounded 103,000 others. “Moreover, two million have been displaced and are deprived of fresh water, food and medicine.”

The protests at the Federal University of Ceará are among many pro-Palestine activities in Brazilian universities aimed at challenging any promotion of the apartheid regime in Israel. Palestine solidarity movements are growing stronger despite the presence of Zionist groups in Brazil. Pro-Palestine activists have succeeded in forcing the cancellation of events such as the Israeli Universities Festival, despite efforts by the pro-Israel lobby in Brazil to dehumanise and criminalise pro-Palestine solidarity.



Student protests demand that universities in Brazil should boycott Israeli professors and institutions, renounce academic agreements and end all academic relationships and ties with Israeli institutions. “Solidarity with the Palestinian people must extend both within and beyond the university walls, in light of the ongoing genocide,” they insist.

A survey conducted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MCTI) revealed that the Brazilian federal government and the University of São Paulo each have seven scientific agreements with Israel, and the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) has three.

Five of the federal government’s agreements with the occupation state are for “Scientific and Technological Cooperation”, one is for “Technical Cooperation” and one is for “Nuclear Energy”. The first agreement was signed by Brazil and Israel in 1962.

The University of São Paulo is one of the largest universities in the country. It has partnerships with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ariel University in one of Israel’s illegal settlements, the University of Haifa and the Jerusalem School of Business Administration, as well as the Consulate General of Israel in São Paulo.

Some of these partner universities have historical ties to the Israeli military and the Zionist movement. The agreements remain in place despite Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip and calls from the Palestinian people to sever such relations because Israeli universities are complicit in the violence and should, they say, be isolated internationally.