Oren Rozenblat, the Israeli Ambassador to Portugal as of late 2024, has used blunt language to denounce what he describes as "lies" and "propaganda" in local reporting. SIC, Público, Expresso (which the ambassador called Expressinho), CNN-Portugal, Jornal de Notícias, and many other Portuguese media outlets have already been targets of the ambassador. "You need to speak the truth," he often says.
Rozenblat has used the term "triste" (sad and pathetic) to characterize Portuguese television, radio and newspapers reports, specifically regarding humanitarian stories like babies dying of cold in Gaza, which he dismisses as "a joke". He has repeatedly claimed that images of the humanitarian crisis and reports of genocide in Gaza are "Hamas propaganda" and rejects UN data regarding the death toll and food insecurity, calling the findings "untrue".
A few months after the Rozenblat's arrival in Portugal, the unthinkable happened. The Portuguese population had long taken it for granted that all Palestinians were dying of hunger. However, the ambassador appeared on television and consistently asserted that "there is no hunger in Gaza", at one point stating that "there are even fat people there".
Amid this tempestuous relationship between the Israeli ambassador and the Portuguese press, the Hamas embassy was inaugurated in Lisbon, and in the entrance hall there is a map where the state of Israel does not exist. Ambassador Rozenblat has publicly called the Portuguese government's decision "wrong".
His predecessor, Dor Shapira, also voiced strong criticisms during his term (2021–2024), as he frequently denounced what he saw as a lack of condemnation for antisemitism among Portuguese politicians and the media. The scandal reached the point of having lists of Jews in national newspapers after public demonstrations with slogans in demonstrations such as "Neither Haifa nor Boavista," "We don't want Zionist landlords."
