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On January 9, 2026, in an opinion piece published in a Lisbon newspaper, João Taborda da Gama, the national coordinator for combating antisemitism, wrote that Portugal is not free from antisemitism and gave the following examples.

1. The Memorial to the Victims of the Jewish Massacre of 1506, in Largo de São Domingos, in Lisbon, was defaced with graffiti with the words "Haltz Juden" and the number "1488", a direct reference to Hitler and Nazism.

2. The inscription "Death to the Jews" was found on Avenida 5 de Outubro, in Lisbon. The glorification of the terrorist group Hamas, responsible for the October 7 attacks, with phrases such as "Hamas Will Win" were painted on walls all over the country.

3. The inscription in red of Blood, under the Star of David, was found at the Jewish Cultural Center Rua da Judiaria.

4. Graffiti on the windows of the Tantura restaurant, in Lisbon, led to its closure.

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On January 26, 2026, in a message to the Knesset, MP Pedro Frazão, from the Chega party, declared that Portugal is afflicted with a growing wave of anti-Semitism and gave the following as examples:

1. Graffiti on the murals of the cities wishing death to the IDF.

2. Graffiti equating Zionism with Nazism.

3. Graffiti crying out against the "murderous Jews"

4. Graffiti that adds the word ‘blood’ to a drawing of a Magen David.

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There are eight cases mentioned, in the articles of Gama and Frazão. Some conclusions should be drawn from these observations. First, there is no serious problem of anti-Jewish hatred in Portugal, because after all everything is ultimately reduced to insulting graffiti. Anti-Jewish graffiti, yes. Anti-Jewish state graffiti, yes. Graffiti that demonstrate a state of mind hostile to the realities reached, yes. However, it's just graffiti.

The second conclusion is that the state has nothing to do with such graffiti, which has certainly been carried out by ideologically radicalized individuals or groups of individuals. Gama, a socialist of the PS/PSD relates them to the "extreme right", while Frazão, a nationalist from Chega relates them to the "extreme left". Therefore, the so-called political center is not affected, the Democratic Rule of Law is not to blame, and the Portuguese State and the media groups (authorized by state license) are unaware of graffiti, as they did not carry it out.

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The third conclusion is that such graffiti did not target any important Jewish property in any city other than Lisbon, the capital of the country. Now, Portugal has 90 thousand square meters. Cities such as Porto, Gaia, Coimbra and hundreds of others were not affected by graffiti.

Finally, the fourth conclusion is that the only Jewish assets of value in Lisbon were not defaced by graffiti, the Shaare Tikvah synagogue and its cemetery, but only a restaurant and a building called "Jewish Cultural Center Rua da Judiaria", which despite this extensive name is a minimal space that does not have any important meaning for national Jewish life.

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What if someone is murdered in an antisemitic attack in Portugal?

The leadership of the Jewish Community of Porto responds in this way to PJN:

"The Portuguese State will be to blame for any murder that may occur. It was the State that promoted antisemitism through its political, media, judicial institutions and with the use of paid criminals.

To begin with, it was the State that turned a blind eye to an attempt to poison Israelis at a festival (2025). It was also the State that attempted to kill the only Portuguese Jewish community with a vibrant religious and cultural life, in a blatant imitation of the Soviet Union in doctrines and methods (2022 onwards). It was the government that commissioned professional thieves to carry out the night-time robberies that targeted a lawyer from the Jewish community, Mónica Gomes, and the former president of SIRESP, Sandra Perdigão Neves (2022-2023). It was the government that was indirectly responsible for the sabotage of a car that miraculously did not result in the murder of the young Jewish leader Ilan Cohen and his wife Helen Cohen, who had been the first signatories of a petition to parliament (2022), as it was the State that conveniently went hand in hand with the madhouse to arrange mountains of anonymous slanderous denunciations against the Jewish community that it tried to destroy and failed (2022).

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It was also the State that inaugurated the Hamas embassy, where the laws of the terrorist movement apply (2025). It was the government that, due to a "Palestinian issue", used all means to pass a law in favor of the Jews, because it did not want Jews and much less rich Israeli Jews (2022). It was the government that was morally responsible for hundreds of murderous news stories against the Jewish community without even being contradicted once (2022). It was the government that, through its servants, ordered the police to illegally invade the largest synagogue in the country (2022). It was the State that trampled on religious freedom by slanderously pronouncing on the value of a Jewish community and on the Jewish identity of people, including the granddaughter of the Portuguese Dreyfus (2022). It was the political power that remained silent in the face of the act of vandalism that targeted the largest synagogue in the country, in Porto, whose façade was defaced with apartheid inscriptions (2023). It was the government that collaborated with the appearance in the newspapers of "lists of Jews" in Porto associated with the housing crisis (2024).

On the other hand, it is the State that maintains unchanged the criminal law on "discrimination and incitement to hatred and violence", which only provides for and punishes behaviors that attack national minorities (immigrants), racial minorities (blacks and gypsies), religious minorities (Muslims) and sexual minorities (gays and LGBT). The parliament did not accept to include in the definition, as proposed by Prof. Rui Pereira, the "national, cultural and religious minority" (2018). The system is all rigged from the base. Jews are outside the range of protection. They are not a race. They are not a religion. They are not diverted. They have two hundred nationalities."

Apparently, the fight against antisemitism in Portugal remains without direction. The state seems to be the biggest problem. If the community's claims are true, what it is about is State antisemitism. There is no recognition on the part of the agents of the political system that there is a problem with the Jews and an additional problem with the State of Israel. In addition, there is no minimally capable law that includes Jews in the protected minorities, and the institutions of the State act according to this thought. Those who claim to fight antisemitism are reduced to condemnations of graffiti, therefore, to condemnations of groups of politically fanatical people who act on their own.