The PJN portrays a discreet Portuguese who one day became the target of dozens of anonymous letters from failures trying to "edit" his soul as a blank page.
João David Roseira Almeida Garrett, who uses the abbreviated name of David Garrett, is a Portuguese jurist, writer of works of philosophy and activist in Portuguese and foreign Jewish organizations. Born in Porto, Portugal, on December 18, 1969, he signed most of his writings with different names or pseudonyms. On pages 9, 111 and 112 of a book-interview he published on Amazon in 2020, under the pseudonym John Rose, and under the title "Interviewing a regular Joe, January 2020", he argues that human beings are nothing before the Universe and, for this reason, should be "discreet and stealthy" and "use several names". The real name of the author of this work-interview is recognized on page 119 of another Amazon book, published by the Jewish Community of Oporto, entitled "Two Millennia of the Jewish Community of Oporto, Chronology 1923-2023". David Garrett is publicly known as a member of the Board of Directors of this Community.
In the field of philosophy of religion, in his "Interviewing a regular Joe", David Garrett dedicated himself to proving the existence of the Creator (pp. 7 to 28), having as a guiding principle the Jewish sources and contemporary science. The author writes that the big bang is described in the Zohar, that the laws of nature presuppose a heavenly lawgiver and that they were discovered and not invented, that genetic scholars know today that there was an "Adam of science" and an "Eve of science" (the male and female ancestors of humanity), and that hundreds of generations of hominids were revealed by Maimonides a thousand years ago. He emphasizes that the deep meaning of human life and the existence of a rationality that surrounds the Universe are undeniable, since the stars were not distributed by chance, an empirical and spiritual framework that the author calls God, for whose existential proof an object such as a marble table is enough, because it can never have an "I", for many millennia to come.
In 2007, using the name of Francisco Almeida Garrett, the author wrote a book in Portugal, entitled "On the Path of Divinity", which deals with the classic proofs about the existence of God, debating with the greatest theist, agnostic and atheist philosophers. It is a composition in the form of dialogue form. The God about of the discussion is the God of philosophy, the Absolute, and not necessarily the God of any specific religion,
In 2009, Garrett gave a lecture at the University of Oporto, for the local Archaeology Group, entitled "The story of a sword". He started from the discovery of a gladius (Roman sword), in an archaeological excavation, to find in it proof of the existence of God. To this end, the iron that made up the sword was transported in time, not only to the cosmic dust that allowed the existence of the Earth, but above all to the first event that gave rise to it. "To go further in investigating the age of your cosmic relic, we need to know what happened at the origin of the Universe, 15 billion years ago. What exploded can be defined as a microscopic sphere, millions of times smaller than an atom's nucleus, in which galaxies, stars, planets and even your sword were contained. But where did this sphere come from? Where did the energy that caused the explosion come from? And where did the space into which the universe expanded from? A mystery that physicists themselves do not even think of unraveling one day. Supposing that, at a given moment, nothing existed, nothing could exist now. And there is. There is a celestial universe, there is matter, there is your sword, there is life and – most importantly! - there is intelligence and consciousness. It is true that God does not see himself, but remember that a good part of human reality is also not accessible to observation. There are forces and entities that we do not observe and that nevertheless exist. Some childish examples: the wind, the process of natural evolution, feeling, the force of gravity, etc..""
With regard to the philosophy of life, in his self-interview, David Garrett argues that each human being is a member of the organism of humanity, programmed to contribute to the improvement of the world in the religious, political, social, economic, cultural and other fields. Since the stars were not distributed at random and influence human existence, men inherit basic tendencies and an existence of meaning. Every rational and meditative person attains the meaning of his or her life. It is in this context that, in all his works, the author clearly defends Jewish philosophy.
Regarding the philosophy of history and the question of whether it is a linear or cyclical process, the author returns to Jewish history. In a Jewish News Syndicate article published in 2025, David Garrett writes that "The millennia-old antisemitic myths of Jewish selfishness and harm to others have been hurled against the Jewish state as crude as they once existed, with nothing more than giving them the forms and seductive galas of 'international law.'" What we are witnessing is nothing but a World Intifada that mixes ideals of radical Islam with ideological currents of the political left. If the cream of the contemporary intelligentsia were to do an academic exercise on how to destroy the Jewish world in every respect and in every way, they would not be able to do better, neither in less time, nor with a more appropriate system." "It is enough to have the minimum notions of philosophy of history to conclude that more violence will occur, at an increasing rate. A century after its creation, there is a need to remake the Haganah and to impose its presence, adapted to the circumstances of time and place, wherever there is a Jewish diaspora."
On the subject of penal philosophy in the State of Israel, David Garrett wrote in the Jewish News Syndicate in 2024 that the Jewish state should enact a law that criminalizes antisemitism, but not a law of local application, but of extraterritorial application, applicable to facts that occurred around the world, except in cases where the national laws of nations adequately punish such behavior. According to the author, "rhetorical or physical manifestations against Jewish and non-Jewish individuals and/or against their property, communities, religious and cultural institutions, as well as against the existence of the state of Israel, should be investigated and judged in the Jewish state, when such manifestations aim to create a climate of fear or a hostile environment within a Jewish community and/or are the result of a negative perception of Jews, as an individualized people, linking them not to virtues, but to trickery, material interests, infidelity to the homeland, violence or implausible conspiracy theories."
In 2025, this exact proposal and wording of a "crime of antisemitism" was translated into an express request by Spanish and Portuguese Jewish organizations – the Hispano-Jewish Foundation, Action and Communication on the Middle East (ACOM), B'nai B'rith Portugal, and the Holocaust Museum of Oporto. According to the Israeli newspaper Ynet, the Israeli Minister of Justice received the proposal and had it analyzed for submission to the Knesset.
In an approach to the philosophy of international law, which explores the historical and philosophical foundations of the general principles of law applicable to all nations, Garrett presented a proposal for a Universal Declaration of Human Duties at the 5th Global Forum to Combat Antisemitism, held in Jerusalem on May 12, 2015. The proposal contemplates the duties of human beings to themselves, family, fellow human beings, humanity in general, nature, animals, property, sexuality, preservation of health, truth, work, education and justice. The proposal is essentially based on the great ethical traditions that humanity has known – summarized in the Seven Noahide Laws proclaimed by Jewish civilization. According to the author, they would allow us "to determine the exact scope of each particular 'human right'". "Human rights cannot continue to mean different things to different people, let alone be anti-rights. They must be synonymous with peace, not conflict. They have as their source the law of God, as we can rightly read in the Declaration of Independence of the United States, and not the law of men, which is merely, and always will be, the law of the strongest."
In the explanatory memorandum to the declaration, and in the supplementary notes to it, the author denounces as fundamental human errors the theatricalization of cruelty, the use of knowledge to provoke injustice, and pornography which, according to the author, "must be combated in the spirit of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Circulation and Traffic in Obscene Publications, proclaimed by the League of Nations in 1923 and negotiated in Geneva."
Still in the field of philosophy of law, David Garrett argues in his "Interviewing a regular Joe" that the law has to be based on the figure of duties, because the mere proclamation of rights prevents the common citizen from perceiving the exact content of the corresponding duties. It claims that fundamental laws must be known and felt in the hearts of citizens. "When ordinary men no longer have a prior knowledge of what law is and become incapable of properly discerning between good and evil, consequently increasing the number of defaulters, jurists and policemen, societies are exposed to the most serious disturbances" ("A Perspective of Criminality in the Light of Philosophy", article integrated in the collection Justice and Delinquency, 2009, p. 168).
He graduated in law in the 1990s along with numerous colleagues who were then part of the Judiciary Police, especially Gil Rodrigues de Carvalho, who would become director of that public entity. The author always defended divisive theses in the field of criminal philosophy and in Portuguese criminal procedure, often to the benefit of the prosecution and not the defendants. In a study published in 2007, entitled "Subjection of the Defendant to Evidentiary Proceedings”, cited in higher courts and in the Constitutional Court itself, and for which the author uses the name of Francisco Almeida Garrett, there is a controversial statement about an almost sacred right in the modern world, the right to silence. "The courts can and should interpret the defendant's posture, therefore his silence as well, according to the set of evidence produced at trial, to his benefit or detriment, as the case may be, from which it follows that objectively silence can disadvantage the defendant. Since the experience of the warned persons shows that the expected reaction of an innocent creature is to protest against the accusatory libel and not to mummify himself, perhaps the legislator could touch up the law and make the questioned aware of this truth of nature."
On pages 169 and 175 of the author's work, already cited, "A Perspective of Criminality in the Light of Philosophy", it can be read that "The doctrine of the rights of man exalted to the point of insanity has given the green light to a system almost exclusively concerned with defending the offenders, who are the first to know about it, themselves and the victims." "While novelists and tribunes delight in celebrating the virtues of moral liberty, in the courts one sees every day the shame and scandalous crimes to which such liberty leads. Nothing hurts the recesses of the ethical minimum more. Nothing makes so many desperate, crazy and wicked."
Between 2008 and 2011, David Garrett was a representative of the Bar Association in the Selection Committees of the Centre for Judicial Studies to choose new judicial magistrates and the Public Prosecutor's Office for the Portuguese courts. Together with the then President António Marinho Pinto and representatives of the prosecutor's office, he gave conferences of the Bar Association on criminal procedure topics such as "Conflicts between lawyers and criminal police bodies" and "The subjection of the defendant to evidence that may incriminate him". These matters are dealt with in another book by the author, from 2008, entitled "Criminal Inquiry and Evidence in Trial".
In the field of political philosophy, David Garrett argues in the interview above (pp. 63 to 104) that the word freedom should be banished from philosophical debate, because it means nothing. "There is no Freedom with a capital "F", "The freedom of the madman is called madness", and "The word freedom is destined to be misunderstood in all its meanings: in the religious, moral, social and political order". The recurrent use of the word democracy also deserves criticism from the author. "For centuries, different political regimes have democratic and aristocratic elements, with the people participating in governance, always, through representatives, whether many, few or just one". In Garrett's perspective, political discussion is transformed into an exercise in infantilism. "Political philosophy, which should seek the best government, reached the lowest level when it abdicated from doing so and raised the formula one man, one vote". The author advocates as the best solution a "merit regime" where citizens enjoy responsible freedoms, supported by principles of natural and divine law common to the great ethical traditions of human history. Garrett defends the "democratization of power", that is, the separation of the various "powers of Power" (executive work, institutional representation and management of accounts) that must be handled and controlled, each by different and independent people, and a single person cannot have all the powers, under penalty of someone "dictating" everything, exercising a "dictatorship". In parallel with the democratization of power, the author defends the "aristocratization of government", insofar as "only those who are most convenient to the common good should govern". "Good men will always be supplanted by the immoral and wanton, and it is more likely that men with responsibilities will leave this caste and not that if the selection processes are not the most adequate". Garrett explains that it should be up to the "Council of State, with senior officials of the nation and regional governors, to choose for the government people of the greatest humility, quality, prudence and fiery, with unusual technical skills, favorable constellations and aptitude to endure deprivations". He adds that such people must be forced to accept to govern "even against their will" and that they cannot be "disturbed by side issues, praise, courtships, flashes of the masses, criticism, and attacks". "Governing is not a telegenic contest, it is a job." According to the author, those who exercise executive power at the top should not officially represent nations, because "they have no time, nor vocation for diplomatic meetings, official receptions, interviews, ribbon cutting, and drunkenness." This proposal for a political system, according to the author, would also have the advantage of nullifying the natural human temptations of vanity, the search for personal recognition and waste.
David Garrett's philosophy is directed towards a useful life and the fulfillment of duties. People are, first and foremost, spiritually and atomically eternal beings, who converge into a single Divinity and a Purpose. Each human being must be guided by a table of immortal values accepted by the great ethical traditions that history records. According to the author proposal at the 5th Global Forum to Combat Antisemitism (Jerusalem, 2015), these values have been recognized in synthesis by the World Parliament of Religions.
In the area of fiction, David Garrett probably published a collection of works that are unknown, given the multiple pseudonyms he used. In 2017 he published a novel entitled "The Rise and Fall of a Poor Man" that reached a best seller list on Amazon. Published under the pseudonym John Rose, the book tells the story of a footballer who, coming from a disadvantaged background, reached the big leagues, attained fortune, and later experienced ruin. The book stands out for the advice that the protagonist received, after becoming impoverished, from an old rabbi who was knowledgeable about Jewish philosophy and whom the book describes as "a centenarian, wise, tall, and upright, with his head always covered and from whose eyes sprang an incandescent light."
In another book, published in 2010, co-authored with veteran teacher Cidália Laranjo, Garrett deals with educational philosophy. The book is entitled "Fathers and Mothers – The Education of Little Men and Women" and clashes with the modern mentality and the ancient education for traditional values. The only character in the book, a Parisian orator, is described as "a withered and dying old man, without bread and without shelter, upright and moralistic, indifferent to the passage of time and much given to oracles and advice".
Support of Jewish Life
As a member of the European Jewish Association's legal body and a regular contributor to the Jewish News Syndicate, David Garrett focuses his legal, intellectual, cultural and spiritual activity on various Jewish organizations in Portugal and abroad.
The Jewish Community of Oporto, the city where David Garrett was born and lives, includes two synagogues, a Jewish museum, a Holocaust museum, a cemetery, restaurants, an art gallery, a library with 10 thousand volumes, a newspaper, a men's choir, the production of historical films and the headquarters of B'nai B'rith Portugal for the defense of Jewish human rights. This appears in the organization's book, published on Amazon in 2025, under the name "Scheme to Silence and Persecute: Jewish Works in Portugal".
According to pages 85 and 86 of the same book, the brilliance that this Jewish community has achieved in the twenty-first century was due in the first place to David Garrett. "Much of what the organization stands for today was built in the light of its Jewish philosophy and its previous writings about God, the Principles of Faith, the principles of Jewish governance, the history of Portuguese Jews and the regulation of the Chevra Kadisha. The only Portuguese Jew whose marriage was officiated by a Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel and a direct descendant of the Royal House of David, he never received an illustrious visitor or held any position of institutional representation in the Community. He always kept as low a profile as possible. At the time of the celebration of the historic Protocol of friendship and cooperation between the Community and the Catholic Diocese of Oporto, he acted as driver of the Jewish delegation. The Israeli ambassador Raphael Gamzou used to say that he wanted to be received by him when he visited the Jewish Community of Oporto, to which he refused saying that he was not an institutional representative.”
In the same pages of the aforementioned book it can be read that David Garrett "shares the date of birth of the ‘Portuguese Dreyfus’", a captain in the Portuguese army, named Barros Basto, who founded the Jewish Community of Oporto in 1923 and who was removed from the army for religious reasons (the circumcision of his Jewish students). There is a strange similarity between this case and the one that victimized a contemporary, a captain in the French army, Alfred Dreyfus. Barros Basto built the largest Portuguese synagogue, Kadoorie Mekor Haim, with the help of the world Sephardic diaspora. He was soon the target of judicial persecution by the political system of the time. The press called him a "pantheist", to delegitimize him in terms of the Jewish community. The State used a collection of anonymous slanderous letters, which accused the target of homosexuality, which was then a crime, to initiate criminal and disciplinary proceedings. They managed to expel him from the army on allegations of the circumcision of his students. From the fear that this caused in the Jewish environment of Oporto, they destroyed the organization he had founded. For more than half a century, the Jewish Community of Oporto was reduced to the almost total absence of religious and cultural life. The rebirth of the organization took place in 2012, essentially thanks to the officer's granddaughter, Isabel Lopes, a septuagenarian economist, and David Garrett, born on the birth date of the founder (December 18) and in the decade of his death (Basto died in 1961, Garrett was born in 1969).
Garrett's role in the rehabilitation of the "Portuguese Dreyfus"
In 2012, it was announced worldwide that the Portuguese Parliament had rehabilitated Captain Barros Basto. They officially acknowledged that he was the target of antisemitism in his time, when his intervention in circumcision operations of his students was seen as immoral and a reason for his removal from the army. The parliament's decision, made many decades after the unjust conviction of the officer (1937), came following a request from his granddaughter, Vice-President of the Jewish Community of Oporto, Isabel Lopes, advised by David Garrett. According to a writing by him, published at the time in the “Journal for the Study of Antisemitism" (Vol. 4, 2022), where he is presented as "coordinator of the team of jurists who rehabilitated Barros Basto", it can be read that "according to the Jewish religion, circumcision is related to the Covenant established between God and the people of Israel. The decision of the Army Disciplinary Council not only condemned Barros Basto, but also Judaism and the Jews. Decades passed and it became necessary to rehabilitate the good name of Barros Basto and do justice to the Jewish people. In August 2011, Barros Basto's granddaughter, Isabel Lopes, met with a team of British and Portuguese jurists including men of religious and civil law. (...) The 1937 sentence was brought to the attention of the President of the Bar Association, António Marinho Pinto, who was shocked by what he read. He publicly stated: "We must all feel like Sephardic Jews until justice is done to Captain Barros Basto!" At the end of October, with the support of religious authorities, Barros Basto's granddaughter sent a request to Parliament, invoking the Dinim Law, which stems from the primordial tradition of the Noahide Covenant. She requested the intervention of the Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Freedoms and Guarantees. This request was signed by a distinguished lawyer from Portugal: Rui da Silva Leal. In February 2012, the Commission's deputies met and all political parties voted in favour of a report written by MP and law professor Carlos Abreu Amorim. The report of this Parliamentary Committee on National Defence, authored by deputy João Rebelo, also states that the decision of the Army Disciplinary Council, by disrespecting freedom of religion, violated both human rights and fundamental rights materially protected by the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic."
David Garrett and a film dedicated to Captain Barros Basto
The text by David Garrett published in the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism, in 2012, states that "the story of Barros Basto will soon excite filmmakers, as he traveled through the villages of Portugal, sometimes on horseback, to try to find descendants of the ancient Jews." Six years later, in 2018, the Jewish Community of Oporto, in which Garrett was a member of the board, produced a 90-minute film dedicated to the captain. His journeys on horseback were not forgotten. The title of the film is ‘Sepharad’. It is available on the community's YouTube channel that has more than 3 million views.
David Garrett and the rehabilitation of the synagogue and the community of Barros Basto
In an article by journalist Gabriela Cantergi published in 2024 in the European Jewish Press, entitled "The strongest Jewish organization, from a cultural point of view, resides in Portugal", it can be read that the synagogue built by Barros Basto is more than alive. Today the great synagogue of Oporto is known for Yom Kippur that is celebrated annually. It has become one of the largest in Europe, with about a thousand people singing in unison. On 04.1.2021, a Jewish traveler who has visited more than 55 countries, wrote to the Community saying that "I wrote to several friends and family afterwards to tell them how deeply moved I was. I don't think I've ever heard such passionate prayers and songs in a synagogue. It was not only the power of the voices praying in unison that touched me so deeply, but also the symbolism of so many Jews gathered in a synagogue in a country heavily impacted by the Inquisition."
David Garrett and the Jewish Cemetery, Five Centuries Later
An important achievement of the Jewish Community of Oporto in recent years was the inauguration of its cemetery. The last one was destroyed five centuries ago when the Jews were expelled from Portugal. The cemetery took its name from the last Gaon of Castela, Rabbi Isaac Aboab, who died in Porto in 1493 after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. The inauguration of the cemetery merited a ceremony presided over by a Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel, Yossef Sheinin. In his speech he stated that "the great captain of the Jewish Community of Oporto" today is David Garrett. The speech is preserved on Youtube and the statement was made at minute 17:20-17:40. The London rabbi Asaf Portal, responsible for the Chevra Kadisha of the cemetery, tells in the same video how the cemetery was born, in a conversation with David Garrett held years ago, and that "when he says yes, things happen". (10:10-12:40)
David Garrett and the history films produced by the Community
An asset of the Jewish Community of Oporto is the production of historical films. The scripts were written by David Garrett and Hugo Vaz, according to page 22 of "Scheme to Silence and Persecute Jewish Works in Portugal". In addition to the film ‘Sefarad’ dedicated to Captain Barros Basto, five others were produced. They include ‘The Light of Judah, ‘The 2000 Jewish children exiled’, ‘1506 – The Genocide of Lisbon’, ‘1618’ and ‘The Nun's Kadish’. The film ‘1618’ is the most internationally awarded film in the history of Portuguese cinema. The films produced by the community portray themes as different as the Inquisition in Oporto, the medieval fairs, the edict of expulsion of Dom Manuel (1496), the edict of expulsion from Spain (1492) and the abduction of 2000 children who were sent to populate the island of São Tomé (1493). This last production, filmed largely on the island, was coordinated by David Garrett's former university colleague, Gil Rodrigues de Carvalho, a Jewish descendant who was retired and was teaching training courses to the local Judicial Police in São Tomé.
David Garrett and the Holocaust Museum of Oporto
In 2024, the Californian Jewish Website quoted David Garrett regarding the Holocaust museum in Oporto, unique in the Iberian Peninsula, and the education that has been developed in many countries. "School programs are poor and Holocaust museums are usually in the hands of states, municipalities and non-Jewish organizations. They preach messages about human solidarity, never about the long and centuries-old persecution of Jews," he said. "Schools treat the Shoah as an attack on minorities and the result of widespread intolerance and xenophobia. Even the word 'Jew' is hardly mentioned in political speeches about the Holocaust," he added. "Our museum teaches history as it really was and does not isolate the Holocaust as if it had occurred in a vacuum. Instead, it treats him as the ultimate exponent of what happened to the Jews for two millennia."
David Garrett and the preservation of the records of the Portuguese Inquisition
According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, in 2023 the Jewish Museum of Oporto inaugurated a memorial to the 842 victims of the Inquisition who were born in the city. They were between 10 and 110 years old and were identified through newly digitized records.
A part of that museum is dedicated to the Inquisition. In 2023, David Garrett was interviewed by the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) about the preservation of the archives of the Inquisition from the sixteenth century. JNS explains this was carried out under a protocol between the Jewish Community of Oporto and the National Archive of Torre do Tombo, in Lisbon, and it allowed the recruitment of restoration professionals and began the digitization of 1,778 cases against "infidel Jews" in three centers: Lisbon, Évora and Coimbra. The latter included cases from Oporto. "These were, in fact, the most important records because at that time the matrilineal genealogy of the persecuted was still known. That is, who were really Jewish and who were not," David Garrett told JNS. "We cannot forget that the Inquisition lasted three centuries, and even persecuted many non-Jews, Catholics of many generations who were still referred to as Jews with the sole purpose of stealing their property," he added. Regarding the importance of the protocol with Torre do Tombo, Garrett stated that "The legal processes of the Inquisition of the sixteenth century were practically lost. Many pages were already completely illegible and glued to others," he said. "We decided to act immediately. Otherwise, the records would rot. It was possible to recover a large part, but not everything."
History repeated itself
According to the book "Scheme to Silence and Persecute Jewish Works in Portugal”, in the years of the growth of the Jewish Community of Oporto between 2012 and 2020, its efforts were silenced by the political and mainstream media as if they were uncomfortable in the light of a "Palestinian question" reigning in Portugal. Worse happened in 2022 when the Kadoorie synagogue was raided by police who raised slanderous anonymous complaints against the rabbi and members of the Community, particularly against Captain Barros Basto's granddaughter, Isabel Lopes, and David Garrett who were "accused" of not being Jewish faith. Lopes's husband's company was described as getting rich and Garrett was accused of driving a Jaguar.
In 2022 that, with his deliberate anonymity lost, David Garrett began to give interviews to the Jewish world. In 2023, in the Portuguese Jewish News, he described the police operation as "unbelievable", said that he drives a "Jaguar today", just as "20 years ago, I drove an Audi A8, and 10 years ago, a BMW 735" (cars of the same quality and value), speaks of "state and newspaper corruption" and "Soviet-style antisemitism" directed "by two handfuls of individuals" with the aim of "crushing the most important Jewish organization in the country, steal its assets, destroy the reputation of its leaders, defame their works of more than a decade and expel their members and benefactors from the country." It stated that the prosecutor's allegations "are technically impossible" and that therefore "the process was born dead and is closed, there is no need to wait." "The State now needs to improvise new allegations, as it did with captain Barros Basto."
Also in 2022, according to Ynetnews, a Portuguese court considered the case of the Prosecutor's Office "based on nothing". The Jewish Community of Oporto did not forget this. Every year it marks "The Day of Shame", to remember the illegal police operation, carried out in the absence of objective evidence of the practice of illicit acts, but based on anonymous, slanderous and generic denunciations.
Soviet-style antisemitism denounced by David Garrett
In 2023, David Garrett, on behalf of the Jewish Community of Oporto, reported to the Jerusalem Post that an investigation by the European Commission was needed into what happened in Portugal: "If the anonymous slanderous complaints were not made by criminals at the request of state agents; whether the attempt to eliminate the first signatory of a petition to parliament was made by someone who chose his target at random; if there is no relationship between the professional thieves who stole the server of a lawyer in Oporto and the computers of the president of SIRESP in Lisbon, then it was all a miraculous coincidence and the Community should not be alarmed," Garrett said. "If, on the contrary, it is concluded that agents of the State used criminals and the entire press against a religious and cultural organization [the Jewish Community of Oporto], then we can say that they intended, above all, to destroy a nascent Jewish elite."
The European Union has a Plan until 2030 to actively promote the return of the Jewish people, their culture and religion. However, David Garrett offered a warning in a new interview with the Jerusalem Post. "As soon as Jewish communities begin to make their mark on European territory, influential antisemites in society will try to destroy Jewish life by attacking the strongest synagogues and sparing the weakest ones, to avoid being accused of antisemitism. They are using the same methods employed in the Soviet Union. This includes the use of the press and slanderers to associate synagogues with business, describing such business as amoral or illegal, obtaining negative reactions from public opinion and from façade Jews, and thus achieve the total destruction of the respectability of synagogues and organizations promoting Jewish life and culture."
Jewish Week in London draws a parallel between Barros Basto and David Garrett
In 2024, the Jewish News dedicated an extensive report to the Jewish Community of Oporto in which states that, "with a gratifying historical symmetry, Captain Artur Carlos de Barros Basto did not have the law in his favor, but David Garrett is a criminal lawyer who closes any loopholes that may legally prevent the survival of the Community."
The partnership between Barros Basto's granddaughter and David Garrett
Isabel Lopes and David Garrett are colleagues on the Board of Directors of the Jewish Community of Oporto. They are responsible for the process of moral rehabilitation of Captain Barros Basto and the Community he founded that took place from 2010 and led to favorable decisions by the parliament and the army in 2012 and 2013. However, they watched the years go by without the officer being symbolically reinstated in the army by the Portuguese State. In 2023, to the Times of Israel, Isabel Lopes reported her great discontent and David Garrett, responsible for the Community's legal affairs, warned that "If we do not receive a response in the coming weeks, we will file a complaint with the Portuguese Administrative Court and, if necessary, later also with the European Court of Human Rights".
The following year, Isabel Lopes, Barros Basto's granddaughter, filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights. The complaint was published on Amazon, in a book entitled "The Portuguese Dreyfus Case: A scandal from 1937 heard in the European Court of Human Rights in 2024". On page 161 of this book, there is an interview with Isabel Lopes in which, asked by the Portuguese Jewish News about how the Jewish Community of Oporto manages to produce so much cultural and religious life today, she replied: "We have a little bit of everything, even a member of the board born on the same day as my grandfather and who for now has no successor up to the task of ensuring the regulatory legality and the good results of our more than twenty departments."
In the same book, on page 152, there is an interview with David Garrett to the Portuguese Jewish News. Faced with the question, "If all the powers of society continue to be united for many years against you, do you fear that your fate may be similar to that which victimized Barros Basto?", the interviewee replied with a single word: "If."
Jewish Museum of Oporto compares Barros Basto and David Garrett
According to the book "The Good Jew / Bad Jew Strategy: A Case in the 21st Century", published by David Garrett on Amazon in 2024, the Jewish Museum of Oporto has a museum collection that compares the State's persecutions against Garrett (in the 21st century) and against the founder of the Community (in the 20th century). According to a document attached to this book, on page 57, here is the text posted in the Museum.
"After more than a decade of work on behalf of the Jewish Community of Oporto, together with his valiant coreligionists, the writer and army captain Barros Basto was the target of anonymous slanderous accusations that falsely imputed to him the then fashionable crime [homosexuality] (1934-1936).
After more than a decade of work on behalf of the Jewish Community of Oporto, together with his brave coreligionists, the writer and jurist David Garrett was the target of anonymous slanderous accusations that falsely imputed to him the then fashionable crime [corruption] (2020-2022).
In both cases, agents of the Portuguese State and journalists took advantage of such anonymous slanderous denunciations to try to destroy the good name of those targeted, the balances they maintained in the Jewish Community of Oporto and their roles as guarantors of the regulatory legality of the organization and as the main drivers of all departments.
As in the time of the Inquisition, agents of the State used to their advantage anonymous slanderous denunciations that were based on the lowest mediocrities, murderous envy and false accusations of violent behavior and embezzlement of donations that foreign Jewish organizations sent to Oporto for the Community's projects.
The anonymous slanderous denunciations resulted in criminal proceedings (in 1936 and 2022) with the aim of dragging those targeted to court for years, destroying their lives and slaughtering a highly prosperous Jewish community in terms of religious and cultural life.
In Minutes no. 71 of the General Assembly of the Jewish Community of Oporto the following can be read: "The criminal case that victimized the founder of the Community, Captain Barros Basto, has many similarities, unfortunately many, too many, with the criminal process that was born in 2022."
Barros Basto is known throughout the world as the "Portuguese Dreyfus". In 1937, the court declared that the accusations against him were false, but even so the State improvised his expulsion from the Army and destroyed the then thriving Jewish Community of Oporto, which was only reborn in 2012.
At the time they were victims of anonymous slanderous accusations, Barros Basto and David Garrett were both fifty-year-olds.
Barros Basto was extroverted and indiscreet. David Garrett was introverted and low-key. However, they met the same fate.
Barros Basto and David Garrett were born on December 18, in the Hebrew month of Tevet."
Portugal and its troubled history with the Jews
In a video posted on Youtube by the Jewish Community of Oporto in 2025, entitled ‘Centuries of Success in the face of mediocrity’, it is said that Portuguese Jews were expelled in the fifteenth century under the name of "heretics", that in the three centuries of the Inquisition Jews were called "apostates", that in the twentieth century Captain Barros Basto was called a "pantheist", and that David Garrett has been called "unprofessed" in the twenty-first century. The video ends by saying the following: "In the Jewish world, actions have their own voice and people know who they are. May the Portuguese elites continue to find many so-called pantheists, non-professed, heretics and apostates within the Jewish community, as it will be a sign that the Jews are still alive in the country." (3:25-3:50)
David Garrett is married and is the father of two children.
