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By Gabriel Senderowicz

The Hamas State “embassy” was recently inaugurated in Lisbon, displaying a map of the Near East in which the State of Israel does not appear, as if it did not exist. Nothing new.

In June 2025, major Israeli newspapers reported on an alleged plan to poison Israeli citizens at a music festival in Idanha-a-Nova. The intended targets were visitors who had served in the Israel Defense Forces — in other words, virtually all Israelis present, given that military service is mandatory in the country whose capital is Jerusalem. Widely reported in the international press, the case went largely unnoticed in Portugal, where only two media outlets published brief reports. There were no media campaigns, no condemnatory statements by politicians, no decisive actions by the judiciary, nor any alert to the public regarding a manifestation of real and extremely serious hatred. The poisoning plot will not appear in official statistics, but it will remain part of a long list of negative episodes — like many other anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli incidents over the past decade — that have been systematically silenced or dismissed.

In 2024, during a large demonstration for better housing in Porto that gathered thousands of people, local Jews were openly associated with the housing crisis. Posters appeared with slogans such as “Do not rent from Zionist landlords” and “Neither Haifa nor Boavista.” For those unfamiliar with the city, Porto’s main synagogue is located in the Boavista neighborhood, and Jewish landlords born in Israel represent only a tiny fraction of professionals operating in the local real-estate market. These individuals became targets of similar messages and graffiti such as “No bombs in Palestine, no evictions in Porto,” seen on streets, building walls, and even on the doors of their homes. Their names — and those of their companies — were published in a newspaper of record, causing serious harm and fear among the targeted families. Children were afraid to go to school. No official condemnation followed — not from the government, not from parliamentary leaders, not from editorial writers. Despite a formal complaint, the police remained inert in the face of actions that, had they occurred in Germany or the United States, would have provoked a major public outcry. Unexpected? Not at all.

In 2023, the façade of Porto’s central synagogue was defaced with “Apartheid” graffiti. This was no ordinary building, but one of the most majestic synagogues in Europe. Political silence fostered a climate of permissiveness toward a minority that, in public discourse, had long ceased to be considered among the oppressed and was instead portrayed as inherently oppressive. That same year, Jewish restaurants and businesses with links to Israel were vandalized, as offenders felt implicitly authorized to insult, threaten, and desecrate. The October 7 massacre in Israel itself was widely “understood” in Portugal — including by political representatives — despite its echoes of the Lisbon massacre of 1506.

In 2022, members of political, economic, and media elites, animated by the so-called “Palestinian cause,” orchestrated a campaign designed, in one stroke, to dismantle a law, undermine the country’s largest Jewish community, and drive its wealthiest Jews out of Portugal, as though they constituted a threat to national prosperity. Anything was permissible.

This included the unlawful invasion of the main synagogue, carried out under unbearable media and political pressure and fueled by anonymous accusations later described by the high court as “based on nothing” (28.09.2022). It included the publication of hundreds of hostile news pieces, day and night, creating an atmosphere of alarm and pressuring judicial institutions to act. It included tens of thousands of hateful messages posted in comment sections and across social media. It included the fabricated “Abramovich Tablet,” or the deliberate use of ridicule — referring to him as “Mr. Two Hundred and Fifty Euros, thank you.”

Even more serious acts followed. Professional criminals broke into the homes and offices of a community lawyer (12.01.2022) and of a former president of SIRESP (29.03.2022), stealing computers and servers in search of supposed “evidence” of crimes that many had already taken for granted. The car of a young French Jewish leader was sabotaged, nearly causing a fatal highway accident (29.11.2022), just hours after he signed a parliamentary petition defending the Jewish Community of Porto. The brazenness was total — adding stupidity to malice, given that in the twenty-first century everything leaves a trace.

Most revealing was an internal inquiry conducted by IRN. When announced, it generated enormous political and media excitement. The socialist government promised urgent conclusions. They never came. Why? Because IRN ultimately informed the Community in writing: “At IRN, an audit took place within the scope of citizenship procedures, which generally concluded that the procedures followed were correct.”

In 2021, further incidents occurred and were once again ignored by those in power, granting ever greater freedom to offend Jews and Israelis. Public claims that “Jews control global finance” and “own the vaccines” went unanswered by political leaders. One prominent figure even stated he had more to say but refrained so as not to be targeted by “Zionist bulldogs.” Acts of vandalism continued: red paint was thrown onto a mezuzah at the entrance of a Jewish family’s home — a chilling practice reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s. At the same time, the German group Antifaschistische Aktion vandalized the gate of Porto’s synagogue. Antisemitism spread into schools and universities, where Jewish students were threatened and harassed. Unusual? No. It was the continuation of a pattern.

In 2020, socialist and communist political forces launched a coordinated campaign to hollow out the law granting nationality to Jews of Portuguese origin — legislation intended to strengthen the national Jewish community. It was irrelevant to the government that Portugal had witnessed unprecedented Jewish demographic, religious, and cultural growth. It was irrelevant that the country now hosted the strongest Jewish cultural community in Europe and the continent’s largest Chabad center. What mattered was expelling Israelis and a millennia-old civilization resistant to ideological reengineering. The campaign relied on stereotypes, exaggerations, slander, and anti-Israeli resentment. Unexpected? No. It followed the same trajectory.

In 2019, the Jewish Community of Porto inaugurated the city’s Jewish Museum to teach students that Jews and Catholics lived in Portugal before the kingdom was founded; that Jewish figures were integral to the First Dynasty; that Dom Dinis and Rabbi-Mor Guedelha collaborated culturally; that Dom Pedro relied on Moses de Navarro; and that Dom João I launched the Age of Discovery with Jewish scientific and financial support. Yet, for security reasons, the museum has never been able to operate openly. The State refused to assign even paid police protection — a service granted to supermarkets. Unforeseen? No. The warning signs were already there.

Between 2015 and 2018, the Community repeatedly warned the government of exponential growth in online antisemitism. Stones shattered thirteen windows of Porto’s synagogue. In Cascais and Lisbon, Jewish cultural projects were aggressively opposed. Authorities did nothing.

Over the past decade, the increased visibility of the Jewish community — particularly in Porto — has been met with escalating rhetorical and physical hostility against Jews, their institutions, and the Jewish state. This hostility is rooted in conspiracy theories, denial of Jewish contributions, and the revival of classic antisemitic tropes. As Theodor Herzl observed long ago: Jews are persecuted only where they exist and only once they become visible.

These are dark days for Portuguese Jewry — days when poisoning plots are ignored, synagogues are vandalized, lists of Jews are published, and the State responds with apathy. In the absence of state protection, the Community has borne the burden of security, education, remembrance, and historical truth.

Many claim antisemitism is not a Portuguese problem. This article demonstrates otherwise. When tragedy occurs — and it is only a matter of time — no one will be able to say it came as a surprise.