Thirty-six incidents were reported in Mexico in 2007, eight fewer than in 2006. As in previous years, most were offensive e-mails, anti-Zionist articles in the media and graffiti.
Graffiti, Threats and Insults
Swastikas were commonly sighted in various neighborhoods with a large Jewish population, and sometimes near Jewish institutions. They appeared, for example, in April at a shopping center in Santa Fe, in June, outside a mall in Polanco, and in October, in a telephone booth in Tecamachalco. In September, they were reported outside the Monte Sinai School, which also received a false bomb threat on September 1.
Persons passing near synagogues and community centers, shouted slogans such as “Damn Jews,” “Heil Hitler” and “Soap” on five occasions. Posters advertising the comedy My Hebrew Shiva (produced by a Mexican filmmaker about the Jewish post-funeral ritual of sitting shiva) were defaced with the slogans “Heil Hitler” and “Achtung Jude.”
Demonstrations and Other Events
Antisemitic and anti-Zionist motifs were observed at several demonstrations. For example, extreme right activists from the Guardia Nacional Mexicana and Ultimo Reducto protesting on April 12 against a 2007 local abortion law outside Mexico City’s Chamber of Deputies handed out fliers with antisemitic canards. Inter alia, they blamed the Jews for Mexico’s problems and signed off with the Nazi salute “Heil Hitler.”
In June, the BINACOM (a bi-national association that brings together educators and students of communication studies from San Diego County and the Baja California Norte region of Mexico) organized “Corto Creativo 07,” a student short film festival, in Tijuana, on the Mexico-California border. During the event a Holocaust denial film, The Great Taboo, was screened. In it Holocaust deniers Germar Rudolf, Ernst Zündel (see
ASW 2006), and Bradley Smith (who participated in the festival) discussed revisionist theory, free speech, Zionism and 9/11. The organizers received several complaints, including from some American Jewish organizations and from Tribuna Israelita. After the festival BINACOM issued a statement, condemning Smith’s use of the conference “to legitimize his attempts to deny the crimes of the Nazis against Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, political leftists and other groups… There can be no debate when one side deliberately falsifies information in the support of ideology…”
Media, Internet and Literature
Although media coverage of the local Jewish community is generally responsible, in May, Gazeta de Saltillo (newspaper of the municipal archive of Saltillo, the capital of the northern state of Coahuila), published an article by Prof. Elisa Gutierrez Galindo of Northeast Autonomous University entitled “The Jews of the New Spain.” Galindo claimed, inter alia, that Judaism was materialistic and messianic, and that Jews were exclusivist in that they sought to destroy the established order since it was not based on Jewish law. Further, she asserted, the acceptance of Jews in Mexico in the 16th century might be considered the “perdition of the New Spain [pre-independence name].” Tribuna Israelita contacted the editor and published a response written by historian Dr. Alice Backal in the following issue.
Some mainstream publications manifested virulently anti-Israel views, portraying Israel as the perpetual aggressor, an illegal occupant, and insensitive to the needs of the Palestinian people. For example:
· “In the sight of the whole world, the West allows an occupation to persist which is not only illegal and responsible for humanitarian crimes but which nowadays constitutes an example of blatant, active racism… the Arab inhabitants of occupied Palestine are treated as second-class human beings by a country that carries out territorial robbery, demographic adjustments, ethnic cleansing, revenge against civilians and, in general, one of the most criminal dirty wars perpetrated against civilians since the middle of the 20th century” (Editorial de la Fuente, La daily left-wing Jornada, March 23).
· “The occupation of these territories by the Israelis, which has continued until today, is... contrary to international legality and is translated into savagery against hundred of thousands Palestinians… Paradoxically, Israel’s victory over its neighbors has generated, in the last 40 years, a disastrous balance for the Jewish state itself: as the protagonist of an illegal occupation, it has experimented with a process of moral degradation that has caused it to be transformed into a repressive, terrorist and racist state, hated by its neighbors and always threatened by terrorist attacks” (Editorial de la Fuente, “40 años de barbarie,” La Jornada, June 5).
A few articles referred negatively to the Holocaust. Most stated that the Jewish people had not learned anything from their suffering and had become victimizers. The Holocaust –they argued − served to justify Israel’s existence and behavior. For example:
“Genocide… was committed in the Nazi extermination camps such as Auschwitz and Dachau, [and is what] the Israeli army is doing today against the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples” (Ma. Estela Saravia, “La Columna de la Independencia,” Uno más Uno [minor mainstream paper], Jan. 7).
“… you still believe the Jewish lies that Hitler was a child killer and committed genocide. [Those who commit] genocide were and are the Zionists from the White House and from Israel” (José Carlos Robles, “A pleno sol,” Sol de Mediodía [mainstream evening paper published in Mexico City ; part of the Soles chain] March 29).
“Knowing the intentions of Israeli militarism to engage in another punitive action against the (Gaza) Strip makes the world aware that it is witnessing an atrocity that is not very different from the one perpetrated by the German Nazis against the population of the Jewish ghetto of Warsaw. The principal difference between that situation and the present one is not of essence but of rhythm and magnitude: today a slower –and more hypocritical − extermination disguised as an Israeli “self-defense” action, is being perpetrated against a much larger population than that of that unfortunate part of the Polish capital” (Editorial de la Fuente, La Jornada, Sept. 21).
Jewish institutions, as well as some individuals, were the target of antisemitic mail: In September, the following antisemitic message was posted on Tribuna Israelita’s website: “How nice the Jews are! I love how they justify Zionism making references to the Holocaust. I love how they kill hundreds of innocent people in the Middle East by claiming a piece of land that never belonged to them. I love this people who since the Renaissance have been considered intolerant and usurers. I hope this century we will find another Hitler.”
In October, a Jewish man from an advertising firm received the following e-mail: “Jews out of Mexico! Go back to raising camels in the desert. It is only a matter of time; as soon as things get difficult in Mexico, the cockroaches (your people) will escape first.”
Street stalls selling antisemitic books such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf were detected in downtown Mexico City; local and international copyright laws forbid the publication of the latter in Mexico. The Protocols was also found in three coffee-book shops. When approached by Tribuna Israelita to halt sales of the book, they claimed they were unaware of the content and removed them from their stocks.
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