Brazilian Jewish Lawmaker Sues Over ‘Nazi’ Jibe
A Jewish politician from Brazil said he would sue a colleague for suggesting he was a Nazi.
Isaac Tayah, president of the city council of Manaus, said he would file charges in a federal court for racism, libel and defamation, according to A Crtitica, a Brazilian news site.
Earlier this month, councilman Mario Frota published in his blog a photomontage of Tayah’s face on the body of Adolf Hitler wearing a Nazi uniform.
Frota told several newspaper that it was a “bad joke,” but Tayah said he would not let it go.
“I can’t just ignore this. Even of the trial goes on for 10 years, Frota will have to answer for this,” he told A Critica. If Frota wanted to make a joke, Tayah added, “he could have presented me as a ballerina. He wanted to create a polemic.”
The umbrella organization of Jewish communities of the Brazilian state of Amazonas – the capital of which is Manaus – expressed “solidarity” with Tayah.
“Comparing Jews to Nazism is offensive to the Jewish people and religion,” a recent statement by the organization, CIAM, read. It added Tayah was a “prominent member” of the Jewish community of Amazonas.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
