|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Portugal is facing a dangerous surge in antisemitism — from covert poison plots targeting Israeli festivalgoers to street protests demanding the removal of Jews from society.
In a chilling exposé aired by KAN News, a Jewish artist using the pseudonym “Sarah” infiltrated a private WhatsApp group of far-left activists in Portugal through her work in the art scene. There, she uncovered a plot to physically harm Israelis expected to attend the upcoming Boom Festival — a major electronic music gathering scheduled for July in Idanha-a-Nova, Portugal.
Sarah, who believes the group was unaware she was Jewish, described the chat as initially disorganized, but said it quickly turned violent. “What started off with just silly ideas then started to become plans. And as you can see, it’s truly sinister,” she told KAN.
The group’s messages included calls to spike party drugs with strychnine — a deadly pesticide that causes convulsions and death by asphyxiation.
One message read: “They are all pretty much IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] veterans… I was thinking of giving them a taste of their own medicine… torch their tent… then give them the strychnine drop to cheer them up.”
Another stated: “Strychnine in their acid is not dismemberment of babies… they are all former or current IOF after all.”
A third declared: “The entire world needs to adopt this tactic wherever Israelis are found.”
Sarah also recounted a group phone call where participants discussed even more disturbing ideas — urinating in Israeli food, defecating on their tents, setting them on fire, and contaminating anything Israelis might ingest.
“Reading these vile, racist, blatantly criminal plans to hurt Israeli people — especially after what happened on October 7 — was really appalling to me,” she said. “Our nature party scene has always been inclusive — we become one on the dance floor.”
Despite alerting both police and festival organizers, Sarah said neither took meaningful action. “This is why I scrambled to try and warn the 4,000 Israelis who I know are coming,” she explained. She has since left Portugal, citing not only the immediate threats but also a climate of institutionalized antisemitism. She described being spat on in public for wearing a Star of David and a hostage tag.
Meanwhile, another deeply disturbing incident played out in broad daylight.
On June 1st, a housing protest in Porto devolved into open antisemitic incitement. Demonstrators carried signs blaming “Zionist murderers” for Portugal’s housing crisis, calling to “cleanse the world of Jews” and urging property owners “not to rent to Jews.”
“To march for hours through the streets of Porto in an organized demonstration… and to carry antisemitic signs with messages whose call for violence is unquestionable, is not a private matter… but incitement,” said Gabriel Senderowicz, president of Porto’s Jewish community. “The Jewish minority is once again accused of violating the basic rights of the Portuguese, such as the right to affordable housing.”
The community has filed a criminal complaint for incitement to hatred and violence — both against the protest organizers and against Esquerda.net, a media outlet affiliated with the far-left Bloco de Esquerda party. After the protest, the outlet published an article blaming Jewish and Israeli real estate investors — many of whom arrived in Portugal under the country’s 2015 citizenship law for descendants of Sephardic Jews — for rising housing prices. The article even named individuals, placing a new generation of Portuguese Jews in the crosshairs.
Israeli Ambassador to Portugal Dor Shapira denounced the rhetoric, stating: “These demonstrations are exploited to spread antisemitic, racist, and hateful ideas. And that’s exactly what these signs say. It must be a red line.”
Senderowicz warned, “If this practice of incitement to violence and hatred against Portuguese Jews continues, we may reach a situation where there are those who adopt these ideas and could shoot innocent people in the streets out of blind hatred.”
These are not isolated events — they reflect a dangerous trend. From secret plots to poison Israelis to public chants of expelling Jews, antisemitism in Portugal is intensifying and metastasizing.
The irony is painful. Just over a decade ago, Portugal extended an unprecedented gesture of reconciliation, offering citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled during the Inquisition. The program, which ran from 2015 until December 31, 2024, granted citizenship to approximately 75,000 descendants of Portuguese Sephardic Jews before being officially terminated.
Yet even the parliamentary debates over ending this law were tainted by antisemitic rhetoric — with statements about Sephardic Jews taking over Portugal and comparing them to the coronavirus. Today, some of those very descendants — and their families — are being vilified in the streets, targeted online, and scapegoated in the media.
As seen in the recent violent attacks in Washington, D.C., Boulder, Colorado, and elsewhere, antisemitic rhetoric rarely stays rhetorical. When fantasies of poisoning Jews and chants of “Zionist murderers” go unchecked, they lay the groundwork for real-world violence — not just against Israelis, but against Jews everywhere.
Authorities in Portugal must act — swiftly and decisively — before incitement becomes atrocity, and hate turns into bloodshed.
