The Creation of the Relations Between Israel and Brazil from a Pioneering Perspective: Between Diplomacy and Kibbutz MEIR CHAZAN
CHAPTER 12 The Creation of the Relations between Israel and Brazil from a Pioneering Perspective: Between Diplomacy and Kibbutz MEIR CHAZAN INTRODUCTION n May 1953, the Israeli foreign minister, Moshe Sharett, visited Brazil. IIn his report to the government following his return from his South American tour, Sharett related that in his speech at the official, festive dinner held in his honor in Rio de Janeiro, he applauded several things that were being done in a similar manner in Brazil and in Israel. A settlement project was being carried out in Brazil, and in Israel: “There, they are pioneers, and so are we; they are a country surrounded by sister nations, but not of the same people, and we are, too.” Brazil was a country that consisted of people who came from diverse cultures, and so was Israel. On the following day, the speech was praised in one of the Brazilian newspapers, although the writer noted that the comparison was original but questionable, since the foreign minister did not mention the difference between “us,” the Brazilians, and them: “they,” in Israel, “turn the desert into a blooming garden, while we turn a blooming garden into desert.”1 1 Protocol of the Government of Israel, May 17, 1953, Israel State Archives, Jerusalem (here- after ISA). Sharett spoke before representatives of the Brazilian Journalists Association in the presence of senior members of the Brazilian foreign ministry, including Osvaldo Aranha, the Brazilian ambassador to the United Nations who chaired the famous session of the United Nations General Assembly on November 29, 1947. For Sharett’s speech and for the program of his visit to Brazil, see ISA, FO 6/236.
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