Two weeks ago Carlos Portugal Gouvea, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. The event went unnoticed in Canada and left barely a ripple in U.S. media. But two months prior Gouvea, a noted Brazilian gun-control activist and head of the University of São Paulo’s “diversity and inclusion committee”, had been observed wielding what looked like a rifle close by Temple Beth Zion, a synagogue in the Boston suburb of Brookline, during Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.
After fleeing security guards, Gouvea was arrested with what turned out to be a pellet gun. He told local police he had been out “hunting rats”; one of his shots had shattered a car window. Within days, Gouvea was charged with four offences, his visa was revoked and a U.S. Department of Homeland Security official denounced “brazen, violent acts of anti-Semitism like this.” In November Gouvea struck a plea deal over his illegal use of the air rifle. Early this month he was re-arrested by ICE and, to avoid the humiliation of deportation, agreed to leave the U.S. “voluntarily”.
It’s Australia’s great shame that the worst atrocity to befall Jewish people since the October 7 massacre should have taken place here. Australia now joins all the other Western countries that are obviously plagued by militant Islam, notwithstanding the heroics of a Muslim bystander, who wrestled a gun off one of the attackers.
