Brazil Chose the Man Israel Banned

The result

With more than 99% of votes counted, Brazil’s electoral authority declared Lula the winner, 51.8% to 48.2%. It is a fourth term for Lula, who turns 81 this week — a first in Brazilian history. Bolsonaro had won the first round on October 4, 47.03% to Lula’s 45.16%, and led the final runoff polls; no candidate since 1989 had lost the first round and won the presidency anyway. Voting on Sunday was extended by two hours after a Supreme Court justice acted on requests from both campaigns, citing transport failures and heavy rain. Turnout surged — abstention, at 19%, was among the lowest on record.

Two campaigns, one question

This race was mostly about Brazil — the cost of living, crime, corruption. But on one question the two men were exact opposites, and both of them said so loudly: Israel.

Flávio Bolsonaro built his foreign policy around it. Visiting Israel in January, he pledged to move Brazil’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem within the first six months of his presidency. He promised to restore full diplomatic relations, name a new ambassador to Israel — a post Brazil has left empty since 2024 — rejoin the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, and bring Brazil into the “Isaac Accords,” the pro-Israel bloc promoted by Argentina’s Javier Milei. In August he flew to Argentina to address a pro-Israel conference and meet Milei. His father, Jair Bolsonaro, made devotion to Israel a hallmark of his own presidency and waved the Israeli flag on stage at a rally; pro-Bolsonaro lawmakers tried to impeach Lula over his Gaza statements.

Benjamin Netanyahu did not hide which side he was on. After the first round, he called Bolsonaro to congratulate him, said publicly that he hoped Bolsonaro would win the runoff, and wished him a “great victory” in the name of restoring the “extraordinary friendship” between Israel and Brazil. Donald Trump and Milei called too.

For his part, Bolsonaro accused Lula of antisemitism and framed the election as a choice between his pro-Israel stance and Lula’s approach.

What Lula has done

Lula’s record is the reason that friendship broke. In February 2024 he said of Gaza: “What is happening in the Gaza Strip is not war. It is genocide” — and compared Israel’s campaign to Hitler’s murder of the Jews. Israel’s foreign minister declared him persona non grata, a status Israel has reaffirmed since, and summoned Brazil’s ambassador for a public reprimand at the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. Brazil recalled its ambassador and never sent another. When Israel later nominated a new ambassador to Brazil, Lula’s government refused him, and Israel downgraded ties. Brazil has joined South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. And under Lula, Brazil continues to recognize a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, as it first did under his earlier presidency in 2010.

None of this was hidden from Brazilian voters. It was the campaign. Lula did not soften a word of it.

The honest caveats

Brazilians did not vote in a referendum on Gaza. Reporting from São Paulo describes voters motivated by prices, by crime, and above all by keeping the Bolsonaro family out of power after Jair Bolsonaro’s conviction for plotting to overturn the 2022 election — the crime Flávio had pledged to pardon as his first act in office. The two-hour voting extension may also draw legal challenges.

And Lula’s win is not control. Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party became the largest force in the Chamber of Deputies and, with its allies, controls both houses of Congress — the most conservative legislature Brazil has elected since the dictatorship ended. Lula will govern against it.

Our read

Here is what happened, stated plainly: the prime minister of Israel openly campaigned, by phone call and public blessing, for a candidate who promised him an embassy in Jerusalem, restored relations, and a place in a new pro-Israel regional bloc. That candidate had won the first round, led the final polls, and had Congress already in hand. He lost — to an 80-year-old who is formally banned from Israel for calling its war a genocide. A man who knew the price of saying it, paid it for two years, and never took it back.

Governments keep treating unconditional support for Israel as the safe position and criticism of it as the costly one. Brazil — the largest country in Latin America, with one of the largest evangelical populations on earth, the very constituency the Bolsonaro campaign was built on — just ran the experiment in the open. The costly position won.

Lula’s fourth term will be hard, hemmed in by a hostile Congress and an economy full of debt. But the diplomatic fact stands: Brazil’s embassy stays in Tel Aviv, its ambassador’s post there stays empty, Brazil stays in the genocide case at The Hague — and the man Netanyahu picked goes home.

Sources: Reuters; Wall Street Journal; CNN; JFeed; Middle East Monitor; Anash.org.