In rebuttal of Lula, Brazil’s ex-leader Bolsonaro waves Israeli flag at mass rally
Former president and many of his supporters display flag of Israel in rejection of current president’s comparison of war against Hamas to the Holocaust
SAO PAULO, Brazil – Tens of thousands of Brazilians poured into the streets of Sao Paulo on Sunday after ex-president Jair Bolsonaro – theatrically waving an Israeli flag – called for a show of support as he faces accusations that he plotted a coup to stay in power.
Dressed in the green and yellow of Brazil’s flag, which Bolsonaro claimed as a symbol while in office, an immense crowd of his supporters thronged Paulista Avenue, one of the main arteries in the country’s economic capital.
Bolsonaro arrived waving the Israeli flag – a rejection of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s remarks last week comparing Israel’s offensive in Gaza to the Holocaust – before putting his hand to his chest for the national anthem. A number of Israeli flags could be seen prominently in the crowds gathered for the rally.
Bolsonaro is seeking to show his base is resilient as he is being investigated by federal police over his alleged role in the Jan. 8, 2023, attacks on government buildings by his supporters over his election loss. He wants the dozens of people still in jail for those incidents to get pardons.
Bolsonaro is also accused of illegally receiving jewels from Saudi Arabia during his presidency.
Six blocks of Paulista Avenue were filled with Bolsonaro supporters, many of them saying that he is being persecuted by Brazil’s Supreme Court and that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva unfairly won his narrow victory in the 2022 election.
While on a visit to Addis Ababa to attend the African Union Summit last week, Lula, who took office a year ago, told reporters that “what’s happening in the Gaza Strip isn’t a war, it’s a genocide.”
“It’s not a war of soldiers against soldiers. It’s a war between a highly prepared army and women and children,” the veteran leftist politician added falsely.
Following Lula’s comments, Foreign Minister Israel Katz – a child of Holocaust survivors – summoned the Brazilian ambassador, Frederico Meyer, to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem and told him Israel “will not forget and we will not forgive” Lula’s comments, using a phrase Israelis often reserve for the horrors of the Holocaust itself.
Nevertheless, Lula received backing from his Colombian and Bolivian counterparts. In protest of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, Bolivia cut ties with Israel in October, and Colombia and Chile recalled their ambassadors.
While Lula had initially described Hamas’s brutal October 7 onslaught on southern Israel – in which close to 1,200 people were killed, mostly civilians, and 253 were kidnapped – as a “terrorist” act, he has since grown vocally critical of Israel’s response.
Bolsonaro, a 68-year-old former army officer, had urged his backers to attend a “peaceful rally in defense of the democratic rule of law” in Sao Paulo.
Bolsonaro has had his passport seized by police as he and his inner circle face scrutiny over plans to try to remain in power after he lost the 2022 elections to Lula.
The former president was exuberantly pro-Israel during his tenure. In one of his first moves after winning the presidential election of 2018, Bolsonaro vowed to follow the lead of his political role model, then-US president Donald Trump, and move Brazil’s embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Instead, however, the South American country opened a trade office in the Israeli capital in 2019, in a move characterized as a precursor to opening an embassy in the city.
Bolsonaro also cultivated close ties with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and was seen as one of his key international allies.
