Bolsonaro’s election defeat in Brazil puts Latin America’s pro-Israel shift to the test

After losing Brazil’s presidential election and leaving for the United States via Argentina and Ecuador, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro has proclaimed himself the “leader of Brazil” and vowed to lead the opposition from abroad. But what does that mean for Israel? For starters, a test for Latin America’s pro-Israel swing.

Bolsonaro won the first round with about 47% of the vote, compared to 45% for current Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, raising the prospect of a major shift in Israel’s ties with South America’s largest country by both population and land mass. Netanyahu congratulated Lula and later spoke with him by phone. “I look forward to restoring the extraordinary friendship between Israel and Brazil,” he added on 𝕏.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Congratulations @FlavioBolsonaro on yesterday’s vote and good luck in the final. I look forward to restoring the extraordinary friendship between Israel and Brazil. Best wishes for your great victory, my friend.

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) October 5, 2026

In the second round, Lula was declared the winner with almost 52% of the vote, compared to Bolsonaro's 48%. Bolsonaro has challenged Lula’s gain of more than 10 million votes from the first round to the second as “mathematically impossible.” He also criticized a last-minute Supreme Court decision granting polling stations that were still open at 5 p.m. a two-hour extension before closing. Electoral records show that only 34,000 votes, about 0.03% of the turnout, were cast during that timeframe.

At a pro-Israel conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, last June, Bolsonaro, an Evangelical Christian, vowed to move Brazil’s embassy to Jerusalem in 2027. Just a few weeks ago, at the reception marking the inauguration of Colombia’s embassy in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recalled traveling to Brazil for the swearing-in of Jair Bolsonaro, Flávio’s father, who led Brazil from 2019 to 2023.

“Who knows? We may do it again,” Netanyahu hinted.

But instead, the younger Bolsonaro now claims to be repeating is something else: the threat of imprisonment.

He said in a statement on 𝕏, “As if following a previously prepared plan, seven minutes after this repugnant electoral fraud, the judge set the regime’s machinery of political persecution in motion” – part of what he says is a campaign that began with his father and follows the “classic playbook of any coup d’état.”

Jair Bolsonaro is serving a sentence of more than 27 years after being convicted of plotting a coup to remain in power following his 2022 election defeat, in what U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called a “witch hunt.” Trump told reporters earlier this week about Flávio, “I thought he and his family were treated very unfairly,” clarifying that he had not taken a side in the election.

Jair had also promised to move the Brazilian embassy to Jerusalem but ultimately stopped short, opening a trade office there in 2019 instead. Under Lula, relations between Israel and Brazil moved in the opposite direction. In 2025, Brazil withdrew its observer status from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and filed a declaration of intervention in South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of genocide.

That year, Brazil also declined to approve Gali Dagan as Israel's next ambassador, leaving the ambassador’s post vacant and prompting Israel to downgrade diplomatic relations. Relations deteriorated further in 2026 after Brazilian authorities reportedly rejected the appointment of Vivian Eisen as Israel's next consul general in São Paulo.

Colombia had followed a similar trajectory under former President Gustavo Petro, who, like Lula, became one of Israel’s most outspoken critics. After historically warm relations, Petro severed diplomatic ties with Israel in 2024. Then came a sharp reversal.

Conservative Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella has since moved immediately to restore ties with Israel upon taking office on Aug. 7 and by his fourth day in office, he officially recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Two months later, at the inauguration of Colombia’s embassy in Jerusalem on Oct. 14, Foreign Minister Omar Bula said Israeli tourism to Colombia had increased by 183%.

“In just two months, we have undone all the damage that President Petro caused to relations between our countries. And we have gone much further,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar added at the event.

It is that kind of restoration of ties that Brazil and Israel are unlikely to see under Lula.

Flávio Bolsonaro's departure is also a reminder of the political and legal turmoil still hanging over Brazil. After his defeat, the Brazilian Federal Police requested the seizure of his passports after identifying a flight risk in connection with an investigation involving suspected money laundering and currency evasion. Bolsonaro denies wrongdoing.

Lula himself spent 580 days in prison in 2019 following convictions for corruption and money laundering. Brazil’s Supreme Court annulled those convictions in 2021 on procedural grounds rather than acquitting him on the merits, reflecting the deep polarization that has long divided Brazil.

That divide is religious as well. In a late-September Quaest poll, Lula led Bolsonaro 48% to 29% among Catholic voters, while Bolsonaro led Lula 46% to 27% among Evangelicals – a striking split in a country that remains majority Catholic, particularly given Bolsonaro's evangelical identity and strongly pro-Israel campaign.

For now, Brazil remains outside the pro-Israel realignment taking shape elsewhere in Latin America.