Lula Wins Brazil Election, Defeats Pro-Israel Bolsonaro

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has repeatedly accused Israel of genocide, won a fourth term as Brazil's president in Sunday's runoff. He defeated Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, a staunch supporter of Israel who had vowed to relocate Brazil's embassy to Jerusalem.

The Associated Press said Brazil's electoral court gave Lula 51.8% with the entire vote tallied, and a margin of nearly 4.4 million votes. Brazil's election authority declared Lula the mathematically certain winner once the uncounted ballots could no longer change the outcome.

The result overturned polls that had pointed to a narrow Bolsonaro victory. Bolsonaro, 45, is the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro and has served in the Senate since 2019. He topped the first round earlier this month with 47% to Lula's 45%. According to the AP, this is the first time since Brazil's military dictatorship ended in 1985 that a candidate who placed second in the opening round has gone on to win the presidency.

Bolsonaro accused Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin, Lula's former lawyer, of "changing the rules of the game in the middle of the game." "It's impossible to recognize the results of the election in the context of these things that happened," Bolsonaro said.

Lula, 80, is scheduled to begin his fourth non-consecutive term on January 5, 2027.

The Brazil presidential debate (Photo: screenshot)

Since the October 7 massacre and the war in Gaza, Lula has become one of Israel's fiercest critics worldwide. "What the Israeli government is doing is not war, it is genocide. Children and women are being murdered," Lula wrote on social media.

Bolsonaro took the opposite line. At his final campaign rally on Saturday in Barra da Tijuca, in Rio de Janeiro state, he was filmed waving an Israeli flag.

During a visit to Israel in January, he went to the Western Wall and several locations in Judea and Samaria. On that trip he pledged to move Brazil's embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem if elected. "It is an honor to defend Judeo-Christian values and to show the Jewish people that the Brazilian people support them," Bolsonaro said at the time.

On Sunday, Bolsonaro's personal pastor, Estevam Hernandes, described plans for a November trip to Israel that would include Brazil's future economy minister. "We agreed that we would celebrate his victory in Jerusalem," Hernandes said. "The plan is to bring Flávio to the Western Wall to celebrate the victory."

Netanyahu backed Bolsonaro ahead of the runoff. On election day, JFeed reported that Yossi Dagan, one of Bolsonaro's closest contacts in Israel, had spent the previous two weeks holding Zoom meetings with Brazilian political and religious leaders at the request of the Bolsonaro campaign. The final Datafolha poll before voting began on Sunday showed the two candidates tied at 50% each.