Netanyahu's embrace of Bolsanaro echoes hidden history of Israeli support for authoritarians in Braz
Netanyahu’s embrace of Bolsanaro echoes hidden history of Israeli support for authoritarians in Brazil, cables reveal
News Eitay Mack on April 3, 2020
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro at the Western Wall, Jerusalem, Monday, April 1, 2019. (Photo: Amos Ben-Gershom/GPO)
Ever since Jair Bolsonaro’s election as President of Brazil in October 2018, the State of Israel has been counted as one of the most enthusiastic supporters of this extreme right-wing politician. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was one of the guests of honor at Bolsanaro’s inauguration ceremony to the Presidency in Brasilia and, at the beginning of April 2019, Bolsonaro visited Israel and received the kind of royal welcome that the State of Israel usually only bestows upon the President of the United States. In a meeting at a business forum in Jerusalem, Bolsonaro said to Netanyahu, “we are like a couple that has just become engaged.”
In the 2018 presidential elections, the economist Fernando Haddad was the Workers’ Party (PT) candidate, but Bolsonaro’s unofficial rival was actually Lula da Silva, the head of the Workers’ Party and former President of Brazil, who at the time was serving a prison sentence, having been convicted on corruption charges. In November 2018, Bolsonaro appointed Sergio Moro, the judge who sent Lula to jail, as the Minister of Justice. In June 2019, it was revealed that Moro had been in contact with the prosecutors against Lula and actively worked to incriminate him. This revelation brought public calls to overturn Lula’s conviction and the opening of an investigation against Moro himself. In November 2019 Lula was released from prison in the wake of an unprecedented ruling by the Brazilian Supreme Court, according to which a person can be imprisoned only after all appeals have been exhausted.
As opposed to the norm in the State of Israel, the warm embrace that the Netanyahu government gave Bolsonaro has been subjected to very widespread criticism by the Israeli press and the public here. It does not appear that there is any real disagreement that Bolsonaro is one of the most dangerous world leaders today. Prior to his election, Bolsonaro served in the Brazil National Congress and was identified with the back benches – the marginal, but loud members of the extreme right. For years, Bolsonaro repeatedly expressed support for torture, the reestablishment of a military dictatorship, violence against women, the extermination of indigenous populations and even the detention and killings of members of the LGBTQ community and members of leftist and workers’ parties. Bolsonaro claimed that he prefers to be compared to Hitler than to a gay person, and that Hitler was a great strategist.
Immediately after his presidential visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Bolsonaro said in an interview that the Nazis were leftists.
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https://mondoweiss.net/2020/04/netanyahus-embrace-of-bolsanaro-echoes-hidden-history-of-israeli-support-for-authoritarians-in-brazil-cables-reveal/
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