Photo virale des fils de Bolsonaro en Israël avec des T-shirts du Mossad et de Tsahal

Tom Gross @ Mideast Dispatch:

Eduardo et Carlos Bolsonaro

This image of Brazilian president-elect Jair Bolsonaro’s sons, Eduardo and Carlos, sporting IDF and Mossad t-shirts on their visit to Israel, has gone viral. 

Brazil’s new president Jair Bolsonaro is strongly pro-Israel, and one of his promises during his recent election campaign was to move Brazil’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, one of several policies that has sparked anger on the Israeli and American Jewish far left. 

Haaretz newspaper has been running a campaign against Bolsonaro, even including a massive banner headline “Hitler in Brasilia”, while the New York Times ran a top-of-the-page comment piece claiming “Swastikas have been painted on walls all over the city” [Sao Paulo]. 

I checked with two different trusted Brazilian Jewish friends of mine who live in Sao Paulo whether any of this might be true, and they wrote that this scaremongering was “nonsense” and that “Bolsonaro is genuine philo-Semite” and “his first foreign policy objective is to realign Brazil’s relations with Japan, Chile, Israel, and the US – at the expense of Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba, and the Palestinian Authority”. 

Tom Gross adds: Brazil is the most important country in South America, and the eighth largest economy in the world. The previous left-wing government of Dilma Rousseff, who was impeached on corruption charges, was very anti-Israel, even taking the rare step of refusing to approve Israel’s choice as ambassador, Danny Dayan, who instead became Israel’s Consul General in New York.