Netanyahu Video-Backed Flavio Bolsonaro's Campaign Launch as Brother Worked to Kill a War Crimes Case Against an Israeli Soldier

At his campaign launch in Sao Paulo this July, Flavio Bolsonaro watched a giant screen play a pre-recorded video message from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"Flavio, my friend, I want to congratulate you on the official launching of your campaign," Netanyahu said. "You're a great champion of Brazil, you're a great champion of the friendship between our peoples."

Flavio, son of imprisoned former president Jair Bolsonaro, is running to unseat incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Sunday's election. If no candidate clears 50 percent, a runoff follows on October 25.

The endorsement did not come out of nowhere. Six months earlier, the Hind Rajab Foundation had filed a case in Brazil against Yuval Vagdani, an Israeli soldier accused of war crimes committed in Gaza, who was vacationing in the country at the time. A Brazilian judge ordered an investigation, and the soldier fled.

Flavio's brother, Eduardo Bolsonaro, moved quickly. He has said he worked directly with Israel's Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli to pressure Brazilian authorities into dropping the case. They did.

"I recorded the first video defending the Israeli soldier," Eduardo said in an interview. "Thanks to our efforts with Minister Chikli, the decision not to investigate set a precedent."

That precedent, and the family's willingness to set it, sits behind Netanyahu's public embrace of Flavio's candidacy.

Flavio has promised to move Brazil's embassy to Jerusalem, a step most of the world's governments have refused to take because the city's eastern half is occupied Palestinian territory. He has also pledged to join the "Isaac Accords," a framework Argentina's Javier Milei unveiled alongside Netanyahu to embed Israel in Latin American security and economic structures, and has adopted language framing Israel's occupation of Palestinian land as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

David Magalhaes, a professor of international relations at the Federal University of Uberlandia, told Middle East Eye the stakes for Netanyahu are concrete, not sentimental.

"Netanyahu stands to gain, particularly at a time when Israel is increasingly isolated within the international community, a situation that has worsened because of the indications of extermination or genocide in the Gaza Strip," Magalhaes said.

Netanyahu faces his own election on October 27. A win for Flavio, Magalhaes said, would be "highly convenient," a signal to Israeli voters that the country's diplomatic isolation has limits.

Lula has pushed back on the foreign involvement, warning Trump in June to stay out of Brazil's vote. According to the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, his later remarks at the UN General Assembly about outside interference were aimed at Netanyahu and Milei as well, though he stopped short of naming them.

The relationship predates this election cycle. Bruno Huberman, a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo, said Israeli influence in Brazil was "built mainly through the armed forces and the police, and from there it extends to far-right parties and movements," a network that deepened sharply during Jair Bolsonaro's 2019-2022 presidency, when Brazil dropped its historic neutrality between Israelis and Palestinians.

Polling shows the race close: Lula at 39.4 percent, Flavio at 38.4 percent in the first round, with some surveys giving Lula a narrow edge in a runoff.