The Israel-Hamas war furthers culture wars in Brazil

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Wednesday for the first time mentioned Hamas by name in a statement calling for a ceasefire in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, following days of activists and lawmakers demanding the Brazilian government to explicitly condemn the militant group for its most recent attacks on Israeli territory.

The latest episode of violence in the Middle East has had its own repercussions in Brazil, with some politicians eager to use each breaking news story to fuel their existing culture wars.

As The Brazilian Report showed, the first casualty in the political battle was in the electoral campaign of Congressman Guilherme Boulos, currently the frontrunner for the 2024 mayoral race in Brazil’s largest city. 

Former State Health Secretary Jean Gorinchteyn, a recent reinforcement to Mr. Boulos’s campaign, said that “as a Jewish man supporting the State of Israel,” he saw himself forced to quit Mr. Boulos’s team due to “a pro-Palestinian stance that does not mention or condemn the armed extremist Islamic group Hamas for the terrorist attacks in Israel last Saturday.”

Mr. Boulos had said he “condemns, without mincing words, the violent attacks on civilians,” but had not mentioned Hamas by name. Finally, in a speech Tuesday on the House floor, he expressed his solidarity with the “families of the victims of the attacks carried out by Hamas.”

Lula’s first statement on the subject on Saturday also failed to mention Hamas, though he did say he was “shocked by the terrorist attacks carried out against civilians in Israel.” The statement was compared unfavorably to that of United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, who said he condemns “in the strongest terms this morning’s attack by Hamas against Israeli towns.”

Although Lula mentioned “terrorist attacks” and days later cited Hamas, he has never explicitly defined it as a terrorist group. Carlos Sérgio Duarte, the Foreign Ministry’s secretary for Africa and the Middle East, vaguely answered a question on this issue in a press conference, saying that such “political developments” are discussed at the UN Security Council. In a press statement on Thursday, the Foreign Ministry said...