Love: Hamas congratulates Lula on his reelection, as it did in 2022

The Hamas terror group has congratulated Lula on his 2026 reelection. The statement was issued on Monday, October 26, one day after the runoff. Confirmation comes from outlets linked to the movement itself and from aggregators that republished the message.

The group congratulated the Brazilian people and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on his reelection, praising his longstanding support for Palestinian rights and his positions against Israeli policies. It lauded Lula’s “noble and courageous positions” in support of the Palestinian cause.

In 2022, the terrorists publicly celebrated Lula’s election as well. Politburo official Basim Naim called him a “freedom fighter” and described his victory as “a victory for all oppressed peoples around the world, particularly the Palestinian people,” citing Lula’s record of positions on the Palestinian cause in international forums.

In Brazil, paradoxically, Lula brands his administration the “government of love.” Yet a look at the president’s foreign policy reveals a platonic love for dictators, tyrants and jihadists. That macabre love, and his longstanding friendship with Hamas, are plain to see, as are his ties to, and admiration for, the Iranian regime, including then-ayatollah Ali Khamenei and former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Even Celso Amorim — Lula’s special presidential adviser and chief foreign policy strategist — wrote the foreword to the Brazilian edition of “Engaging the World: The Making of Hamas’s Foreign Policy” by researcher Daud Abdullah. In it, he credits Hamas’s international diplomacy with the potential to play “a central role in restoring Palestinian rights.”

Unfortunately, Amorim is not alone. Brazilian politics is now crowded with supporters of terror groups such as Hamas, as I wrote in my article “Elections in Brazil: The Historic Presence of Anti-Israel Candidates.” It is therefore not hard to understand why Lula pulled Brazil out of the Holocaust remembrance alliance in 2025.

Lula’s love and friendship for terrorists has had dire consequences. It has turned Brazil into fertile ground for members of terror groups such as Hezbollah, a subject I addressed in another article.

Beyond the shameful designation of persona non grata by Israel, how could we have imagined that Brazil — a historic partner with deep ties to the founding of the Jewish state — would, under an antisemitic president, choose to stand against its own history: becoming an enemy of Israel and a friend of the Hamas terror group, which advocates the destruction of the Jewish state? As I have also argued, Lula’s victory cements the rupture between the two countries.

We have already known the dark chapter of the Vargas era against the Jews, but Lula’s antisemitism is something astonishingly new and unprecedented. The so-called government of love exudes hatred for Israel…

Shema Yisrael שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל