Sionismo à brasileira: religião, ideologia e apoio a Israel na opinião pública brasileira contemporânea

Abstract

This research investigates the social and ideological bases of Brazilian support for Israel, connecting religious and partisan dimensions of contemporary politics. The study combines quantitative and qualitative methods to test the hypothesis that Zionism in Brazil has consolidated as an ideological marker associated with moral conservatism and antipetismo (anti-Workers’ Party sentiment). In the first stage, I use data from the A Cara da Democracia survey to estimate, through logistic regression models and matching techniques, the effects of religion, voting for Jair Bolsonaro, antipetismo, and evaluation of the Lula government on support for Zionism. The results indicate that, although evangelical religion exerts a relevant influence, political variables — especially voting for Bolsonaro and rejection of the Workers’ Party — are stronger predictors of such support. In the second stage, focus groups conducted with participants from different ideological backgrounds help interpret the discursive meanings of this alignment, revealing how the defense of Israel is mobilized as a symbol of order, authority, and moral purity, in contrast to negative representations associated with the left. By integrating statistical and qualitative analyses, I aim to demonstrate that support for Israel in Brazil transcends the religious field to become a constitutive element of the moral and identity boundaries of the new right.