Diaspora, Delegitimisation, and Foreign Policy: Unpacking Brazil’s Vote for the “Zionism is Racism” United Nations Resolution

This article analyses Brazil’s 1975 vote in favour of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism with racism and racial discrimination. Historians and political scientists have investigated extensively the causes for this vote. However, all these analyses focus on Brazil’s relations with other state actors whilst ignoring the possibility that domestic factors, including Brazilian leaders’ attitudes towards Zionism, influenced the decision to support the anti-Zionist resolution. Drawing on archival materials from Brazil and Israel, the article introduces domestic and normative factors into the analysis of this controversial vote. It argues that Brazil’s desire to secure oil imports and financial investments from Arab countries, combined with its repudiation of diasporic allegiances, best explain its support for the resolution. Whilst the Brazilian dictatorship’s delegitimisation of diasporic loyalties was not the primary reason for the decision, it constituted an important element in the normative framework that enabled it.