I've been reading about the history of this area of the world lately, and I'm just curious about this. In one book I'm reading, Thomas Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem, (which I find totally engrossing--but any thoughts on its academic merit in general?) it says that when Israeli forces began their invasion of Lebanon in the early 80s, the soldiers were enchanted by the Lebanese women, some of whom were receptive to the soldiers because so many of their husbands were away in Brazil. I asked myself, why Brazil? So I did some googling, and found that there's a relatively large Arab population in Brazil nowadays, mostly of Lebanese and Syrian descent, and many of whose parents and grandparents arrived in Brazil in the late 19th century because they were fleeing Ottoman tyranny.
So what I take from those two facts is that Lebanese and Syrians have had a special relationship with Brazil for at least a hundred years. So this is what I'm curious about: why Brazil? It seems like a random country on the other side of the world. Did Brazil offer refugee status to Lebanese/Syrians in the 19th century, and the partnership continued from there?
*Not historian. Brazil had a strong immigration policy in the 19th and early 20th century, it is home of the largest Italian, Japanese and Arab diaspora in the world, and 2nd largest German diaspora. It was a strategy to populate the south and deep west part of the country and establish its borders, also an effort to whitening the country's population, according to the mainstream views at that time. I don't know the particulars of the Arab diaspora tho.