Argentine President Milei to visit Israel this month

The South American leader has broken with decades of Argentinian foreign policy tradition by firmly siding with Israel since taking office over a year ago, propelling relations between the two nations to unprecedented heights.

By Etgar Lefkovits, JNS

Argentinian President Javier Milei is scheduled to visit Israel later this month in his second visit to the country in as many years.

The March 23 visit, which is to include a landmark address to the Knesset, comes as the Argentinian leader has emerged as one of Israel’s most vocal supporters, firmly aligning himself with both Jerusalem and Washington.

Milei is also expected to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Israeli officials.

The planned trip follows an invitation to formally address the Israeli parliament extended to Milei last month by Knesset Speaker Amir Ohama.

The South American leader has broken with decades of Argentinian foreign policy tradition by firmly siding with Israel since taking office over a year ago, propelling relations between the two nations to unprecedented heights.

Diplomatic ties between the two countries were first established 75 years ago.

Last year, in one of his first official trips as president, Milei paid a wartime solidarity visit to Israel, where he reiterated his pledge to move his country’s embassy to Jerusalem.

An iconoclast and political outsider, Milei was elected in November 2023 amid a burgeoning economic crisis and skyrocketing inflation that has long beleaguered the large South American country, which is making major strides toward recovery under his leadership.

A week after his election victory, he visited the United States for government meetings, stopping at the grave in New York of the late Lubavitcher Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. It was his third such visit that year.

Since taking office, he has listed Hamas as a terrorist organization and called out Iran’s terrorism, vowing to try in absentia Iranian suspects in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.

Last month, Milei declared two days of national mourning for the Bibas children, Ariel, 4, and nine-month-old baby Kfir, who were murdered in captivity by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza, along with their mother Shiri.

The family, which held Israeli, Argentine and German citizenship, had become symbols of the plight of the 250 hostages abducted by Hamas during the terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023 massacre.