Buenos AiresAmidst a large security device and with a cap on his head, the president of Argentina, Javier Milei, visited the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem this Tuesday. With his forehead and hands resting on the stone of Judaism’s holiest site, the Latin American leader prayed. Next to him was the ambassador of Argentina to Israel, the Orthodox rabbi Shimon Axel Wahnish, Milei’s spiritual mentor, who has accompanied him during recent times in the study of the Torah, the Jewish law.
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Visibly moved, Milei gave the rabbi a hug, before greeting and taking selfies with the onlookers who had approached him to greet him. Meanwhile, in Buenos Aires, the Chamber of Deputies was preparing to resume the debate in particular on the so-called “omnibus law”, which can be amended article by article in a session that, like last week’s, is expected to be long
Meanwhile, in Buenos Aires, the Chamber of Deputies resumed the debate in particular on the so-called “omnibus law”, which can be amended article by article in a session that is expected to be long. At the end of Tuesday afternoon, the Congress had voted in favor of granting extraordinary legislative powers to the president, in a controversial vote that the leader of the center-right opposition has described as a “treason to the motherland”.
In this first official trip to Israel, Milei met with his Israeli counterpart, Isaac Herzog, and reconfirmed that he will move the Argentine embassy to Jerusalem, a controversial move that is against international law and that Donald Trump has already do in 2017. He has also reiterated his will to include Hamas in the list of terrorist organizations in Argentina. This Wednesday, Milei will hold a private meeting with Israeli businessmen and meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has celebrated the arrival of the Argentine delegation in Tel-Aviv through social networks. After Israel, Milei will travel to Rome, where he will meet with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Pope Francis at the Vatican.
Miletus and Judaism: A Close Relationship
Aside from geopolitics and trade relations, Milei’s trip to Israel has an enormous symbolic charge that directly impacts Argentina’s Jewish community, the largest in Latin America and the fifth largest in the world outside of ‘Israel. It is estimated that about 250,000 Jewish people live in Argentina and that about 100,000 Judeo-Argentines live in Israel.
After the attacks by Hamas last October 7, and in the midst of the electoral race in Argentina, Javier Milei positioned himself, without fissures, next to the state of Israel, which, as he maintains to this day, has the right to a legitimate defense. Milei repeatedly expressed solidarity with the families of those kidnapped by Hamas, and in the final stretch of his campaign he included more and more allusions to “the forces of heaven”, a reference to the book of the Old Maccabees Testament that speaks of a Jewish liberation movement against the invading Greek army in 166 BC. A few days later, Milei officiated Hanukkah celebrations in Buenos Aires, where he reiterated with euphoria that “the forces of heaven will help Argentina and Israel at this time.”
Although the first record of Jews arriving in Argentina from Europe dates from the 17th century, it is not until the 19th that large communities from Western Europe (France and Germany) and, later, from Eastern Europe and the Russian Empire, fleeing pogroms and persecutions to a mostly depopulated country that in 1853 already guaranteed religious freedom in the Constitution. Most settled in the big cities, but others acquired land to establish small communes in the interior of the country and engage in agriculture and animal husbandry.
At the end of the 19th century, the first Yiddish publications were born in Buenos Aires, and by 1920 more than 150,000 Jews were already living in Argentina despite growing anti-Semitism in the form of persecution, desecration, destruction of property and businesses and even denial of refuge Even so, in the years before and after Hitler came to power, Argentina was the Latin American country that welcomed the most Jewish refugees – around 45,000 – and, after the Second World War, some 8,000 Holocaust survivors.
Anti-Semitic attacks
But the most traumatic episodes that still stand out in the memory of the Jewish community in Buenos Aires are two terrorist attacks in the nineties: the first, against the Israeli embassy, on March 17, 1992, with a total of of 29 dead and 242 wounded; and the second, against Associació Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), on July 18, 1994, which left 85 people dead and 300 injured. Since then, security has been tightened in temples, schools, associations and any building, space or compound related to the Jewish community: access is difficult and constant surveillance.
“Currently there is an increase in anti-Semitism and it is necessary to pay attention to security issues”, the vice-president of the Delegation of Argentine Israeli Associations (DAIA), Marcos Cohen, tells ARA. “We will work with this government as we have done with all democratic governments, whether of one color or another: we always establish links with the government to live our Jewish life”, he adds.
While the DAIA considers Milei’s approach to Judaism positive, there are sectors within the same community that consider it dangerous, precisely because of the level of exposure it involves. “It doesn’t make me feel safer, quite the opposite,” a Jewish woman who prefers not to reveal her identity tells ARA, and says that it is a concern shared by other members of her environment. Regarding the transfer of the Argentine embassy, Cohen considers it a “very valuable” gesture, since “Jerusalem is the thousand-year-old capital of our people”.
2024-02-06 21:12:02
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