In February, Milei made a wartime visit to Israel, signalling a major shift in Argentina’s foreign policy toward the United States and Israel after decades of backing Arab countries.
An unabashedly public philo-semite who studies with a rabbi, Milei has repeatedly pledged to move the Argentine embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In a further sign of friendship, Milei appointed his rabbi, Axel Wahnish, as Argentina’s ambassador to Israel.
An iconoclast and political outsider, Milei was elected in November amid a burgeoning economic crisis and skyrocketing inflation that has long beleaguered the large South American country. A week after his election victory, he visited the United States for government meetings, stopping at the grave in New York of Lubavitcher Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, his third such visit last year.
His staunch support for Israel both ditches decades of unequivocal backing for Arab countries in the predominantly Catholic Latin American nation under both left- and right-wing governments and contrasts with neighboring Brazil, whose leftist leader, President Lula da Silva, has been highly critical of Israel’s war against Hamas.
