Argentinian President Javier Milei started his official state visit to Israel on Monday with an emotional pledge at Jerusalem’s Western Wall that he will “always stand” with the Jewish state, which he called “the cause of the West.”
The Argentine leader, who is on his second visit to Israel in as many years and has emerged as one of Israel’s most vocal supporters around the globe, reinforced that message at the Jerusalem holy site.
“I want you to know that my support for Israel comes from the heart, because I believe this is a just cause—the cause of the West,” he said, adding, “I will always stand by your side.”
Milei, who came directly to the Western Wall upon his arrival from Spain, was greeted at the site by cheers and songs of support.
Accompanying Milei were Argentina’s Ambassador to Israel Axel Wahnish, with whom the Catholic leader studied the Bible before his election, Argentinian Foreign Minister Gerardo Werthein and Milei’s sister, Karina Milei, who serves as secretary general to the presidency.
The official, four-day visit will include meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog, as well as with Argentinian-Israeli victims of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas massacre, a keynote address at Israel’s parliament on Wednesday and a lecture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on Thursday.
Milei will also be awarded the Genesis Prize and, as first reported in JNS, is scheduled to announce long-awaited direct flights between Buenos Aires and Tel Aviv.
Milei has broken with decades of Argentine foreign policy by siding firmly with Israel since taking office in December 2023, propelling relations between the two nations to unprecedented heights. Diplomatic ties between the countries were first established 75 years ago.
Last year, in his first official trip 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 an economic crisis and skyrocketing inflation that has long beleaguered the 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 Lubavitcher Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. It was his third such visit that year.
Since taking office, Milei 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 the AMIA Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires.
Earlier this year, Milei declared two days of national mourning for the Bibas children, Ariel, 4, and nine-month-old 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 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023.
