Argentinian President Javier Milei will visit Israel in June, in his second trip to the country in as many years, Buenos Aires’s ambassador to the Jewish state said at the JNS International Policy Summit in Jerusalem on Sunday.
The Argentine leader has emerged as one of Israel’s most vocal supporters around the globe, firmly aligning himself with Jerusalem and Washington.
Milei will sign a memorandum of understanding with Israel against terrorism and antisemitism during his visit, Ambassador Shimon Axel Wahnish said at the JNS Policy Summit.
He is also scheduled to give an address at the Israeli parliament, which was originally scheduled for March, and to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Argentine ambassador said that he hopes to announce the start of direct flights between Tel Aviv and Buenos Aeries within the next two months, and to open an embassy in Jerusalem in the coming year as Milei has pledged.
Wahnish said that he envisioned an “Isaac Accords” between Israel and many countries in Latin America, modeled on the landmark 2020 Abraham Accords between Israel and four Arab countries forged under the first Trump administration.
“This is going to be just the beginning,” the ambassador said.
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 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 251 hostages abducted by Hamas during the terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel.
