Argentine President Javier Millay is scheduled to arrive in Israel on Tuesday. This is big.
The arrival of foreign leaders other than the U.S. president or Arab heads of state in Israel usually does not make news. There has been a long parade of presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers visiting Israel to show solidarity in the wake of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks.
Some people lead governments whose policies are actually useless. They want to empathize with the victims, but they don’t want to fight the terrorists.
Millay is different in every way. His support for Israel is rock-solid. He also campaigned for president while waving an Israeli flag.
Javier Millay waves an Israeli flag during a rally. pic.twitter.com/Jfk27GJkbg
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) November 17, 2023
The size of Argentina’s Jewish community (less than 250,000 people) is not enough to make Millais’ position a simple political calculation. Rather, he believes in Israel’s mission as a nation. It is about restoring the ancient homeland of the Jewish people and showing the world an example of how an oppressed people can overcome all obstacles to success.
Millay’s support goes even deeper, extending to his embrace of Judaism itself. Although he has not converted (yet), he has a deep understanding of the tenets and values of the Jewish tradition. As president-elect, he paid a special visit to Ohel in New York. It is here that the spiritual direction of the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schnierson, ignited a revival of religious Judaism around the world in the decades following the Holocaust.
Argentina’s President-elect Javier Millay visits Oel, 7th Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schnierson, November 27, 2023 (Emma Jo Morris/Breitbart News)
Like Milais, who shut down half of government ministries on his first day in office, the Rebbe acted with a sense of urgency, believing that what needed to be done should be done immediately.
Millay’s visit to Israel will be a similar pilgrimage. He reportedly plans to visit Judaism’s holiest site, the Western Wall, to pay his respects. Foreign leaders typically avoid the site because the Palestinians – absurdly – claim it as part of a future state. President Donald Trump has broken that taboo, and it appears Milley plans to follow in his footsteps.
But Millais is also carving her own path. He is a liberal and one of the few people in high office in the world who is passionate about individual rights and limited government. Last month, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, after riding on a commercial jet rather than a private or military jet, he confronted the world’s elites to the face of their corporatist socialism. He said that it was destroying Western countries socially and economically. He takes the message to Israel.
Israel has historically been a fairly socialist country. Many (but not all) early Zionists were socialists. The early state economy was dominated by central planning, and politics was dominated by the state trade union, the Histadrut. But socialism had the same results in Israel as in other countries. Free market reforms that began in the mid-1980s and were extended two decades ago by then-Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu led to the country’s prosperity today.
Millay is therefore unique in that she is pro-Israel, liberal, and steeped in Jewish ideology. His visit to Israel comes at a time when Israel is beginning to feel isolated. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) may have authorized the continuation of Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, but it sought to apply an international treaty that emerged in response to the genocide of European Jews in the Gaza Strip. , branded the Jewish state a potentially genocidal regime. Second World War. Even Israel’s most important ally, the United States, wants to impose a new Palestinian state on beleaguered Israelis as retribution for Hamas, which turned Gaza into a terrorist base.
The Argentine president’s promise to make his first major visit to Israel will not only boost Israel’s morale. He will also bring together a set of ideas – freedom, faith and strength in the fight against terrorism – that are core to support for a Jewish state around the world. He represents the values on which the fate of Israel and the West rests.
Joel B. Pollack is a senior editor at Breitbart News. Breitbart News Sunday Sunday nights from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM ET (4:00 PM to 7:00 PM PT) on Sirius XM Patriot. He published his 2021 e-book “The Zionist conspiracy (and how to join it)‘ has been updated and a new preface has been added. He is also the author of a recently published e-book. Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 US Presidential Election. He is the recipient of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter @joelpolak.
