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Argentina’s shocking primary winner could become the country’s first Jewish president
BUENOS AIRES (JTA) — Argentina has never had a Jewish president. But that concept could move a step closer to reality after a general election in October.
That’s because on Sunday, the leading vote-getter in national primary elections was Javier Milei, a libertarian who wants to convert Argentina’s currency to the U.S. dollar and has made headlines for controversial comments on hot-button topics ranging from climate change to sex education.
He also wants to convert to Judaism.
In an interview with Spain’s El Pais last month, Milei said he is considering conversion. One of the obstacles getting in the way: observing Shabbat.
“If I’m president and it’s Shabbat, what do I do? Am I going to disconnect from the country from Friday to Saturday? There are some issues that would make [the religion] incompatible. The rabbi who helps me study says that I should read the Torah from the point of view of economic analysis,” he said.
Milei, a 52-year-old economist who was raised Catholic and who leads the two-year-old La Libertad Avanza (Freedom Advances) party, studies Jewish topics regularly with Rabbi Shimon Axel Wahnish, who heads ACILBA, an Argentine-Moroccan Jewish community based in Buenos Aires.
“He is a person I love very much, whom I consult regularly,” Milei said in an interview with Radio Jai, a Jewish radio station that broadcasts from Buenos Aires. “These are discussions that suddenly can take two or three hours and that for me are very gratifying and help me grow a lot and understand situations in a much deeper way.”
There is little unsurprising about Milei’s persona, policy principles and electoral success. The bushy-headed politician with long sideburns received 30% of the primary vote, after polls predicted he would earn 15-20%, defeating both the ruling left-wing Peronist party and the main conservative opposition bloc.
Primary voting is mandatory for most adults in Argentina, so primary elections are seen as an accurate bellwether of subsequent general elections.
Milei supporters display an Argentine national flag and a “Don’t tread on me” flag during a rally at the Movistar Arena in Buenos Aires, Aug. 7, 2023. (Luis Abayo/AFP via Getty Images)
Milei is often referred to as “far right,” “libertarian” and “anarcho-capitalist.” He blames the establishment for the country’s poverty levels and soaring inflation rates, and he points to their issues with corruption. If elected, he says he would dismantle Argentina’s central bank and sharply cut public spending.
Beyond economics, he has called climate change a “socialist lie,” has said that the free market should dictate organ donations and believes sex education is a ploy to destroy family values. (He is also a former tantric sex coach.)
In public appearances, Milei often quotes Torah passages. He walked out on stage for a campaign event at an arena in Buenos Aires earlier this month to a recording of a shofar, the ram’s horn blown on Rosh Hashanah.
SUENA EL SHOFAR pic.twitter.com/cggV3tjgbS
— Santiago Oría (@Santiago_Oria) August 8, 2023
He has visited the Buenos Aires Holocaust Museum and last July traveled to New York, where visited the grave of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the influential former spiritual leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.
El Ohel de todos… pic.twitter.com/qrGSUfrC4p
— Rafi Tawil (@TawilRafi) July 15, 2023
Milei and his vice presidential candidate, Victoria Villaruel, were the only two Argentine lawmakers to vote against a bill that would make July 18, the date of the 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombing, a national day of mourning. A group of families of victims of the attack shouted at Milei at this year’s commemoration ceremony for the incident that killed 85 people.
After sharp criticism, Milei tried to change his vote, but his request was denied by the president of the Chamber of Deputies.
Milei is staunchly pro-Israel and has said that his “two great allies are the United States and Israel.” If elected, he has vowed to move the Argentine embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem — and make his first foreign trip as president to Israel, where he said he would “delve deeper into his studies of the Torah, Talmud, and other Jewish scriptures,” according to local news outlet La Nacion.
Milei also has several mastiff dogs, at least two of them named for Jewish economists: Milton, for Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman, and Murray, for Murray Rothbard — who is often called the father of anarcho-capitalism, which advocates for stateless societies.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.