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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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UK: Pro-Palestinian Activists Applied for a March Permit on Oct 7 as Massacre Was Ongoing
Supporters of Hizb ut-Tahrir at a pro-Hamas rally in London. Photo: Reuters/Martin Pope
i24 News – Anti-Israeli activists in Britain applied for a permit to stage a demonstration through London on the morning of October 7, 2023, as Gazan jihadists were rampaging through southern Israel and slaughtering civilians, the Daily Telegraph reported.
At 12:50 PM, as the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust was still ongoing, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) notified the Metropolitan Police that they intended to hold a rally the following week.
Reports and videos of the Hamas-led onslaught began appearing on social media, and Israeli and then international broadcast media, several hours earlier.
“The Met was contacted on Saturday Oct 7 at approximately 12.50pm via telephone call and informed of the intention to protest,” a police spokesman was quoted by the Telegraph as saying. “The Met committed this to our systems on the same day and are satisfied being contacted by telephone was a sufficient means in which to notify the MPS as the event was taking place seven days after notification.”
The group’s spokesperson defended the move, telling the Telegraph it was “clear” as early as Saturday noon that “the Israeli attacks on Gaza would be of an indiscriminate violence we had not witnessed before, and that 2.3 million people in Gaza – more than 50 percent of them children – were at severe risk.”
The post UK: Pro-Palestinian Activists Applied for a March Permit on Oct 7 as Massacre Was Ongoing first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Report: Egypt Says Trump’s Gaza Plan Cannot Be Implemented, Puts Forward Alternative
US President Donald Trump speaks at the White House, in Washington, DC, Feb. 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
i24 News – Egypt on Friday informed the US of the impossibility of implementing President Donald Trump’s plan to evacuate the people of Gaza and confirms that it has a vision of its own for rebuilding Gaza without displacing the Palestinians, the Saudi outlet Al-Hadath reported on Friday.
The US leader, meanwhile, said there was “no rush” to implement his controversial plan.
The post Report: Egypt Says Trump’s Gaza Plan Cannot Be Implemented, Puts Forward Alternative first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Frees Three Hostages, Israel Begins Releasing Palestinians
Released hostage Or Levy, Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, February 8, 2025. Photo: Haim Zach/GPO/Handout via REUTERS
Palestinian terrorist group Hamas on Saturday handed over three Israeli hostages whose gaunt appearance shocked Israelis, and Israel began freeing dozens of Palestinians in the latest stage of a ceasefire aimed at ending the war in Gaza.
Ohad Ben Ami and Eli Sharabi, who were taken hostage from Kibbutz Be’eri during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and Or Levy, who was abducted that day from the Nova music festival, were led onto a Hamas podium by gunmen.
The three men appeared thin, weak and pale, in worse condition than the 18 other hostages already freed under the truce agreed in January after 15 months of war.
“He looked like a skeleton, it was awful to see,” Ohad Ben Ami’s mother-in-law, Michal Cohen, told Channel 13 News as she watched the Hamas-directed handover ceremony, which included the hostages answering questions posed by a masked man as militants armed with automatic rifles stood on each side.
In another show of force by Hamas, which has paraded fighters during previous releases, dozens of its terrorists deployed in central Gaza as it handed hostages over to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The hostages were then driven in ICRC cars to Israeli forces and into Israel, where they had tearful reunions with family members, and flown to hospitals. “We missed you so much,” the mother of Or Levy, Geula, said as she hugged her son.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the sight of the frail hostages was shocking and would be addressed.
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog described the release ceremony as cynical and vicious. “This is what a crime against humanity looks like,” he said.
The Hostage Families Forum said the images of the hostages evoked images of survivors of Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. “We have to get ALL THE HOSTAGES out of hell,” it said.
In exchange for the hostages’ release, Israel was freeing 183 Palestinian prisoners, some convicted of involvement in attacks that killed dozens of people, as well as 111 detained in Gaza during the war.
Cheering crowds greeted the buses as they arrived in Gaza, embracing the freed detainees, some of them weeping with joy and tearing prison-issued bracelets off their wrists.
Among those freed in Ramallah, in the West Bank, was Eyad Abu Shkaidem, sentenced to 18 life terms in Israel for masterminding suicide attacks in revenge for Israel’s 2004 assassinations of Hamas leaders.
“Today, I am reborn,” Shkaidem told reporters as the crowd cheered.
The Palestinian Red Crescent medical service said six of the 42 released in the West Bank were in poor health and were taken to hospital. Some prisoners complained of ill-treatment. “The occupation humiliated us for over a year,” said Shkaidem.
PAINFUL RETURN
Some hostages face a painful return. Sharabi’s two teenage daughters and his British-born wife were slain in the Hamas attack on Kibbutz Be’eri, where one in 10 residents was killed.
Israel’s Channel 12 said Sharabi had not been told about their deaths and asked where they were when he arrived.
Levy will be reunited with his three-year-old son. His wife was killed in the attack.
Dr Hagar Mizrachi from Israel’s Ichilov Hospital said the hostages exhibited severe weight loss and malnutrition.
Sixteen Israeli and five Thai hostages have been released so far and 583 Palestinian prisoners and detainees have been freed.
The first 42-day phase of the ceasefire, mediated by Washington, Cairo and Doha, has largely held since it took effect on January 19.
Netanyahu sent a delegation for talks in Doha on Saturday, Israel’s Channel 12 reported, citing a political source.
Concern the deal might collapse before all remaining 76 hostages are free has grown since President Donald Trump’s surprise call for Palestinians to be moved from Gaza and for the enclave to be handed to the United States and developed into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Arab states and Palestinian groups have rejected Trump’s proposal, which critics said would amount to ethnic cleansing. Hamas said on Saturday its armed display at the hostage handover showed it could not be excluded from post-war Gaza arrangements.
Netanyahu welcomed Trump’s intervention and his defense minister has ordered the military to make plans to allow Palestinians who wish to leave Gaza to do so.
Under the ceasefire deal, 33 Israeli children, women and sick, wounded and older men are to be released during the first stage in exchange for almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
Negotiations on a second phase began this week aimed at returning the remaining hostages and agreeing on a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza in preparation for a final end to the war.
Hamas-led terrorists killed some 1,200 people and seizing more than 250 as hostages in the October 7, 2023 attack.
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