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Paraguay’s election has implications for its Israeli embassy — and its relationship with Jerusalem
(JTA) — The question of where countries keep their embassies in Israel has become a debate that perpetually attracts controversy around the globe. In Paraguay, ahead of a national election on Sunday, the question is far from decided.
Since former President Donald Trump moved the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018, a few other countries have followed suit, agreeing with much of Israel’s political establishment that the latter city, despite international and Palestinian opposition, is Israel’s sole capital. Israeli conservatives, such as those currently in power, have looked to court more countries to move their embassies and have counted each example as a historic victory.
The government of Paraguay, a country of around seven million people sandwiched in between Brazil and Argentina, has been back and forth on the Israel embassy issue. Shortly after Trump’s move, Paraguay’s president at the time, Horacio Cartes, moved his embassy as well. That year Guatemala did the same, and a few years later, Honduras and Kosovo followed suit.
But only one month after being elected, in September 2018, Cartes’ successor Mario Abdo announced he would be moving the country’s embassy back to Tel Aviv. Despite being a member of the same conservative party as Cartes, Abdo felt that for “broad, lasting and just peace” among Israelis and Palestinians, Paraguay’s embassy should be in Tel Aviv. Critics of Trump’s decision say declaring Jerusalem as Israel’s sole capital hurts the chances of a two-state solution, as the Palestinians would look to claim part of Jerusalem as their future state capital.
Abdo’s move quickly resulted in pushback. In Paraguay, pro-Israel protesters demonstrated outside the president’s residence in Asuncion. Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence “strongly encouraged” Abdo to reconsider his decision, and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu went beyond rhetoric: he closed Israel’s embassy in Paraguay. It hasn’t reopened since.
Election day on Sunday could bring the debate back to the fore.
One of the two leading presidential candidates is 44-year-old economist Santiago Peña of the Colorado Party, Paraguay’s right-wing political party which has ruled the country for nearly 80 consecutive years (save for the period between 2008 and 2013). The party has been plagued by corruption allegations, and Peña has been tied to these scandals: he was finance minister under Cartes, who was recently sanctioned by the United States for undermining Paraguay’s democracy by “making cash payments to officials in exchange for their loyalty and support.”
Thanks in part to those corruption allegations, a non-Colorado candidate now has a serious shot of winning the presidency this year. Efraín Alegre is a more centrist candidate from Concertación, a coalition of political parties who came together to oppose Colorado’s domination. Earlier this month, polling from Encuesta Atlas had Alegre leading by a few percentage points, though other polling has found Peña in the lead.
In March, in a meeting with the Paraguayan-Israeli chamber of commerce, Peña announced that if he wins the election, one of his first actions as president will be to order the move of the Paraguayan embassy to Jerusalem. He said that Paraguay “recognizes that city as the capital of the State of Israel.”
Efraín Alegre’s last statement on the issue of Paraguay’s embassy came in 2018, shortly after Paraguay initially moved its embassy to Jerusalem. Alegre argued that the move would fuel the conflict.
In a statement provided exclusively to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Alegre confirmed that he would keep Paraguay’s embassy in Tel Aviv.
“Fundamentally, Paraguay is a country that respects international law. In its resolutions 181 of 1947, 478 of 1980, and 2334 of 2016, the United Nations Security Council has made clear the status of Jerusalem, not accepting its annexation or its declaration as the capital of Israel. This position is shared by all nations with only a few exceptions,” he wrote. “There is great potential for exchange and cooperation between Paraguay and Israel, and Paraguay will continue to defend Israel’s right to a peaceful existence. In fact, there is a long relationship of friendship between our nations. Paraguay’s vote at the United Nations in 1947 was the one that gave the majority for the recognition of Israel as an independent state. These close ties were not, nor are they now, subject to the status of Jerusalem.”
The Comunidad Judía del Paraguay, an organization which encompasses all the Jewish institutions in the country , remains apolitical but fervently Zionist, similar to Jewish organizations in other Latin American countries. The community of around 1,000 Jews is mostly affiliated with the Conservative movement and is concentrated in Paraguay’s capital of Asuncion. The city contains a local chapter of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, a Jewish day school and a Hebrew Union that organizes religious and athletic activities.
“We as a community have maintained very good relations with all governments and we will continue to work with whoever is elected,” said Mariano Mirelman, executive director of the Comunidad Judía del Paraguay.
But it is possible that if Peña is elected and moves the embassy, the topic of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will re-enter public discourse in Paraguay. And this has the potential to fuel antisemitic attitudes, according to research by the Latin American Jewish Congress (or LAJC), an arm of the World Jewish Congress.
In Paraguay, serious antisemitism incidents are rare, but according to the LAJC, antisemitism in Paraguay does appear online, especially related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In a yet-to-be- released 2022 study by the LAJC’s Observatorio Web program of more than 42,000 tweets in Paraguay related to Jews, Israel or the Holocaust, 6.45% of them were antisemitic and included making comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, which constitutes antisemitism according to the LAJC.
If Paraguay’s embassy does move back to Jerusalem, that would mean that more than half of the embassies in Jerusalem are from Latin America, joining Honduras and Guatemala.
According to Bishara Bahbah, author of “Israel and Latin America: The Military Connection,” it’s not an accident that the majority of these countries are from Central and South America. Although ideologically they may not feel strongly about the embassy issue, they know they can curry favor with the United States by strongly supporting Israel.
“Latin American countries view Israel’s special relationship with the United States as a critical element of their relationship with Israel,” Bahbah tells JTA. “Because if they are in need of U.S. support in one or two or three areas, they tend to lean on Israel to convince the U.S. government to provide them whatever they are seeking.”
Due to its size and lack of regional power, Paraguay’s potential decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem will likely not have a domino effect, Bahbah said. Further, although the Biden administration has left the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, it has shown no signs of pressuring Latin American countries to move their embassies the way the Trump administration did.
Regardless of what happens with Paraguay, Netanyahu has not given up in his fight to have Jerusalem recognized as Israel’s capital worldwide. As he said while visiting Italy last month: “I believe the time has come for Rome to recognize Jerusalem as the ancestral capital of the Jewish people for three thousand years, as the United States did with a gesture of great friendship.”
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Maine Senate candidates spar over military aid to Israel
(JTA) — Troy Jackson, Maine’s Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, said he opposed “giving a blank check” to Israel at a debate on Tuesday, while also linking American military assistance to the killings of Palestinians.
“I didn’t want any more offensive weapons going to murder people in Palestine,” Jackson explained, in a rebuttal to his opponent, Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins.
The two candidates were participating in their first general election debate, aired on CBS13 and moderated by news anchor Gregg Lagerquist, without a live audience. Jackson, who holds a narrow lead over Collins, has rattled many members of the Jewish community in recent weeks, as he has intensified anti-Israel rhetoric and made controversial comments to Maine Jews.
A former state lawmaker and union advocate, Jackson secured the Democratic nomination at the end of July in a landslide victory. He won the nomination after the former Democratic nominee, staunch Israel critic Graham Platner, left the race amid a sexual assault allegation, which Platner denies.
Jackson had previously said little publicly about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but during the contest to replace Platner, he accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and called for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel.
Collins, a five-term senator, has been a staunch supporter of Israel over the past three decades.
Asked by Lagerquist during a lightning round whether the U.S. should increase, decrease or keep military funding for Israel the same, Collins responded that “the current level is good,” adding that she is “a strong supporter.”
Jackson, meanwhile, argued that “it’s kind of unfair to ask that like this,” while also noting that he has the endorsement of J Street, the liberal pro-Israel organization.
After Jackson then declared that the U.S. should not be “giving a blank check” to Israel, Collins accused him of making comments that were “very different” from his past remarks. Jackson denied this claim, while arguing against the supply of more offensive weapons to “murder people.” Calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a war criminal,” he noted that “Senator Collins likes him.”
Jackson’s remarks came just a week after he apologized to members of the Jewish community for controversial comments he had made in a News Center Maine television interview.
During the interview, he had described the war in Gaza as “a genocide,” adding that “there are people here in Maine that don’t like to use that term only because, you know, they’re Jewish and, you know, what that means to them with the Holocaust.”
Although he did not retract his views on the conflict, he acknowledged that the word genocide “carries particular weight for many Jewish families given the Holocaust – the genocide of six million Jews.”
“In trying to acknowledge that, I misspoke and made a generalization about Jewish Mainers’ views that doesn’t reflect what I meant to say. I apologize for the pain that caused,” he added.
Just before the Democratic nominating convention this past summer, Jackson vowed that he would “never vote in favor of U.S. taxpayer-funded military aid to Israel.”
The Pine Tree State Poll, released by the University of New Hampshire two weeks ago, found that the two candidates were in a statistical tie, with 51% of voters polled favoring Jackson and 47% opting for Collins.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Jewish Haverford students named a professor in their antisemitism lawsuit. Police say he responded by stalking one online.
A religion professor named by Jewish Haverford College students in a recently settled lawsuit against the school was arrested Tuesday after authorities say he used anonymous accounts to harass one of those students online.
According to an indictment unsealed in federal court Tuesday, Haverford professor Guangtian Ha used at least four burner accounts on X to send roughly 50 threatening messages to an unidentified male Jewish student between October 2025 and May 2026.
Ha is charged with one count of cyberstalking, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
Federal authorities say Ha replied to one of the student’s posts with a picture of the student’s home mailbox and an emoji of a pair of eyes. After the student took security precautions in response to the messages, the professor allegedly commented on them and wrote, “The goyim have woken up, Jew. Run. Flee. Leave.”
Haverford College President Wendy Raymond informed students of the arrest in a letter published on the school website Tuesday, saying Ha had been placed on administrative leave and barred from campus while the case proceeds.
“I am deeply distressed by these allegations and want to state in the plainest of terms that any form of harassment or discrimination based on identity is unacceptable, antithetical to our values, and has no place at Haverford,” Raymond wrote.
Ha, who was on sabbatical this semester, could not be reached for comment. Federal court filings do not identify any legal representation for the defendant.
The arrest comes two months after the liberal arts college, which is located just outside of Philadelphia, settled an antisemitism lawsuit filed by Jewish students.
In that lawsuit, filed in 2024, those students had listed a number of Haverford professors who they said contributed to an antisemitic environment. One of them was Ha, a member of Faculty for Justice in Palestine, who had tweeted from his public account that “the only way to deal with Zionists is to stop talking to them and refuse to let them waste your time.”
He later tweeted — still from his public account — that he knew who at Haverford had been “silent on this genocide or even tacitly support it,” saying, “I will never forgive them. I know their names and I know their faces. Never forgive. No reconciliation.”
The messages Ha allegedly sent from his anonymous accounts were even more threatening. According to the indictment, one read, “Jew, get the f— out of my country.”
Another message allegedly read, “If Jews are so special then they should be placed in special camps and receive special treatments.”
According to an amended civil complaint filed in January 2025, the school took no public action against Ha, who taught courses on Islam and religion in China.
In the settlement, the college’s leaders agreed that Haverford’s policy would bar discrimination specifically against students and employees with Zionist views, as well as those who are Jewish or Israeli, according to Higher Ed Dive.
In addition to his alleged online activity, Ha had co-written an opinion column in the Haverford Clerk, the campus newspaper, in which he downplayed student concerns about antisemitism as “Zionist witch hunts” — arguing instead that pro-Palestinian students faced the brunt of campus discrimination.
“A truly inclusive learning community would necessitate our administration taking a clear and careful stance against this sort of hatred,” he wrote.
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‘He has repeatedly capitulated to Zionist pressure’: Leftist groups to protest Mamdani on Oct. 7
A raft of pro-Palestinian and democratic socialist groups will protest against New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on the three-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks, accusing the mayor of capitulating to pro-Israel pressure since taking office.
More than 20 local organizations, most of them college chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine or Young Democratic Socialists of America, are participating in the event, which will culminate with a rally at City Hall. (Young Democratic Socialists America is the student offshoot of the DSA.)
The groups’ complaints against the mayor include his allowing a law to take effect that allows NYPD to implement security perimeters at places of worship and launching a plan to combat antisemitism that includes funding for Jewish community groups that do not disavow Israel.
“Zohran Mamdani campaigned on promises to the Palestine movement,” the groups said in a caption alongside a poster for the event. “He has betrayed his own alleged values, failing to make those promises a reality. Instead, he has repeatedly capitulated to Zionist pressure.”
The protest comes even as Mamdani, who drew on the support of local progressive groups in his run for office, continues to hammer the Israeli government and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from City Hall. But the protest — which appears to have split the city’s DSA movement — revealed growing discontent from the far-left with how Mamdani has governed.
It also underscored how uncompromising the left flank of the democratic socialists can be on matters related to Israel.
Why leftist groups are protesting Mamdani
Mamdani rode into office last November on a swell of pro-Palestinian support and democratic socialist organizing power. He rejected many of the pro-Israel norms of New York City campaign trail, including by promising to arrest Netanyahu if he ever visited New York and calling the war in Gaza a genocide.
Since taking office, Mamdani has revoked an anti-BDS executive order signed by his predecessor, Eric Adams, and the city’s previously accepted definition of antisemitism from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. Mamdani also publicly defended pro-Palestinian student protesters detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and opposed the West Bank land sales at local synagogues.
And even in a public appearance conceding he did not have the authority to arrest Netanyahu, Mamdani reiterated his stance that the Israeli premier is a war criminal.
Still, he has tried to court Jewish groups by pledging to address antisemitism through his new multimillion dollar strategy that allocates $6.4 million to community organizations. He has also visited with Jews in all five boroughs to build community relations.
Their criticism of Mamdani for the security perimeter bill reflected disappointment in the mayor for something he couldn’t do much about. The bill, Int. No. 1-B, passed in March with a supermajority, meaning he was unable to veto it. Rather than sign it into law, Mamdani did not take action on it and it became law after 30 days. (He vetoed a separate bill creating a protest buffer zone for schools that had passed with a simple majority.)
The protesting groups argue the bill criminalizes protests against synagogues that host “illegal land sales” of property in the West Bank. Additionally, the chapters take issue with Mamdani’s antisemitism strategy providing security infrastructure to “Zionist synagogues” that hold these sales. The bill provides the same security to all synagogues regardless of their affiliation with Israel.
The online poster for the event states in its caption that Mamdani’s Strategy to Combat Antisemitism provides “funding for Zionist propagandist groups” such as the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. The council works in partnership with the UJA-Federation of New York to fight against antisemitism and foster support for Israel, including sponsoring tours to the country. Under a Mamdani-created program, JCRC will work with grassroots groups on programs that include education, victim support, data collection and combating online hate.
The mayor’s office declined the Forward’s request for comment. The organizations involved did not immediately respond to inquiries, except for Lehman College Young Democratic Socialists of America which declined.
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