JNS
The Yeshiva University president said that the Argentine president “represents a distinctive voice in contemporary economic policy, undertaking structural change on a national scale.”
Javier Milei, the Argentine president, said in a talk at Yeshiva University in Manhattan on Monday that he is “proud to be the most Zionist president in the world.”
Milei, who has visited Israel several times since becoming president and who has been photographed frequently at Jewish sites, including the grave site of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in New York City, spoke in Spanish, with simultaneous translation via headsets, at the event.
The talk was the last installment of the school’s “great conversation” series and it included a conversation between Milei and Ari Berman, a rabbi and president of Yeshiva University.
Berman asked Milei about the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. The Argentine president said that his hope is that “we will win” against the Iranian enemy.
“It’s incredible that the world was saved by just an inch, and that’s the bullet that just missed Trump,” he said, of an assassination attempt on the U.S. president.
A Catholic who studied the Bible with a rabbi before his election, Milei has emerged as one of the most outspoken allies of the Jewish state, who has aligned the foreign policy of the South American country with that of the United States and Israel.
He said at Yeshiva that the alliance between Socialists and Islamists has become stronger since Oct. 7.
“Socialism found out that the basis for the free enterprise capitalist system is anchored on Judeo-Christian values,” he said. “They found out if you attack Judaism, if you attack Israel, then you break the basis for the capitalist system and Western civilization.”
What they don’t realize, he said, is that “you will never be able to defeat the Jewish people.”
Berman asked Milei what advice he has for the students in the audience. The Argentine president quoted the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson.
“As the Rebbe used to say, it wasn’t just about guidance to get from this point to paradise but rather about bringing paradise to earth,” he said.
“When you work with passion and you do so with faith and respecting values, the values of the Jewish tradition, that will not only lead you to success, but you will also be making a great contribution to the world,” he added.
His visit to the university was part of a three-day trip to New York City that included diplomatic meetings at the Argentinian consulate and a headline appearance at JPMorgan Chase.
At the wide-ranging Yeshiva talk, Milei referred variously to the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Elvis, Salvador Dalí, Machiavelli and a Chinese proverb.
