The genocidal terrorist organization Hamas and allies in the Arab League and other regional organizations condemned libertarian Argentine President Javier Milei this week for moving his country’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and issuing a full-throated defense of Israel’s war in Gaza.
The Arab Parliament, the legislature of the Arab League, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) joined Hamas in lamenting the move out of Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as an insult to “Palestinians,” without specifying a governing Palestinian entity. Multiple Muslim states in the region, most prominently Saudi Arabia, have responded to Israel’s self-defense operations in Gaza by demanding that Israel cede control of East Jerusalem to a hypothetical Palestinian state. Others, such as top Hamas funder Iran, have repeated longstanding calls for the complete destruction of the state of Israel.
Israel’s self-defense operations in Gaza began four months ago in response to Hamas executing a massive invasion and terrorist siege of Israel on October 7, killing an estimated 1,200 people, abducting another 250, and engaging in widespread acts of gang rape, torture, infanticide, desecration of corpses, and other atrocities. Hamas has controlled Gaza and used it as a terror base since 2005, when the Israeli government withdrew.
Milei spent much of this week in Israel, his first official state visit since being inaugurated president in December, to honor the victims of the October 7 attacks, denounce Hamas, and pray before the Western Wall. Milei has publicly expressed interest in converting to Judaism and studying the Torah. Prior to his inauguration, he promised that his first foreign trip as president would be to Israel and that he would realign Argentine geopolitics – for decades tilted towards China, Russia, and other rogue states by leftist leaders – to make the countries closest allies America and Israel:
Joel B. Pollak / Breitbart NewsAmong several commitments Milei made in Israel was his order to move the embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing it as the capital of the country. Hamas – fresh off the slaughter of hundreds of people – issued a statement on Wednesday condemning Milei for allegedly violating international law by placing the Argentine embassy in the capital of Israel. The move, Hamas jihadists said, was “an infringement of the rights of our Palestinian people to their land and a violation of the rules of international law considering al-Quds as occupied Palestinian land.”
“We strongly condemn and denounce the announcement by the president of Argentina of his intention to transfer his country’s embassy to the Nazi-Zionist entity to occupied [sic] Jerusalem,” the terrorists declared.
The OIC, a coalition of states that calls itself “the collective voice of the Muslim world,” issued a statement accusing Milei of committing a “clear violation of both international law and relevant resolutions by the United Nations” by properly recognizing the capital of Israel.
“The OIC statement further stated that the South American country has been urged to halt its actions and adhere to the resolution that emphasizes the preservation of the occupied city’s legal and historical identity,” the Iranian state propaganda outlet PressTV, paraphrasing the statement, reported on Thursday. “The OIC also underscored that the unauthorized maneuver by the Argentinean president constitutes a violation of the rights of the Palestinian population.”
Similarly, the Arab Parliament, which represents the Arab League, urged Milei to “follow the approach of the South American countries that defend the rights of the Palestinian people to establish their independent state with the city of Jerusalem as its capital,” according to Arab News, and demanded international pressure on Argentina – a national already in the worst economic crisis of its history – to force it to submit to anti-Israel demands.
The West Bank political party Fatah also issued a statement calling Milei’s embassy move “an assault on international law and resolutions of international legitimacy, and a denial of the rights of the Palestinian people to sovereignty and the status that Jerusalem constitutes as the capital of a state Palestine.”
The Jerusalem Post also reported on an outraged statement from a top Algerian politician, former cabinet minister Azzedine Mihoubi, who condemned Milei for visiting the “outcast, racist, terrorist entity accused of committing genocide in Gaza,” referring to Israel as a “monster.”
The entities condemning Milei claimed that recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was a violation of international law. In reality, the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations – which governs issues such as the establishment of diplomatic missions on foreign soil – has no provisions that would limit the establishment of an Argentine embassy in Jerusalem as long as Israel consents to its existence. The legal document limits the size of an embassy or other diplomatic mission to that “considered … reasonable and normal” and asserts that the receiving country – in this case, Israel – must consent to the establishment of any “part of the mission in localities other than those in which the mission itself is established.”
Several of the parties condemning Milei did not express similar outrage in the face of the atrocities of October 7. In November, for example, Saudi Arabia hosted a pan-Islamic summit that invited both members of the Arab League and the OIC. At the summit, the parties condemned “Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, war crimes and barbaric and inhumane massacres by the occupation government [Israel]” but did not similarly condemn Hamas, which controls Gaza. The host of the summit, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman, demanded the United Nations stop the “humanitarian catastrophe” of Israeli self-defense operations but did not urge the United Nations to act against Hamas.
During his visit this week, Milei prioritized honoring the victims of October 7. On Thursday, he visited Kibbutz Nir Oz, one of the communities most devastated by the attack, touring the burned-down homes and meeting with survivors:
Joel B. Pollak / Breitbart NewsMilei also visited Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial, and condemned Hamas as “the face of modern Nazism.”
“Seeing the dismal images of the Holocaust, I ask myself where the free world was back then. And today, I ask myself the exact same question: where is the voice of the free world, demanding and clamoring for the release of over 100 people kidnapped for over 100 days already?” Milei said in remarks at the memorial. “We shouldn’t remain silent in the face of the monstrosity of Nazism. Similarly, we shouldn’t remain silent in the face of modern Nazism, today disguised as the terrorist group Hamas.”
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