The idea sounds audacious even for Middle East diplomacy: A web of “Isaac accords” that would bind Israel to half a dozen Latin American democracies, mirroring – and, if Rabbi Shimon Axel Wahnish has his way, one-upping – the 2020 Abraham Accords in the Gulf.
Yet the soft-spoken rabbi who now serves as Buenos Aires’ envoy in Jerusalem insists the moment is ripe. If the Abraham Accords began in the desert, why shouldn’t the next chapter start in the Pampas?
We are seated in Rehavia in what was once an Ottoman-era manor and is now the official Argentine ambassador’s residence – a year-old move from Herzliya that quietly placed a diplomatic flag inside Israel’s capital even before President Javier Milei fulfills his headline promise to shift the embassy itself to Jerusalem.
An entire salon wall is lined from floor to ceiling with books in Hebrew. Outside, an improbably lush garden and a children’s trampoline are visible. It is, in short, the perfect tableau for a conversation that wanders from theology to terrorism to trade, then circles back, invariably, to what Wahnish calls his president’s “mission from God.”
“From the very first day,” he told me in Hebrew (every direct quote here is an English translation), “President Milei declared that Israel is a strategic partner on the level of the United States.”
“Our two countries aren’t merely partners. We’re brothers who share the same values of liberty and democracy,” Wahnish continued. For a state that spent the past decade abstaining on critical UN resolutions, this pivot borders on political whiplash.
The ambassador’s residence itself is the opening paragraph of that new policy. Milei instructed his envoy to move the residence from Herzliya to Jerusalem. “Putting the ambassador’s home here is our first statement that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital,” Wahnish said, adding with mischievous relish: “Any child born between these walls will be an Argentine citizen and a Jerusalemite.”
A rabbi’s unlikely road to the foreign service
Until early 2024, Wahnish headed ACILBA, Buenos Aires’ Sephardi community. Milei, an “anarcho-capitalist” economist famous for brandishing a chainsaw at rallies, had slipped into the rabbi’s weekly Torah class two years earlier.
Their text sessions on Moses, markets, and moral courage ran late into the night. When Argentina had no ambassador in Israel for almost three years, Milei phoned his rabbi and said, “Fix it for me – in Hebrew, so no nuance is lost.”
Wahnish moved to Jerusalem nine weeks later.
This first repair in the relations between Israel and Argentina is historical. No Argentine Jew forgets March 17, 1992, when a suicide bomber leveled Israel’s embassy in Buenos Aires, or July 18, 1994, when a bombing at the AMIA Jewish community center killed eighty-five people.
Both attacks were traced to Tehran’s operatives. A decade ago, Buenos Aires signed a memorandum with Iran that critics called a whitewash.
Wahnish still bristles at the memory. “Your predecessors signed a memorandum with terror,” he told Milei after the election. “Now we must sign one with our brothers.”
A draft focusing on joint counterterrorism efforts and cyber investigations called the Memorandum of Liberty and Democracy is already circulating among lawyers in both capitals.
The president lands on Monday for a three-day sprint. Milei will begin his visit at the Western Wall before dawn, accompanied by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“He insisted on prayer before protocol,” Wahnish said. Later, the pair will meet President Isaac Herzog, Milei will address a special Knesset plenum and, on June 11, he will receive the million-dollar Genesis Prize in the Chagall State Hall from the foundation’s chair, Stan Polovets, and Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana.
Milei will not be accepting the prize’s funds. He will invest them in a nonprofit organization that has not been named yet. Milei is the first non-Jewish laureate in the prize’s eleven-year history.
Milei will also attend an evening unveiling at the City of David in the president’s honor and privately visit with the families of four Argentine Israeli hostages, three of whom are believed to still be alive.
The itinerary, Wahnish noted, is tighter than the schedule originally drafted for March. “The president postponed [that trip] so he could first stabilize Argentina’s economy,” he said.
‘Heaven’s answer’
The rabbi’s voice dropped when he told a story that still felt miraculous to him. Last February, he and Milei went to pray at the Western Wall.
That night, during a layover in Rome in order to meet with Pope Francis, Wahnish had a dream in which he opened a car trunk and found two bound hostages. He woke shaking, checked his phone, and saw over 1,000 unread messages: Israeli commandos had just rescued Fernando Marman and Luis Norberto Har, both Argentine Israeli nationals, during a raid in Rafah.
“I called the president in the morning,” the rabbi recalled. “I said: This happened because you prayed at the Western Wall.” Milei, he added, “felt it was heaven’s answer to his promise.”
Wahnish’s grand design, though, lies beyond ceremonial headlines. “If the Gulf can have the Abraham Accords, why can’t Latin America have the Isaac Accords?” he asked.
His concept is audacious: Twin frameworks – diplomatic recognition and a free trade compact – that link Israel to a bloc of Latin democracies who share an anti-terror, pro-innovation worldview.
The working blueprint envisions fast-track customs lanes, joint satellite launches, water technology hubs along the Paraná River, and specialized cyber training for Latin American police agencies.
Wahnish listed early recruits. “Paraguay is already on board. President Santiago Peña wants a signing, and Ecuador’s President, Daniel Noboa, has designated Hamas a terrorist group and is also considering joining.”
Argentina’s Liberty International World Conference, with a target date of December, would gather Milei, Netanyahu, Peña, Noboa, and possibly more presidents; Wahnish hopes US President Donald Trump will attend as an “honorary witness.”
The symbolism matters: Isaac, in rabbinic lore, renews Abraham’s covenant by re-digging his father’s wells. Abraham opened one region, and Isaac deepened the water so the blessing could spread.
What does Israel stand to gain? Immediate votes at the Organization of American States, new landing rights for El Al, and, above all, a strategic partner wrapped around the Southern Cone. Argentina, for its part, is betting on Israel’s agricultural technology to revive the Pampas and on Israeli desalination models for its drought-stricken north.
Neighborhood turbulence
None of this is simple. Brazil’s President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has accused Israel of “genocide” in Gaza; Chile’s left-wing coalition wavers weekly; Bolivia recently reopened Tehran’s welcome mat.
Wahnish shrugged, “The darker the neighborhood, the brighter the candle shines.”
“Israel and Argentina are virtually the only full democracies in our regions. We face the same enemies, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iranian proxies, and we lean on the same pillars of freedom,” the rabbi said.
Locally, Milei is administering shock therapy to an economy with 254% inflation. Critics call his dollarization plan a kamikaze act; Wahnish calls it moral clarity.
“He doesn’t speak nonsense,” Wahnish said. “People will endure pain if they trust the surgeon.”
He described the president’s Buenos Aires apartment as “a museum of Judaism: “There are mezuzot on every doorway, hanukkiot in every corner.” Morocco-born mystic Rabbi David Abuhatzeira, he added, prays daily for Milei’s success.
The president, for his part, “believes he is a conduit to fulfil God’s will. If pride creeps in, he feels he is failing.”
‘Hebrew is the key’
Why does the ambassador conduct many meetings in Hebrew? Because Milei sees the Middle East through Jewish eyes,” Wahnish said. “Hebrew is the key to his thought process.”
The linguistic preference mirrors a voting shift: Argentina now aligns with Washington and Jerusalem on almost every Israel-related UN ballot. “Sometimes,” the rabbi joked, “it is more supportive of Israel than the US.”
With Milei due in Jerusalem next week, attention will quickly shift from ideas to deliverables: An embassy timetable, a counterterrorism agreement, and the first draft of the proposed Latin-Israel framework.
Whether these materialize on schedule or slip into the familiar diplomatic backlog will tell us how serious both sides really are about an “Isaac accords” era.
