Buenos Aires Herald 
Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu thanked President Javier Milei for including Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in its list of terrorist organizations, calling it “yet another sign” of Argentina’s “friendship with Israel.”
“Thank you Argentina, thank you President Javier Milei for designating Hamas as a terrorist organization,” Netanyahu said Sunday in a video posted on X. “This is yet another sign of your friendship to Israel and your commitment to the truth.”
On July 13, Argentina became the eighth country — along with the European Union — to have so far labeled the military and political group a terrorist organization.
The Argentine government’s decision was announced a week before the 30th anniversary of the AMIA Jewish community center bombing, which killed 85 people and injured over 300. The government’s press release highlighted Hamas’ links with Iran, arguing that the Argentine Federal Cassation Court had concluded that Tehran orchestrated the 1994 bombing of the AMIA along with the terrorist organization Hezbollah.
In the legal ruling the government is referencing, however, there is only one judge who states that Iran was the mastermind behind the bombing. Iran’s alleged responsibility for the attack has never been proven in court, and no one has ever been convicted for it so far.
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“This administration has stated multiple times its determination to realign Argentina with Western civilization,” said the July 13 press release from the Argentine government. “That is why it is inadmissible for those who attack it not to be labeled as what they are: terrorists.”
Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, leaving a toll of 1,139 dead. Israel launched a military operation on the Gaza Strip following the attack, which has so far killed more than 46,000 people, including 16,000 children.
Last week, Israeli President Isaac Herzog wrote an X post calling for justice for the 85 victims of the AMIA attack and thanked Milei “for leading the commemoration of this terrible crime.”
Milei met Herzog and Netanyahu last February when visiting Israel, his first official trip to another country. That time, Herzog called him “a true friend of Israel” and cheered Milei’s decision to move the Argentine embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, “the eternal capital of the State of Israel and the Jewish people.”
Before taking office, Milei has said that he would be internationally aligned with Israel and the United States. Since he became president, he has visited the U.S. five times, mostly to participate in far-right political rallies, but none of them were official state visits.
On July 14, the Tehran Times, a mouthpiece of the Iranian regime, accused Milei’s government of being under Israeli control and “endangering Argentina’s national interests” in an editorial about the AMIA case. The article states Iran will eventually make Argentina “regret their enmity with Iran,” which was taken as a threat by the Argentine government.
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