Israel Unwired1mo ago
Argentina’s President Javier Milei, one of the world’s most passionate supporters of Israel, the Jewish people and the Torah, just said something extraordinary about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that every Israeli should hear.
Speaking in New York after his appearance at the United Nations, Milei called Netanyahu an “extraordinary leader” with geopolitical vision.
But then he went much further.
Milei said Netanyahu understands the connection to the “cultural battle” taking place in the world today “as very few people in the world” do, specifically naming US politicians Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Scott Bessent among the others who understand it.
He then said he doubts whether Israel would still exist without Netanyahu and warned that Israel’s disappearance would endanger Europe and the entire Western world.
That is much bigger than a compliment to Netanyahu.
Milei is saying Netanyahu understands what the war actually is.
To understand Milei’s statement, you have to understand what he means by the “cultural battle.”
Milei has been warning for years that Western civilization is fighting an ideological war over its most fundamental values. He argues that radical left-wing and post-Marxist ideas gained power not primarily through armies, but through institutions: universities, media, government bureaucracies, NGOs, international organizations and culture.
He has explicitly invoked Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony, the idea that political transformation follows cultural domination and argued that the left successfully captured institutions that determine how societies understand truth, justice, morality and even good and evil.
But here is what makes Milei’s worldview particularly important for Israel:
He understands that Israel and the Jewish people sit at the epicenter of this cultural war.
At an International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance gathering this year, Milei connected sinah, hatred, to Sinai, where the Jewish people received the Torah.
Then he made an extraordinary statement:
“Combating antisemitism is not only defending a people; it is defending the morality that is at the foundation of our civilization.”
He also declared:
“Israel is the bastion of the West.”
Think about that.
Milei is connecting Sinai, Biblical morality, Jew-hating antisemitism, Israel and the survival of Western civilization.
And I believe he is touching upon something even deeper.
This Is ultimately a war against Biblical morality…
Western civilization did not invent its moral foundations out of thin air.
Humanity created b’tzelem Elokim, in the image of God.
A morality higher than the ruler.
The sanctity of life.
Family.
Responsibility.
Justice.
Freedom from tyranny.
The idea that even a king answers to something above himself.
These are Biblical ideas that entered history through the Jewish people and profoundly shaped Western civilization.
Milei himself increasingly speaks in these terms. At Davos he used the Torah’s account of Pharaoh and Moses to describe the struggle between tyranny and freedom. His spiritual adviser, Rabbi Shimon Axel Wahnish, has said that Milei sees Judaism and Moses as representing a “cultural and spiritual revolution toward freedom.”
That helps explain Milei’s extraordinary attraction to Torah and the Jewish people.
Because from a Jewish perspective, this cultural battle is ultimately deeper than left versus right.
It is a battle over whether man answers only to man or whether there is a moral order established by God above us all.
A culture that removes God will eventually redefine morality according to whatever ideology controls the institutions, as we the “progressive” left doing today.
Truth becomes narrative.
Responsibility becomes victimhood.
Family becomes whatever society decides it means today.
National identity becomes something to dismantle.
And ancient Biblical morality becomes an obstacle to “progress.”
That is why I believe this cultural revolution is ultimately a rebellion against God.
And that helps explain why Israel is at its epicenter.
Why Israel?
Why does a tiny Jewish state provoke such obsessive rage across university campuses, international organizations and Western streets?
Why do movements supposedly concerned with completely different issues repeatedly converge around hostility toward Israel?
Milei himself speaks about what he calls an “implicit alliance between the radical left and Islamist terrorism.”
Others, like myself, call it the red-green alliance*: revolutionary leftism and jihadi Islam.
Their visions of the society they ultimately want are profoundly different. Yet Milei argues that they share hostility toward Western civilization.
And Israel represents almost everything this cultural revolution rejects.
We are an ancient people rooted in history.
An indigenous nation rooted in a particular homeland.
A civilization rooted in God.
A people who returned after 2,000 years to our ancestral land, revived our ancestral language and rebuilt Jewish sovereignty.
Israel is living proof that rooted identity and modernity do not have to contradict each other.
We didn't erase ourselves to join the modern world.
We came home.
This is where I believe even many Israelis fail to understand the magnitude of our own story.
The Jewish people are not simply another nationality that happened to establish a country in 1948.
We stood at Sinai.
We carried the Torah through thousands of years of exile.
We introduced humanity to the belief in one God and a transcendent moral order.
And now we have returned to the very land in which the Torah envisioned the Jewish nation living its national life.
That gives Israel a role far beyond simply keeping Jews alive.
We have the opportunity to bring our Biblical national identity back into history: living in our land, speaking Hebrew, defending ourselves and building a society rooted in Jewish values.
That doesn't mean forcing anyone to become religious.
It means remembering who we are.
Strengthening Jewish identity.
Strengthening our connection to God and Torah.
Strengthening our indigenous connection to the Land of Israel.
Because Judaism was never intended merely as a religion practiced privately inside a synagogue or in the home m.
We are a nation.
With a Torah.
With a land.
With a mission.
And that is why I believe a stronger Jewish Israel can become one of humanity’s most powerful answers to this cultural revolution.
The answer to nihilism is meaning.
The answer to rootlessness is rooted identity.
The answer to moral relativism is moral clarity.
The answer to the rejection of Biblical civilization is a Jewish people proudly living its Biblical identity in its Biblical homeland.
That is what it means to become a light unto the nations.
Milei gets it!
Perhaps this explains Milei’s extraordinary love for Judaism.
This is a president who studies Torah, speaks openly about the Creator, repeatedly visits the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s resting place and has spoken about his attraction to Judaism.
He understands that defending Jews is not merely about protecting Jews.
It is about defending the moral foundations he believes made Western freedom possible.
And he understands Iran through the same lens.
Milei has said plainly that Iran is not merely Israel’s enemy but an enemy of the West. He has praised Netanyahu and Trump as leaders willing to confront what he describes as the Iranian regime's terrorism while others hesitate.
So the pieces fit together.
Iran is one front.
Jihadi terrorism is another.
The ideological battle inside Western civilization is another.
And Israel stands at the intersection.
That is why Milei’s compliment to Netanyahu matters so much.
Milei believes Netanyahu sees the entire battlefield.
Not only Tehran.
Not only Gaza.
Not only Hezbollah.
The battlefield of ideas.
Israelis need to understand what is at stake!
This is the conversation Israelis need to have when evaluating Netanyahu vs. Eizenkot and the other party leaders on the center left seeking to replace him.
Because Netanyahu’s center-left opponents not only fail to understand this larger cultural battle; but, they actively represent the very political and institutional forces advancing its progressive agenda within Israel. That is why their replacing Netanyahu would endanger Israel and promote the exact culture war against us that Millie has ben talking about.
As opposed to the party leaders on the political left, Only Netanyahu understands that Israel is not merely as another Western democracy that happens to speak Hebrew.
Only Netanyahu understands that Israel is the sovereign expression of an ancient people restored to its indigenous homeland.
Only Netanyahu understands the ideological dimension of Iran’s hostility toward Israel.
Only Netanyahu understands the progressive cultural forces operating through universities, international institutions, NGOs and media.
Only Netanyahu understands why all the radical leftist and jihadi movements converge around delegitimizing the Jewish state.
And only Netanyahu understands that strengthening Israel's Jewish identity is an asset not something Israel must minimize to gain international acceptance.
None of Netanyahu’s center-left opponents seeking to lead Israel understand this larger civilizational struggle. Worse, rather than fighting the progressive cultural forces Milei is warning about, they would actively advance many of those same forces within Israel.
Milei's statement raises a question far bigger than one Israeli election.
Israel needs leaders, like Milei and Netanyahu, who understand what Israel is and what we are up against.
The missiles are real.
Iran is real.
Jihadi terrorism is real.
But ideas are weapons too.
The Jewish people have survived empires, exile and persecution and returned to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to rebuild our national life.
Now our challenge is not to run away from who we are.
It is to become more deeply who we are.
A Jewish nation.
In the Land of Israel.
Connected to our Torah, our God, our history and our mission.
And perhaps Javier Milei understands something that too many Jews themselves have forgotten:
The Jewish people are not peripheral to the battle for the freedom loving world. We are the nation entrusted with the keys to helping save it.
We must embrace that mission.
That is what it truly means to fulfill our destiny as a light unto the nations. That is tikun olam b’malchut Shakai!!!
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