No surprise that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has announced his support for the Argentinean football team.
The country's president, Javier Milei, is the most rabidly pro-Zionist foreign
leader of any nation on earth. Milei's government has granted automatic
privileges to Israelis such as relating to pension rights and has been busily
preparing the Patagonian region of Argentina for Zionist colonisation.
It is remarkable how the Jewish state has a high degree of influence in a
country that was famous for shielding Nazi war criminals such as Eichmann,
Mengele, Priebke, Roschmann and Kutschmann. It was also for a time the base of
operations of Otto Skorzeny, the special forces officer of the Waffen-SS who
came to be known as Hitler's favourite commando.
Argentina is also, a country whose junta in the 1970s was unabashedly
anti-Jewish. The military government led by General Jorge Videla accused Jews
of financially supporting left-wing groups such as the Montoneros guerrillas.
David Graiver, a financier of Polish-Jewish descent allegedly acted as the
primary investment banker and money launderer for the Montoneros organisation.
As was the case with the leaders of Nazi Germany and Francoist Spain, the junta
believed that Jews were at the heart of leftist movements including the other
prominent guerrillas, the Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP), the armed
wing of the Communist Workers' Revolutionary Party.
This resulted in the junta focusing a lot of its efforts on the Jewish
community during the "Dirty War" conducted against what were
designated as Marxist subversives between 1976 and 1983. Although Jews made up
1% of the population, they represented 10%-12% of los desaparecidos i.e.
the "disappeared ones".
Ironically, the Israeli state supplied significant amounts of weapons and gave
military training to the Argentinian military during the "Dirty War".
It was in this context as one of Argentina's primary arms suppliers that Israel
sold weapons and munitions to Argentina during its war against Britain over the
Falkland Islands.
But as mentioned earlier the transformation of Argentina from a country which
harboured Nazi criminals and which in the 1970s witnessed a rise in pro-Nazi
and anti-Jewish sentiment to one that has become one of the most vital allies of the Jewish state is noteworthy. Milei, the self-described "most Zionist
president in the world" has been at the heart of establishing the
"Isaac Accords" (the Latin American equivalent of the West Asian
"Abraham Accords"), has stood in solidarity with Israel in all its
conflicts and has introduced laws that provide a privileged status to Israelis
including Israeli Defence Force veterans suspected of committing war crimes in
war theatres such as Gaza and south Lebanon.
And Netanyahu's support for the Argentinean national football team can only be
bolstered by the perceived pro-Zionist sentiments of Lionel Messi. While Messi
has previously donated to hospitals in Gaza and to UNICEF projects in
Palestine, images of his visit to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem during a
"Peace Tour" in 2014 with his former team, FC Barcelona, have become
ingrained in the minds of both pro-and anti-Zionist fans of the game. During the
visit, Messi and his teammates wore traditional yarmulkes, prayed at the holy
site, and left handwritten notes between the ancient stones.
In contrast to Diego Maradona who avowedly supported left-wing causes and
left-wing regimes, Messi has striven to maintain a personal policy of political
neutrality. And Netanyahu appears to have respected this stance by justifying
his support for the Argentinean national team by referencing President Milei.
"Before Messi,Milei", Netanyahu joked, "He's a superstar."
© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).
