Benjamin Netanyahu will depart for the first visit of a sitting Israeli prime minister to Latin America on Sunday evening, two days after his wife was notified that she would face an indictment hearing over alleged misuse of public funds.
The prime minister and Sara Netanyahu will first visit Argentina, then swing through Colombia and Mexico before making his way to New York City to address the United Nations General Assembly and meet United States president Donald Trump.
In addition to what is expected to be a friendly meeting with center-right Argentine President Mauricio Macri, the Israeli premier’s time in Buenos Aires will be dedicated to attending memorials to two devastating terror attacks targeting Jews and Israelis in the early 1990s.
In 1992, 29 people were killed when Israel’s embassy in the city was destroyed by an explosion orchestrated by Imad Mughnieh, a senior Hezbollah terrorist. In 1994, a major Jewish community center was reduced to rubble, killing AMIA, in a car bombing also blamed on Hezbollah and Iran.
A delegation of businesspeople “from the fields of agriculture, water, communications and energy,” will accompany the prime minister, a statement from his office said, adding that “members of the delegation will hold commercial meetings with their local counterparts.”
Paraguay’s president, Horacio Cartes, will travel to Buenos Aires to meet the prime minister.
Netanyahu will also “attend events with local Jewish communities in Argentina, Colombia and Mexico and meet with community leaders,” according to the statement.
A report earlier this week in Globes newspaper suggested that the Jewish community in Argentina were stumping up $100,000 toward the cost of hosting the Israeli leader, however the government denied the story.