March 3, 2026
Since becoming president of Paraguay in May 2023, President Santiago “Santi” Peña has moved the country's embassy in Israel from a Tel Aviv suburb to Jerusalem, ratified Paraguay’s designation of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as terrorist organizations, and signed on to the U.S.-led Global Guidelines to Combat Antisemitism.
“For every act of antisemitism, every Paraguayan will respond unequivocally, 'Nosotros Judios, we are Jews,” he told AJC Global Forum 2025 when he received the AJC Gesher Award for bolstering his nation’s enduring friendship with the Jewish people and Israel.
“Paraguay is here to say, we are with you, our dear friends. We will not abandon Israel.”
Notably, when many countries in the region either downgraded or severed relations with Israel after the war started by Hamas’ massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023, Peña expressed full-fledged solidarity with the Jewish state and is one of 20-plus heads of state to join President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, a multinational effort to oversee maintenance of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, reconstruction of Gaza after the war and restoration of order in the coastal enclave.
Key Takeaways
- Paraguay has been one of Israel’s most consistent allies since the Jewish state’s rebirth, and an ally of the Jewish people for over a century. Under President Peña, that friendship has never been stronger.
- The Triple Frontier border area remains an active counterterrorism concern, with Hezbollah financing networks still operating in the region.
- In 2026, American Jewish Committee (AJC) is deepening its on-the-ground partnership with Paraguay's Jewish community and government through its first-ever delegation to the country.
A Century of Welcoming Jews
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has praised Paraguay for welcoming European Jews “before the Holocaust, during the Holocaust, and after the Holocaust.”
The first Jewish immigrants arrived in the late 19th century from France, Switzerland, Italy, and Ottoman-controlled Palestine. A second wave came in the 1920s from Poland and Ukraine. Paraguay's doors opened partly in response to the devastating War of the Triple Alliance (1864–1870), which decimated the country's population and made it eager to attract new settlers.
A third wave — refugees fleeing the Nazis — arrived in the 1930s and ‘40s, though for many, Paraguay served as a waystation to Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay.
“There is a basic sympathy between our people and the people of Paraguay,” Netanyahu said at the reopening of the Paraguayan Embassy in Jerusalem in December 2024. “You too are a small people. You, too, suffered the specter of annihilation.”
Paraguay Voted for Israel’s Sovereignty
When the United Nations voted on the Partition of Palestine on November 29, 1947, Jews around the world huddled around their radios to listen to the roll call. By the time Paraguay voted “yes,” becoming the 33rd country to do so, they knew a dream of 2,000 years was about to become a reality – an independent Jewish state.
Paraguay opened diplomatic relations with Israel in 1949. It has often lent its support to Israel, abstaining from resolutions in the UN General Assembly that criticize Israel for taking unilateral actions in Jerusalem and in the occupied territories. It has exclusively voted against anti-Israel resolutions during Peña’s term.
Embassy in Jerusalem — A Moral Commitment
Under Peña’s leadership, Paraguay’s embassy in Israel got a new address – again.
During a 70th anniversary trip to Israel in April 2018, then-outgoing president Horacio Cartes announced that the Paraguayan embassy would move from the Tel Aviv suburb of Mevasseret Zion to Jerusalem. The following month, Paraguay became the third country after the U.S. and Guatemala to move its embassy to Jerusalem.
However, by September of that year, Cartes’ successor Mario Abdo Benitez, who had not been consulted about the measure, moved the embassy back to Tel Aviv out of concern that it would jeopardize peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Angry about the reversal, Netanyahu closed the Israeli embassy in Asunción, Paraguay’s capital. Israel’s envoy to Paraguay worked in Argentina.
In December 2024, Peña fulfilled his promise to move his country’s Israeli embassy back to Jerusalem immediately, calling it a “tipping point in our own history,” emphasizing it as “a moral obligation” and “a testament of who we are.”
“Without an embassy in Jerusalem, diplomatic relations with Israel do not have a real heart, do not have a real soul,” he told AJC Global Forum in April 2025.
Netanyahu reciprocated by reopening Israel’s embassy in Asunción that same year.
A Frontline Against Iran-backed Terrorism
The Triple Frontier — where the borders of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil converge — has long been a hotbed for money laundering and criminal activity linked to Iran-backed terrorist groups, particularly Hezbollah.
Paraguay took a significant step in August 2019 by designating Hezbollah as an international terrorist organization, enabling authorities to act against the group's financial networks operating in the region. The U.S. Treasury has repeatedly sanctioned individuals and entities in the Triple Frontier area for funneling millions to Hezbollah.
Asunción also holds a grim historical distinction: it was the site of the first terrorist attack ever carried out against an Israeli embassy. On May 4, 1970, two Palestinian terrorists opened fire at the embassy, killing one secretary and injuring another.
Hezbollah’s trail of violence across Latin America has been devastating. The group carried out the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, and just two years later, the 1994 AMIA Jewish Community Center bombing — also in Buenos Aires — killed 85 people and wounded more than 300. It remains the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentine history and the worst antisemitic attack in the Western Hemisphere since World War II.
More recently, a 2023 U.S. indictment highlighted ongoing Hezbollah financing operations tied to the region, underscoring that the Triple Frontier remains an active concern for counterterrorism officials worldwide.
Paraguay's Jewish Community and AJC's Partnership
Paraguay's Jewish community numbers roughly 1,000 — concentrated in Asunción — but maintains a vibrant institutional life, including a Chabad-Lubavitch center, a Jewish day school, a Holocaust studies center, and a Conservative synagogue. Shaped by waves of Ashkenazi and Sephardic immigration spanning more than a century, the community remains active in business, culture, and civic life, with strong ties to larger Jewish communities across Latin America.
AJC has built a trusted, lasting relationship with both Paraguay’s government and its Jewish community — and in March 2026, that partnership enters a new chapter. AJC CEO Ted Deutch, President Robert Lapin, and Dina Siegel Vann, Director of the AJC Belfer Institute for Latino and Latin American Affairs (BILLA), will lead AJC's first-ever delegation to the country, meeting with President Peña and leaders of CRIP (Consejo Representativo Israelita de Paraguay), the official representative body of Paraguay's Jewish institutions. The delegation will also travel to neighboring Argentina.
“This is indeed a historical visit – AJC's first to Paraguay – coming on the heels of our public recognition of its courageous president and the signing last year of our Partnership Agreement with the Jewish community of Paraguay,” Siegel Vann said. “We are fulfilling our commitment to visit Asuncion to strengthen ties between our countries and communities and continue ongoing conversations.”
It's the kind of sustained, on-the-ground diplomacy that defines how AJC works — building the relationships that keep Jewish communities safe and thriving around the world.
