What South America Remembers That Europe Forgot

There is something deeply revealing about the fact that a Jew can now walk more comfortably through parts of South America wearing a Magen David than through large stretches of what still calls itself enlightened Europe.

I realised this slowly while travelling through Uruguay, Chile, Argentina and Paraguay with Keren Hayesod.

I arrived carrying the habits many European Jews now carry without even noticing anymore: checking exits, scanning crowds, weighing whether visible Jewishness is worth the possible confrontation. Years of hostility disguised as “activism” have trained us into these reflexes. London does it to you. Paris too. Increasingly, Toronto and Melbourne.

And then, somewhere between Montevideo and Buenos Aires, I stopped thinking about it altogether.

I wore my Magen David openly. Walked the streets freely. Sat in cafés, spoke at community events, moved through public spaces without that faint current of anxiety humming beneath the surface. Nobody stared. Nobody spat slogans. Nobody demanded I justify Israel before permitting me basic civic comfort.

That stayed with me.

South America is hardly free of antisemitism. No serious person would claim otherwise. Argentina still carries the memory of the AMIA bombing like scar tissue beneath the skin. The continent has known political extremism, economic instability and its own long history of conspiratorial politics. But what I encountered there was something Europe has misplaced: the understanding that Jewish communities belong naturally within the national fabric.

Not as tolerated guests. Not as political accessories. As citizens.

And the communities themselves possess a remarkable vitality. In Santiago, Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Asunción, I met Jews who remain profoundly attached to both their countries and to Israel without seeing any contradiction between the two. Families still gather. Synagogues remain full. Young people speak about continuity, marriage, children, aliyah, responsibility. There is concern, certainly, especially after October 7, but not paralysis.

That difference matters.

In Europe, too much Jewish communal life now revolves around security barriers, police coordination and institutional caution. Necessary, yes. But corrosive over time. A people cannot survive indefinitely in psychological crouch position.

Again and again, our conversations turned toward Iran.

Not the fantasy version endlessly recycled in Western diplomatic circles, where moderation is always supposedly one election away, but the regime itself: ideological, expansionist and entirely serious about its revolutionary ambitions.

My years infiltrating circles close to the Islamic Republic resonated deeply with audiences across South America because the region understands the consequences of Iranian radicalism in concrete terms. Argentina remembers its dead. People understand that the IRGC is not simply another branch of government but the operational arm of a transnational ideological project that has left bloodstains across several continents.

When I spoke about the parliamentary campaign to proscribe the IRGC in Britain, about the briefings, the letters, the effort to force policymakers to stop hiding behind diplomatic euphemisms, I sensed something increasingly rare in Western political culture: clarity.

No tortured moral relativism. No compulsive need to excuse fanaticism as grievance politics. Just clarity.

And for the first time in a long while, I left feeling hopeful.

Not naïve. Hopeful.

The threats facing the Jewish world are real. October 7 shattered illusions many people still clung to. Across parts of the West, antizionism has become a respectable vehicle for some very old hatreds wearing newer clothes. One would have to be blind not to see it.

But travelling through South America reminded me that the Jewish story has never been written solely through persecution. It has also been written through endurance, stubbornness, humour, family, memory and an almost irrational refusal to disappear.

That spirit exists powerfully within Keren Hayesod.

For generations, its men and women have done the unglamorous work that actually sustains Jewish life: supporting communities, helping families rebuild, funding education, assisting aliyah, responding to crisis before headlines arrive and long after cameras leave. When Jewish communities enter periods of darkness, they help relight the room.

I saw that firsthand throughout this journey.

Late-night conversations filled with laughter. Young volunteers speaking about Israel with fierce affection. Community leaders refusing despair even while fully aware of the dangers ahead. There was seriousness, certainly, but also warmth. Confidence. Life.

The enemies of the Jewish people often mistake visibility for weakness. They see openness and assume fragility. History keeps punishing that assumption.

Because the Jewish people remain what we have always been: dispersed perhaps, argumentative certainly, wounded often, but still standing.

And as long as we remain bound to one another across continents and communities, there is very little we cannot overcome together.