On the occasion – this week – of both the 78th annual Yom Ha’Atzmaut (Israel Independence Day) and the signing of the Isaac Accords between Israel and Argentina, I want to share a comparison between Israel and Argentina that hardly anyone reading this would probably have even begun to think about. At first glance, it might be quite odd to compare those two countries, as they are extremely different in many ways – indeed, Israel is the Startup Nation, a massive economic success story despite limited natural resources, while Argentina has been mired in one serious economic crisis after another despite its educated population and bountiful geography. Nonetheless, it makes much more sense the way I’m about to explain.
In particular, this essay makes a comparison between the State of Israel as it arose in 1948 on the one hand, and on the other hand a counterfactual partially-English-speaking, more developed Argentina that could have arisen (but didn’t, in real life) in the wake of the British invasions of Buenos Aires in 1806 and 1807, whose primary purpose was to secure British commercial access to the lucrative South American market in the wake of Napoleon’s Continental European blockade. (In the end, the British did gain commercial access to the soon-to-be independent South American republics – including Argentina and Uruguay – later on, albeit only by means of informal empire.)
The counterfactual Argentina would pretty much be a South American version of Canada or Australia. It is important to note that the counterfactual Argentina would include Uruguay, the Falkland Islands, and the southernmost part of Chile (along the Strait of Magellan plus the western half of the far southern island of Tierra del Fuego – counterfactually known as Fireland in English) as well as what we, in reality, know of as Argentina. It would not, however, include the fairly small northeastern finger-shaped panhandle called Misiones; that would instead be a part of Paraguay in that scenario.
To preface, British Argentina (some 40% leaning towards English these days, and some 60% leaning towards Spanish) could easily have happened, and Israel as the Jewish state could even more easily not have happened. That is, the State of Israel arose in 1948 against all the odds, indeed being termed a “miracle,” whereas the incorporation of the present-day counterfactual Argentina into the British Empire in 1807 would logically have had much more of a chance with shorter odds, but in real life it missed the mark.
(For Argentina, this would have been in bits and pieces, much as the British did it in such areas as Canada, South Africa, and India. This would have started with direct control of the strategic port of Montevideo and the granting of independence – as a British protectorate – to the much more populated and much more lucrative Buenos Aires before ultimately being incorporated into the empire a few decades later.)
It is important to note that British Argentina would have been wealthy for quite a long time, whereas Israel only became wealthy in recent decades (itself even less of a probability than the very emergence of Israel in 1948). Israel had even greater odds against its very emergence and existence in 1948, and further odds (again, greater than Argentina) against its existence in 1967, 1973, and so forth, as well as against its more recent emergence as a powerful First World country and top US ally with its expertise in high-tech, defense, and the like.
Even in real life, despite opposite economic trajectories, the overall story of Argentina is somewhat similar to the story of Israel, and both of those stories are quite unique, for good and for bad. Argentina’s story is unique even among riches-to-rags stories, because not only is it the tale of a highly developed country turning into a significantly underdeveloped country (though still far ahead of, say, Mali or even neighboring Bolivia). But also – unlike with South Africa or Lebanon (just to give two examples) – there is a plausible point of divergence which would retroactively rescue Argentina from its terrible fate if one were to go back in time and change the outcome of that point of divergence. Israel, for its part, is quite a unique story of an ancient people’s homeland restored after millennia of exile and its language restored to large-scale everyday speech; this is something not seen in the annals of any other homeland or ethnicity on that scale.
Similarities
The similarities between the State of Israel and the counterfactual British Argentina are quite startling, in:
- being markedly more developed and Westernized than each of their neighbors (Arab/Muslim in the case of Israel and Latin American in the case of British Argentina),
- at the same time being geographically surrounded and culturally influenced by those neighbors (in the case of British Argentina, quite possibly to the point of being a uniquely hybrid society – and a bridge not just between the English-speaking world and Latin America but also between the developed countries and the less-developed countries), with Hebrew in Israel being influenced by Arabic (e.g. “sababa”, “yalla”, and “achla”) and English in British Argentina being influenced by Spanish, and
- being bicultural and bilingual (Hebrew and Arabic in the case of Israel, and English and Spanish – plus much non-stigmatized Spanglish in everyday, informal use – in the case of Argentina).
Turning to the geographies of Israel and Argentina (whether in real life or counterfactually), each of these countries has a north-south orientation but with almost all the major cities along a northwest-to-southeast crescent. In Israel, the respective cities stretching from the northwest to the southeast are Haifa, Tel Aviv-Yafo, and Jerusalem, with Beersheba being an outlier. In Argentina plus Uruguay, they are Salta, Tucumán, Córdoba, Santa Fe, Rosario, Buenos Aires, and Montevideo, with Mendoza, Bahía Blanca (White Bay counterfactually), and Mar del Plata (Plate Shores counterfactually) being outliers.
Another key similarity between Israel and Argentina is that both the Negev and Patagonia take up the southern portions of these countries and make up large parts of the land but relatively little of the population. Also, they’re cone-shaped and get thinner towards the south, and they generally are dry – except, in the case of Argentina, small portions of Argentine Patagonia next to Chile and in the far south of Tierra del Fuego/Fireland which constitute the world’s southernmost forests. (As I’m sure you know, there’s no parallel to such forests in Eilat or thereabouts!)
Yet another geographic similarity is between the Sierras de Córdoba (just west of the city of Córdoba in central Argentina) and the Judean/Samarian Hills (of which Jerusalem is a part). They are relatively low-lying hills, though the Sierras de Córdoba – despite being much lower-lying than the nearby Andes – are 2.5-3 times higher up than the Judean/Samarian Hills. Nonetheless, each of these hill ranges have more humid areas on the side nearer the coast and dryer areas on the other side. Plus, especially with regard to the British Argentina scenario, the Sierras de Córdoba – and points west and north – would be an integral part of the more Spanish-leaning areas (as opposed to many areas nearer to the coast being English-leaning), much as the Judean/Samarian Hills make up one of the main Arab areas (post-1967 Jewish towns and so forth notwithstanding) even as the Tel Aviv-Haifa coastal corridor is one of the main Jewish areas.
A final geographic similarity (not applicable, though, to the counterfactual British Argentina, as stated above) is that both Misiones and the Metula panhandle stick out to the northeast. (This is especially true if we’re just talking about before the 1967 Israeli capture of the Golan Heights to the east of the Metula “finger”.)
For more on the geographic similarities, see the maps below.
Other similarities, especially between Israel and real-life Argentina and Uruguay, are in the flag colors – predominantly some variety of white and blue. (Uruguay’s flag was partially modeled on Argentina’s.) The blue is dark for Israel’s flag, light for real-life Argentina’s flag, and somewhere in between (but usually on the darker side) for real-life Uruguay. The flag of the counterfactual Argentina is based mainly on that of real-life Argentina, except that a light green stripe is substituted for light blue on the bottom and b. it’s the sun from the real-life Uruguayan flag and not the one from the real-life Argentine flag that’s displayed in the centre. (The flag of at least one part of the counterfactual all-Arab Palestine would be the same as that of the real-life Palestinian Authority [including the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip], with other parts thereof – such as they would exist – having similar flags with the pan-Arab colors. This is outside the scope of this essay.) For more, see the flags below.
Differences
An obvious difference between the counterfactual British Argentina and the State of Israel, besides the wildly diverging probabilities as mentioned earlier, is that a British Argentina would have a significantly lesser degree of opprobrium from elsewhere in Latin America than Israel has had from the Arab/Muslim world (and especially from the Palestinians plus their sympathizers around the world). British Argentina would be more seamlessly integrated into Latin American affairs, especially after the British Empire starts to fall apart after WWII.
Even more at the height of the British Empire, British Argentina wouldn’t have been hated or boycotted by the other Latin American countries in quite the same way or to quite the same extent that Israel has been, and continues to be, by Arab and other Muslim countries (and, again, especially by the Palestinians). And, of course, British Argentina’s existence certainly wouldn’t be threatened by its South American neighbors. As a result, there would be far less of a need for a citizen’s army, complete with mandatory service for both men and women from the majority of the population, than there is in Israel.
This difference extends to comparing real-life Argentina with a Palestine in which the nascent Israel is stillborn in 1948. While there is a sharp difference between real-life Argentina (plus even the better-off real-life Uruguay) and its counterfactual British counterpart with regard to economic and political (in)stability, there isn’t all that great of a difference on the demographic and cultural front. On that front, the British-origin component would be added to the Spanish- and Italian-origin components, and the English-speaking component would be added to the Spanish-speaking component.
By contrast, there is an enormous difference on just about all fronts between the real-life State of Israel and the counterfactual Arab-majority Palestine in all of the Land of Israel, which might not even necessarily be one country, but rather, perhaps at least 2-3 separate little countries. In the latter situation, there would be very few Jews left (if any), no more than in any of the Arab countries these days, and it would be a far poorer and more traditional economy to this day, just like Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, etc. – with a standard of living well below even that of real-life Argentina and Uruguay.
Another significant difference is that Jews from Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and other parts of the Diaspora “returned” to their ancient homeland of Israel in large numbers many decades after people from the British Isles, as well as English-leaning immigrants from elsewhere, would have settled in British Argentina that wasn’t their one-time homeland any more than in North America, Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa. The Jews, whichever country they wound up in during the 2+ millennia of their dispersion, have been far more attached to the Land of Israel than the Europeans in premodern times were to the New World settler lands.
Unlike with the true European settler societies in the Americas, Australia, and so forth, it’s more accurate to talk about the Jews immigrating to Israel starting in the late 19th century as “returning” to Israel – or, if one insists on using some variant of “settler” (itself a term mired in political controversy in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), as “re-settling” Israel. Whereas in the true settler societies (except South Africa, in the demographic sense anyway) the Europeans displaced and vastly outnumbered the indigenous peoples, in Israel the Jews are the true indigenous people returning en masse to their own land. Thus, if anything, Israel – the Jewish component anyway – is a “re-settler society” (or “resettler society” without the hyphen) rather than simply a “settler society.”
Finally, there are two geographic differences of note. A radical geographic difference is that British Argentina, despite being significantly smaller in area than similar countries such as the United States, Canada, and Australia, would be well over 100 times bigger than Israel (at some 3 million sq. km. or 1 million sq. miles) and a good deal more densely populated – just like real-life Argentina. In fact, Israel and the small Argentine – real-life or counterfactual – province of Tucumán (plus the real-life Argentine province of Tierra del Fuego, covering the eastern half of the island of that name) are roughly the same size, at just over 20,000 sq. km. or 8,000 sq. miles. Another geographic difference is that going from the Sierras de Córdoba away from the coast one hits the Andes, the highest mountain range outside the Himalayas, whereas going from the Judean/Samarian Hills away from the coast one goes to the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea, which are among the world’s lowest points.
Conclusion
Israel and Argentina – in both their real-life and counterfactual terms – are far away from each other geographically and culturally, and have had opposite trajectories in real life (and could have easily been different in either country, for bad or for good). Nonetheless, and for all their differences, they have remarkable similarities in some aspects of their geographies as well as – to a good extent – their flags.
While the two countries have always had reasonably good relations (despite some ups and downs over the decades), there has been a major upgrade since the current Argentine president, Javier Milei, was brought to power late in 2023. His strong philosemitic and pro-Israel sentiments have brought him and Argentina closer to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and he has visited Israel numerous times since taking office, ultimately culminating in this week’s signing of the Isaac Accords. This further solidifies the aforementioned similarities and the connections across the scenarios, real and counterfactual, and this should hopefully continue to bode well for relations between Argentina and Israel (and also between Uruguay and Israel).
