‘Israel needs its supporters to be here’: Paraguay envoy pushes for lasting ties

When Israeli shoppers send Paraguay’s ambassador videos showing his country’s flag beside beef in supermarkets, Alejandro Rubin Cymerman sees something that trade figures cannot capture. The flag, he says, makes Paraguay’s support for Israel visible.

“Israel needs its supporters to be here,” Rubin told The Media Line in a Spanish-language interview at Paraguay’s embassy in Jerusalem. He arrived in January 2024 with instructions to move the mission to the city during the war. After completing that task, he has focused on commercial and institutional ties designed to outlast changes of government.

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Israel needs its supporters to be here

Rubin put Paraguayan beef exports to Israel at $220 million in 2025 and forecast around $300 million this year. Exports stood at $88 million in 2023 and, he said, practically stopped after October. He credited much of the later growth to the private sector, saying the embassy played only a small role while working to make the meat’s Paraguayan origin more recognisable to consumers.

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We only played a small part

Paraguay was unfamiliar to many Israelis when Rubin arrived. Some asked where the country was, which he found painful given Paraguay’s longstanding support for Israel, including its backing of the 1947 United Nations partition vote. He said President Santiago Peña’s public support and the embassy relocation helped change that response. “Today I go out, say ‘Paraguay,’ and people say, ‘Thank you,’” Rubin said. He described Israel, the United States and Taiwan as the three pillars of Peña’s foreign policy.

The relationship has also experienced reversals. Paraguay moved its mission to Jerusalem in 2018, then returned it to Tel Aviv later that year under a new president. Israel responded by closing its embassy in Asunción. Israel reopened its mission in September 2024, and Peña inaugurated Paraguay’s Jerusalem embassy that December. Rubin called the earlier reversal the relationship’s worst moment, while noting that Paraguay never closed its embassy in Israel.

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Today I go out, say ‘Paraguay,’ and people say, ‘Thank you,’

Asked how the relationship could withstand another political transition, Rubin said both governments and their foreign ministries were working to make cooperation useful to their populations. Paraguay and Israel have signed at least five memorandums of understanding covering areas including water management and education, though the article notes delays in implementing some agreements. Rubin said the goal was to build “the strongest possible ties” beneath the embassy’s location, with practical benefits for both countries.

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the strongest possible ties