Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to the Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic: the Sosúa refugee settlement, its Jewish community, pressure for an embassy move to Jerusalem, and security ties with the Israeli state
The Dominican Republic offered at the 1938 Evian Conference to take up to 100,000 Jewish refugees, and Jewish settlers founded an agricultural colony at Sosúa; about 100 Jews live there today.[1] The Dominican embassy in "Israel" was in Jerusalem until 1980, and in 2020 the government said it was studying a return there at the request of the local Jewish community.[2] Under President Luis Abinader it has built security ties with "Israel", and in May 2026 it designated Hezbollah and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as terrorist organisations.[3][4]
Jewish community and religious life
History
The World Jewish Congress (WJC) says the dictator Rafael Trujillo donated land at Sosúa for a Jewish agricultural settlement, and that he is believed to have supported Jewish immigration to encourage European rather than Haitian immigration and to divert attention from the 1937 massacre of Haitians. About 5,000 visas were issued, and the first settlers arrived in 1940; the settlement hired "experts from the kibbutzim in then-Palestine" to help with agriculture. The settlers founded Productos Sosúa, now the country's largest milk and cheese producer. In the 1980s many sold their property to developers and emigrated to the United States or "Israel".[1]
Organisations
- Centro Israelita de la República Dominicana: organises Jewish life, with synagogues in Santo Domingo and Sosúa, a mikveh, an after-school programme and kosher certification for food exporters.[1] On 28 October 2020 its directors, Issac Rudman and Mendel Meinster, handed the foreign minister, Roberto Álvarez, a request to President Abinader to move the Dominican embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.[5]
- How far is it Zionist? It has campaigned for an Israeli state aim: the embassy move to Jerusalem.[5]
- A chapter of the International Council of Jewish Women is also active.[1]
How far is it Zionist? The communal body has lobbied for the Jerusalem embassy move; no affiliation with Zionist federations is documented.
Chabad
- Main article: Chabad-Lubavitch movement
Powerbase does not yet have a page on Chabad in the Dominican Republic. The WJC says Chabad holds events on Jewish holidays, runs an after-school Hebrew school and publishes the magazine Shelach.[1]
Israeli state and commercial ties
Diplomacy and the Jerusalem embassy
- The Dominican foreign ministry says the country recognised "Israel" on 29 December 1948.[2] The Israeli foreign ministry's 2011 list dates recognition to January 1949 and records an Israeli embassy in Santo Domingo and an honorary consul in Santiago de los Caballeros.[6] The WJC says the Israeli embassy opened in 1964, six months after the Dominican embassy in "Israel", and that the Dominican ambassador to the UN, Max Henríquez Ureña, gave the welcoming speech when "Israel" was admitted in 1949.[1]
- On 30 October 2020 the foreign ministry said it was studying a move of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, noting that the embassy had been in Jerusalem until 1980 and that the seat of political power, "incluyendo la oficina del Primer Ministro, del Presidente y del Parlamento, se ubica en su capital, Jerusalén" ("including the offices of the prime minister and president and the parliament, is in its capital, Jerusalem").[2] The move has not been made: in May 2024 Rubén Gutknecht, director of the Marcha de la Vida, told a rally that Abinader had promised it in his 2020 campaign and that the promise had been "incumplida desde hace casi cuatro años" ("unfulfilled for almost four years").[7]
- The WJC says the Dominican–Israeli Interparliamentary Friendship Group condemned the Dominican Republic's vote in favour of reconsidering Palestine's request for full UN membership.[1]
- On the margins of the inauguration of the Costa Rican president in May 2026, Abinader met the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog. They discussed Israeli co-operation in agriculture, irrigation and business development, and the 6th Latin American Forum against Antisemitism, to be held in Santo Domingo in August.[8] Days later the foreign ministry designated Hezbollah and the IRGC as terrorist organisations; the Israeli ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, called it "an important decision".[4]
Arms, police and intelligence
- SIPRI records three EL/M-2106NG air-search radars, ordered in 2010 as part of a $35 million deal and delivered in 2010–11, and an M-2082 air-search radar delivered in 2010.[9]
- In May 2025 Noticias SIN reported that the government, through the Ministry of Defence, had contacted Israeli authorities with a view to strengthening surveillance of the border with Haiti.[10]
- In December 2025 the Israeli embassy's security division honoured the Ministry of Defence, the Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia, the National Police, the drug control agency (DNCD), the army and the airport security corps (CESAC) for their co-operation in protecting the embassy. The ambassador, Raslan Abu Rukun, thanked them, and the embassy said it would keep strengthening security co-operation.[3]
Pegasus
In May 2023 Amnesty International's Security Lab, peer-reviewed by Citizen Lab, said the phone of the investigative journalist Nuria Piera had been infected with NSO Group's Pegasus spyware around 20 July 2020, 8 September 2021 and 1 October 2021, when she was investigating corruption involving senior officials and relatives of a former president. It was the first confirmed case in the country. The attorney general's office and the interior ministry told Amnesty that neither had bought or used Pegasus since the current officeholders took office in August 2020.[11] The presidential spokesman, Homero Figueroa, said no agreement between the government and NSO Group was known from 2020 onwards.[12]
Trade
The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics lists the Dominican Republic separately. In 2025 "Israel" imported goods worth $1.5 million from the Dominican Republic (2024: $2.6 million) and exported goods worth $27.5 million to it (2024: $51.7 million).[13]
Migration and aliyah
The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics does not list the Dominican Republic separately; it is included under "other countries".[14]
Political interference
UN voting
The Dominican Republic voted for the General Assembly's endorsement of the New York Declaration on a two-state solution in September 2025.[15]
Jeffrey Epstein
- On 17 June 2013 Epstein offered to pick up Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem in Santo Domingo, and wrote that Ehud Barak, Ian Osborne and Peter Mandelson were "all going to st pete, if you want to meet". Bin Sulayem replied that he would be in St Petersburg on 19 June, leave for Santo Domingo on 21 June and arrive in St Thomas by private plane on 22 June.[16]
- In October 2015 Bin Sulayem told Epstein he would fly to Santo Domingo on 22 October "to open our Free zone".[17]
- In March 2011 Epstein asked Peggy Siegal for details of renting a place at the Casa de Campo resort for friends.[18] In February 2012 she invited him to lunch there, writing that she was staying "with Emilia and Pepe Fanjul".[19]
See also
- Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to Haiti
- Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to Cuba
- Jewish, Zionist and Israeli connections to Guatemala
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 World Jewish Congress, Community in the Dominican Republic worldjewishcongress.org, accessed 21 October 2026.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores (Dominican Republic), Gobierno estudia posibilidad de trasladar embajada dominicana en Israel de Tel Aviv a Jerusalén mirex.gob.do, 30 October 2020 (Dominican government-side).
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Embajada de Israel reconoce apoyo de instituciones dominicanas en materia de seguridad El Nuevo Diario, 16 December 2025.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Dominican Republic designates Iran's IRGC, Hezbollah as terrorist organizations The Jerusalem Post, 13 May 2026.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores (Dominican Republic), Canciller Roberto Álvarez recibe solicitud del Centro Israelita de la República Dominicana mirex.gob.do, 28 October 2020 (Dominican government-side).
- ↑ Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Diplomatic Missions Abroad: Status of relations mfa.gov.il, archived 5 August 2011 (Israeli government-side).
- ↑ Llaman a Luis Abinader cumplir promesa de traslado Embajada de RD a Jerusalén Periódico Evidencias, 6 May 2024.
- ↑ Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores (Dominican Republic), Abinader se reúne con el presidente del Estado de Israel, Isaac Herzog, y con el subsecretario de Estado de EEUU, Christopher Landau, en Costa Rica mirex.gob.do, 9 May 2026 (Dominican government-side).
- ↑ Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Arms Transfers Database SIPRI, trade register for Israel as supplier, 1950–2025, data generated 20 October 2026.
- ↑ Cobertura desde Israel: RD establece contacto con gobierno israelí para fortalecer frontera dominico-haitiana Noticias SIN, 27 May 2025.
- ↑ Amnesty International, Dominican Republic: Pegasus spyware discovered on prominent journalist's phone amnesty.org, 2 May 2023 (critical).
- ↑ Emilio Guzmán M., El gobierno niega vínculos con compañía creó Pegasus Hoy, 4 May 2023.
- ↑ Central Bureau of Statistics (Israel), Foreign Trade Statistics Monthly, Table D1: Trade Countries – Imports and Exports CBS, December 2025 issue (library copy) (Israeli government-side).
- ↑ Central Bureau of Statistics (Israel), Statistical Abstract of Israel 2024, Table 2.55: Immigrants, by period of immigration, country of birth and last country of residence CBS, 2024 (Israeli government-side).
- ↑ United Nations General Assembly, Recorded vote on A/80/L.1/Rev.1: Endorsement of the New York Declaration on the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution, 12 September 2025 (copy hosted by Al-Quds Al-Arabi).
- ↑ Email thread between Jeffrey Epstein and Sultan Bin Sulayem, 16–17 June 2013, EFTA00704295, US Department of Justice, Epstein Files release, Data Set 9, justice.gov, accessed 21 October 2026.
- ↑ Email from Sultan Bin Sulayem to Jeffrey Epstein, 12 October 2015, EFTA00714352, US Department of Justice, Epstein Files release, Data Set 9, justice.gov, accessed 21 October 2026.
- ↑ Email from Jeffrey Epstein to Peggy Siegal, 5 March 2011, EFTA01837524, US Department of Justice, Epstein Files release, Data Set 10, justice.gov, accessed 21 October 2026.
- ↑ Email thread between Peggy Siegal and Jeffrey Epstein, "Come for lunch", 18–19 February 2012, EFTA01842135, US Department of Justice, Epstein Files release, Data Set 10, justice.gov, accessed 21 October 2026.