BUCHAREST – Deputy Prime Minister Yariv Levin on Wednesday called on Romania to move its embassy to Jerusalem.
“The Romanian flag deserves to be raised in the city of the great kings David and Solomon,” he told a joint session of the Chamber of Deputies and Senate.
Levin thanked the Romanian Parliament for condemning Hamas after the October 7 massacre. Israel was fighting to defend democratic values, women’s rights, and freedom, he said.
Not all the seats were filled, and quiet conversation ran through the chamber as speakers stepped up to the podium. Among the attendees was a group of schoolchildren seated in the gallery.
Levin’s message to Europe’s leaders was blunt: “Follow the Romanian way. Be Romanian.”
Levin has blocked Supreme Court appointments and moved to remove the attorney-general as part of a judicial overhaul that critics say undermines democratic checks on government power.
MP Silviu Vexler, president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania and co-sponsor of the Solidarity Day legislation alongside a representative of Romania’s German minority, was one of the speakers. He addressed Levin by name and invoked his late father, Prof. Aryeh Levin, an Israel Prize-winning linguist, who he said had taught that you cannot speak before you understand and cannot understand before you listen.
Romanian Chamber Speaker calls Israel closest ally in region
Before the plenary, Chamber Speaker Sorin Grindeanu had welcomed Levin in a smaller meeting with deputies.
Grindeanu, who led a parliamentary visit to Israel in February, said Romania considered Israel its closest ally in the region.
“Our friendship and our cooperation are, from my point of view, stronger than ever,” he told the Israeli delegation.
Senate President Mircea Abrudean opened the formal session with a warning about antisemitism spreading across Europe.
“Democracy must never capitulate in the face of extremism,” he said.
To illustrate the bilateral relationship, Levin said direct flights he had helped establish in 2019, during his time as tourism minister, led to an increase in visits to Israel by Romanians to more than 120,000 a year. Israel is now Romania’s third-largest tourism destination, he said.
The warm reception came amid political turbulence in Bucharest. Romania has been without a functioning government since May 5, when a no-confidence vote toppled Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan, leaving the country in caretaker status with no clear successor yet named.
The exhibition Her Pain, Her Power: Voices of October 7th, dedicated to Israeli women affected by the Hamas attack, opened after the session in Parliament. Schoolchildren who had attended the plenary were among the first to walk through it.