Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro “Teddyboy” Locsin Jr. yesterday said despite some foreign policy differences between the Philippines and the United States, Manila is one with Washington in the matter of fighting terrorism and antisemitism.

“Whatever foreign policy differences we have with the US, on fighting Islamic fundamentalist terrorism we stand foursquare with the US and with the great state of Israel with which we have historic ties of blood and friendship. We will fight antisemitism to the very end of it,” Locsin tweeted yesterday.

President Rodrigo Duterte has shifted the direction of Philippine foreign policy from its former US-centric configuration by cultivating warmer relations with other world powers such as Russia and China.

Locsin said the recent bombing of Pittsburgh synagogue that left 11 people dead unites the Filipino people with Jews everywhere.

“Decent people everywhere grieve over the synagogue bombing in Pittsburgh. And condole with families of Jewish-Americans killed there and the US government. The ugly motivation is antisemitism which all decent mankind condemns. PH stands with Israel and US in fighting antisemitism,” Locsin said in a separate tweet.

He noted the Philippines took in Jew refugees during the Second World War to save them from Nazi persecution and supported the proposed creation of Israel in the United Nations.

The Philippines was the lone Asian country, out of the 33 nations, that voted in favor for the establishment of the State of Israel.

Likewise, the Philippines welcomed about 1,200 European Jews who arrived in the country from 1937 to 1941, escaping the Nazis only to face another bloody war under Japanese occupation.

Many of the Jews came from Austria and Germany, as the Nazi crackdown against them intensified.

Unable to immigrate to countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States, thousands of Jews escaped to other places such as Shanghai in China, the Dominican Republic and the Philippines.