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AMIA Bombing - 15 Years Without Justice

On 18 July 1994, a bomb exploded in front of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killing 86 people and wounding several hundred more, and devestating the Jewish community. The exact circumstances of the attack remain unclear and the prepetrators and their backers are still at large.

SAY HELLO TO
IRAN’S NEW
MINISTER OF DEFENSE

Interpol has issued a red notice following the Argentinean Government’s call for the arrest of the man who was one of the masterminds of the bombing of the Jewish Community Headquarters in Buenos Aires which killed 85 people.

He denied it.

He now denies that Iran is developing a nuclear bomb.

AMIA MASSACRES: NO JUSTICE FOR THE VICTIMS

Bernardo Kliksberg

Although fifteen years have passed, no one has ever been jailed for the 86 people murdered and the 300 injured in the massacre at AMIA, a cornerstone of the Jewish community in Argentina. Nobody is paying the price for having murdered humble teachers, social workers and secretaries, who formed the backbone of the century-old institution’s team, which provided far-reaching support, educational and spiritual services. The progress made in the investigation, the detention orders, the Supreme Court’s recent involvement in the proceedings, and many other steps are laudable; however, fifteen years down the line, there is still no justice for the worst anti-Jewish terrorist attack carried out in recent Latin American history.

Lessons for the future must be taken from the event:

Never Forget

The blessed memory of the victims, and the country’s dignity itself, demands that Argentinean society not give in until justice has been served. The relentless work carried out, with the public’s support, by all of the family members’ organizations and the community’s central institutions – DAIA and AMIA – has been exceptional, selfless and extremely courageous. They have toiled so that the cause be given full attention, the innumerable police and legal mistakes be brought to light, and so that there might finally be some answers regarding who planned the murders from the outside, and what the inside connections look like.

The work will have to continue day in and day out, and indeed the effort must be stepped-up.

Samuel Pisar, a Majdanek, Auschwitz and Dachau survivor, advisor to John F. Kennedy and currently well-known figure in American society, tells how when the doors to Auschwitz’s gas chambers would close shut, those trapped inside had only three minutes left to live. And what would they do with those final three minutes? Many scratched the words “never forget” into the walls with their fingernails. If those buried under the rubble of the AMIA building had had the time to leave a similar message, surely they would have called for society to not rest until justice is delivered.

Facing The New Forms Of Anti-Semitism

In Ahmadinejad’s mind, Pisar’s mother and little sister Frieda never existed. Pisar tells: “When the destruction of the Bialystok Ghetto in Poland began, only three members of my family were still alive: my mother, my little sister, and myself, thirteen years old at the time. My father had been executed by the Gestapo. My mother asked me to wear long pants, as she thought that if I looked like a man, slave work might save me. ‘And you and Frieda?’ I asked. She didn’t reply. She knew that their fate was sealed. As they and the other women, children, elderly and sick were whisked away to the cattle cars, I was unable to take my eyes off of them. Little Frieda was holding on to my mother with one hand, and in the other she held her favorite doll. Both of them stared back at me before disappearing from my life forever”.

Ahmadinejad has stated that Pisar’s little sister, the million and a half Jewish children murdered and the six million exterminated never lived, and that the Holocaust never took place. With the same cold blood, he has called the young Iranians who denounced the massive electoral fraud and took to the streets “a group of lowly infiltrators”. And in that same fascist tone he decided that Neda, the young assassinated by his paramilitary men, had been killed by foreign journalists so that they would have an anti-regime news story to report.

In spite of all of this, Ahmadinejad, the new global leader of anti-Semitism, who has called for the destruction of the State of Israel and brutally represses his people, is “dressed-up” in Latin America and seen as a “light version” of himself by certain sectors that call themselves “progressive”. Who wins when a friendship with a fascist despot, with active ties to global neo-Nazi groups, is cultivated? Is it not those very people in the region who are marginalized, oppressed and excluded?

The cold-blooded murder of Neda in the streets of Tehran and the systematic denial of the Holocaust have the same root, this new fascism, which the Argentinean judges also tie to the AMIA massacre.

The Increase In Racism And Xenophobia Demands A Response

In a world of growing unemployment and social tension, ultra-right political forces have found a climate conducive to Anti-Semitism and racism, and have exploited this in order to gain ground.

In the last European Parliament elections, the late neo-Nazi Haider’s party won 13% of the votes in Austria, double what it won in 2004, while in Great Britain the neo-fascist BNP won two seats for the first time ever. In Hungary, the party that idolizes the Hungarian regime that cooperated with the Nazis, Jobbik, garnered 422,000 votes and three seats, and in Italy, the most anti-immigrant law in recent memory – which considers undocumented immigrants to be delinquents and was strongly condemned by the Church and the European Union – has been passed.

It is clear that in this climate, Jews and minorities are seen as scapegoats and blamed for the economic and social problems. A survey of minorities in the 27 countries of the European Union found that 94% of those interviewed had been the object of discrimination. Attacks are raining down on the gypsies in Italy and Hungary. In the latter country, the Jobbik leader, Krisztina Morvai, virulently attacked Hungarian Jews a few days ago. Furthermore, at the celebrated metal shoe memorial by the Danube, which serves as a reminder of the massive execution by firing squad of the Jews, who were subsequently thrown into the river, pig footprints were recently found. In another recent survey, a third of Europeans considered Jews to be responsible for the global economic problems, and many more believed that they had control over global finances, a belief that is eerily reminiscent of the Zar Russian secret police’s old, sinister anti-Semitic hoax: “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”.

What Can We Do Now?

Demanding justice for the AMIA, denouncing Argentinean and Latin American manifestations of fascism and defending the discriminated and persecuted Gypsy people are all ways to contribute to the absolutely necessary international fight against xenophobia.

What is the best way to remember those who were sacrificed on this fifteenth anniversary? Along with celebrating their lives – which were cut-short – and their valiant personal, familial and social legacy: by not giving a single inch when it comes to the vigorous and incessant demand that those responsible be definitively tried and sentenced. In his final letter from within the burning ghetto, Mordechai Anilewicz, the 23 year old commander-in-chief of the Warsaw Ghetto’s historical rebellion, wrote to the Jewish people and the world in his best letter, telling them that that fight, which they knew would end in their deaths, was in “defense of our and your dignity”.

Today, defending the honor of the dignified Argentinean people, and of a world in which the demons of anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia have been let loose once again, amounts to telling the 86 souls whose names are inscribed in the walls of the reconstructed AMIA building – which is once again working tirelessly for good causes – that we will not give in until there is justice for them.

Read the WJC coverage of the 14th Anniverary of the AMIA bombing