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Home > Publications > WJC Report > Summer 2006 > WJC Around the World 
WJC Policy Council Chairman Israel Singer traveled to Argentina for a series of meetings and special events celebrating the 70th anniversary of the DAIA, the Delegacion de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas, Argentina's Jewish political representative body. The main event was attended by more than 600 people, including top leaders of the Argentine government, the business and intellectual world, prominent members of the Jewish community. The keynote speakers of the evening celebration were Argentine Vice President Daniel Scioli and Israel Singer. In his address, the Vice President said that anti-Semitism is an aggression not only against the Jews but against Argentina as a whole. Argentine President Dr. Nestor Kirchner met with a representative Jewish delegation which included, among others, Singer and LAJC President Jack Terpins of Brazil. Singer called on President Kirchner to continue to search for those responsible for the unsolved 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, in which 29 were killed, and the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community headquarters, in which 85 people died. Finance Minister Roberto Lavagna, who is credited with authoring Argentina's economic recovery plan, discussed the participation of nongovernmental organizations in welfare programs for the poor with the delegation. Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio, and the Jewish group exchanged views of the joint Jewish-Catholic program to feed the poor during Argentina's economic crisis, and agreed to undertake further joint programs. Before leaving, the group was taken by the Cardinal to the vestry of Buenos Aires' main Catholic cathedral, where they viewed a prominently placed Holocaust memorial.
LAJC President and President of the Jewish Confederation of Brazil (CONIB), Jack Terpins, headed a delegation of the newly-elected CONIB Executive to a meeting with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva who expressed special friendship for the Jewish community, and wished the CONIB leadership success in its endeavors. WJC leaders raised the plight of small Jewish communities in Latin America with President George W. Bush in a meeting in Brasilia. Israel Singer, along with LAJC President Jack Terpins and LAJC Inter-religious Affairs Chairman Rabbi Henry I. Sobel, told Bush, who was in the region promoting democracy, that the way Jews are treated can be “a kind of barometer, a bellwether of when things are going badly in South America.” The WJC leaders expressed concern for the Jews in Venezuela, in the face of social unrest fanned by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. “The need for a scapegoat is more keenly felt,” said Sobel. Late last year, the WJC protested when Venezuelan police raided a Jewish school in Caracas, causing uproar among Jews across Latin America.
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