Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai is planning a documentary about the July 18, 1994 AMIA Jewish community centre bombing in Buenos Aires that left 85 dead and 300 wounded.
It was the worst terrorist attack ever in Argentina, which has Latin America’s largest Jewish community, and one of the deadliest anti-Semitic attacks since the Holocaust. Two years earlier, a bombing at Israeli Embassy murdered 29 people and injured a further 242.
In 2006 prosecutors Alberto Nisman and Marcelo MartÃnez Burgos formally accused the Iranian authorities of directing Hezbollah to carry out the attack and last year Nisman published a 502-page indictment accusing Iran of establishing terrorist networks throughout Latin America.
Yet Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in January 2013 signed a memorandum with the Iranian government that would set up a “truth commission” of international legal experts to analyze evidence from the bombings.
Argentina’s Jewish community, international Jewish groups, Israel, and the United States protested the agreement and Argentinian Foreign Minister Hector Timerman this past February confessed in an interview that negotiations between Argentina and Iran over the AMIA bombing had made little headway.
Kirchner now says she is
ready to abrogate the country’s memorandum with Iran and has asked Jewish
leaders to prepare an alternative proposal, “one that is different than the
current Memorandum of Understanding, but within the margins of international
law and due process that will allow the investigation to move forward.”
As of now no one has ever been arrested, and Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham even accused Israel of framing the country for the suicide attack, and called Nisman “a Zionist.”
One venue for Gitai’s film will be the Paraguayan city of Ciudad del Este, which shares a border with Argentina and Brazil, an area known as the “Triple Frontier.” The region, a crossroads of drug and arms trafficking, money laundering, counterfeiting and smuggling, has become a haven for terrorists, according to American intelligence.
In 1997, Argentina’s minister of the interior, Carlos Corach, described the region as “a sanctuary” for crime and terrorism; it has been a primary source of support for Hezbollah, Hamas and other extremist groups.
Argentina has always been a fertile field for anti-Semitism. Juan Peron, Argentina’s long time dictator, was an admirer of Italy’s fascist leader Benito Mussolini. After World War II many Nazi war criminals found refuge in Argentina, the notorious Adolf Eichmann being the best-known example.
Several generations of army officers were trained and modeled after the German army and the military junta that ran the country from 1976 to 1982 considered Jews an “alien” people, corrupting the nation’s “Christian soul” and disproportionately involved in left-wing activities. Jews were a prime target of the military government, with some generals being obsessed with the “Jewish question.’’
During this period, an estimated 15,000 political prisoners were “disappeared” (that is, killed). Despite comprising less than one per cent of the country’s population, Jews made up around 12 per cent of the victims of the military regime.
In his book Prisoner Without A Name, Cell Without a Number, journalist Jacobo Timerman, who was imprisoned by the junta for reporting the atrocities of the military regime’s “dirty war,” described the anti-Semitism of his jailers.
They repeatedly questioned him about Israeli schemes to send military forces to Argentina in order to implement the “Andinia Plan,” a supposed Zionist conspiracy to occupy a broad section of southern Argentina and establish a second Jewish state there.
His son Hector is now Argentina’s foreign minister, so things have taken a turn for the better.
As of now no one has ever been arrested, and Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham even accused Israel of framing the country for the suicide attack, and called Nisman “a Zionist.”
One venue for Gitai’s film will be the Paraguayan city of Ciudad del Este, which shares a border with Argentina and Brazil, an area known as the “Triple Frontier.” The region, a crossroads of drug and arms trafficking, money laundering, counterfeiting and smuggling, has become a haven for terrorists, according to American intelligence.
In 1997, Argentina’s minister of the interior, Carlos Corach, described the region as “a sanctuary” for crime and terrorism; it has been a primary source of support for Hezbollah, Hamas and other extremist groups.
Argentina has always been a fertile field for anti-Semitism. Juan Peron, Argentina’s long time dictator, was an admirer of Italy’s fascist leader Benito Mussolini. After World War II many Nazi war criminals found refuge in Argentina, the notorious Adolf Eichmann being the best-known example.
Several generations of army officers were trained and modeled after the German army and the military junta that ran the country from 1976 to 1982 considered Jews an “alien” people, corrupting the nation’s “Christian soul” and disproportionately involved in left-wing activities. Jews were a prime target of the military government, with some generals being obsessed with the “Jewish question.’’
During this period, an estimated 15,000 political prisoners were “disappeared” (that is, killed). Despite comprising less than one per cent of the country’s population, Jews made up around 12 per cent of the victims of the military regime.
In his book Prisoner Without A Name, Cell Without a Number, journalist Jacobo Timerman, who was imprisoned by the junta for reporting the atrocities of the military regime’s “dirty war,” described the anti-Semitism of his jailers.
They repeatedly questioned him about Israeli schemes to send military forces to Argentina in order to implement the “Andinia Plan,” a supposed Zionist conspiracy to occupy a broad section of southern Argentina and establish a second Jewish state there.
His son Hector is now Argentina’s foreign minister, so things have taken a turn for the better.
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