Being Jewish and being Israeli: The experience of Argentina

The memorial to the victims of the bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992. Photo credit: Carlos Zito – CC BY-SA 3.0

During my appointment in Buenos Aires during the worst years of dictatorship and repression (1976-1980), I learned about this ambiguous distinction embodied by Israel’s ambassador, Ron Nergard, in Argentina’s capital. When Argentine Jewish citizens were victims of repression (kidnapping, torture, disappearance, murder, fraud, expropriation)^{many of them for the simple reason of being Jewish, Israeli diplomats were invariably absent from meetings held with leading European and American diplomats on the issue of human rights violations. Only Rabbi Marshall Meyer attended these meetings. He was a regular guest at the French Embassy. He sought to draw the attention of the American media and organizations (especially the American Jewish Committee) to the disappearances, fully aware of the powerful and dangerous anti-Semitic currents that were flowing through Argentine society at the time (the armed forces, the police , the nationalists). and Catholic extreme right). Local Jewish organizations and the Israeli embassy refused to recognize and publicly condemn these currents, even in response to the disappearance of Israeli citizens. and the kidnapping and torture of the newspaper’s owner and editor The OpinionJacobo Timerman, father of the Argentine Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hector Timerman (2010-2015) during the presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015).}

Jacobo Timerman described the long and painful anti-Semitic interrogations he was subjected to in a book published in 1981.^{. The testimony of French people of Jewish origin who disappeared for a while after being arrested at home by armed military and police and released after being tortured by their captors is categorical: being Jewish is always an aggravating factor.. Israel’s ambassador, Ron Nergard, said he was not the ambassador of the Jews, but the ambassador of Israel, and refused to issue visas to Argentine Jews who were considered too far left on the spectrum political and therefore the most dangerous. , to the despair of the local representative of the Jewish Agency, Daniel Recanati. Unlike the concern expressed by Prime Minister Ben-Gurion about the increase in attacks against the Jewish community in Argentina after a coup deposed Peron in September 1955, which led to the sending to Buenos Aires from the head of the Israeli secret service, Isser Harel. , the Israeli authorities hardly showed such solidarity during the repression of many Argentine Jews by the military dictatorship. However, among the disappeared were several Israeli citizens, including the daughter of an officer of the Delegation of Argentine Israeli Associations (DAIA), who was 17 years old when she was kidnapped from her home, not forgetting the Jewish leaders subjected to arbitrary and brutal imprisonment (among them Amnòn Rudin of the Jewish Agency for Israel, Jaime Pompas, former president of the Jewish Community of Córdoba ).}

It was not until March 1978 that an Israeli newspaper (the March 29 issue of Haaretz) first mentioned the issue of missing Jews in Argentina^{. When Israel’s foreign minister went to Buenos Aires in 1982, he refused to receive a delegation of parents of the disappeared; this happened again in 1984, when the former president of Israel, Yitzhak Navon, came to participate in the 11th congress of the local Jewish organization DAIA (Delegation of Argentine Israeli Associations). The DAIA, which Jacobo Timerman equates in his memoirs with the Judenrathe criticized the Jewish Movement for Human Rights, led by Rabbis Mariscal Meyer and Herman Schiller, for their role in supporting the disappearances, seeing their initiatives as a threat to the Jewish community. Shulamit Aloni (1928-2014), former Minister of Education and Culture in Yitzhak Rabin’s government (1992-1993) and member of parliament, told the Haaretz newspaper on May 24, 2006 that he had never gotten the Knesset to debate the sale of Israeli weapons to the Argentine military junta. It is estimated that during the dictatorship (1976-1983) about one billion dollars in Israeli armaments were sold to Argentina.. Federal Police Inspector Peregrino Fernandez, a repentant torturer, revealed during his public confession that the Economic Counselor of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, Herlz Inbar, gave counterinsurgency courses to heads of state major of the Argentine army during the dictatorship. We cannot rule out that these arms contracts may have curbed any thought of intervention, if it actually existed, by the Israeli government to help the Jewish victims of the military junta’s repression. There is no doubt, however, that the embargo on arms sales to Argentina imposed by the Carter administration (1977-1981) due to human rights violations prompted Israel and the European countries – Germany and France in particular – to satisfy the requests presented by the Argentine army. . This undoubtedly sent an ambiguous message to the junta and weakened the effectiveness of the main consulates’ actions on behalf of their missing citizens. Clearly, Israel was not alone in this. These arms sales strengthened the junta’s grip on power at a time when military leaders were diplomatically frustrated by their paradigm, the United States, which had trained these same military leaders.}

The main expressions of support and solidarity with the South American Jewish community during the years of military repression came from American Jewish organizations, especially the American Jewish Committee, which sent a delegation to Buenos Aires in 1979 and 1981 The solidarity committees that met in Israel in 1977, especially to promote a boycott of the World Cup recommended by the writer Marek Halter, are mainly due to the efforts of the Argentine exiles. These committees did not receive the slightest support from the right-wing parties in Israel, nor from the Israeli Communist Party, which had been particularly active in the situations in Chile and Uruguay in 1973 and 1974, respectively. Anti-Semitism, on the other hand, is invariably denounced and denounced by Tel Aviv when it works against Israeli interests.

This is explained by Marco Aurelio Garcia, former member of the Brazilian Communist Party, exiled in Chile and France during the military dictatorship, and one of the founders of the Workers’ Party, one of the mentors of Brazilian diplomacy since 2002. of Israel:

“Isn’t Israel a terrorist state when it bombs UN schools and kills dozens of children? If it’s not terrorism, it’s certainly a war crime. We must stop this hypocritical diplomacy. Jews must get out of the habit of considering any criticism as an attack on the existence of Israel. Israel constantly supported the apartheid regime in South Africa. It constantly supported the dictatorship of Somoza in Portugal. Don’t come to me now to the good ones”.^.

When explosions destroyed the Israeli embassy on March 17, 1992, and the headquarters of the Argentine Jewish association AMIA on July 18, 1994, causing a total of 114 deaths and 542 injuries, violent anti-Semitism within the police forces and the Argentine army was overlooked. Instead, Israel pointed the finger at Iran and Hezbollah. Once again, the agenda aligns with Israeli interests.

Patrick Howlett-Martin is a diplomat, with dual nationality (French and British). He is the author of brazil The contested rise of a regional power (2003-2015), Paris, 2016.

notes

1.) About 1,500 Jewish citizens of Argentina were victims of repression between 1976 and 1980 and since then registered as missing. ↑

2.) Amnon Rudin of the Jewish Agency, Jaime Pompas, former president of the Jewish community of Córdoba, Mauricio Weinstein, son of the president of the Commission of Disappeared Jews created in Buenos Aires in 1978. ↑

3.) Jacobo Timerman, Nameless prisoner, cell without numberUniversity of Wisconsin Press, 1981. ^

4.) Testimony of Anita Jarolavsky, arrested on April 29 and released on May 7, 1976, and Raymond Franck, arrested on May 9 and released on May 24, 1976. ↑

5.) An Israeli journalist, Marcel Zohar, published a book (in Hebrew) on this issue in 1990: Let my people go to hell: treason in blue and whiteCitrin Publishing, Tel Aviv. ↑

6.) Aharon Kleiman, A double-edged sword. Israeli defense exports in the 1990s(pp. 233-235), 1972. ^

7.) Between 1950 and 1970 it is estimated that 2,808 Argentine officers were trained in the United States, mostly at the School of the Americas (then in the Panama Canal Zone) and at Fort Benning (Georgia). Two generals of the military junta, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola, were among the apprentices. ↑

8.) Monthly interview PeepNo. 30, 2009. ↑