Argentina at the limit

Editorial

Latin America was once a haven for Nazis, former Nazis and neo-Nazis, whose ideologies or criminal records were conveniently overlooked by the extreme-right juntas that ran several of the countries there. Times have changed but, in some cases, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” The left is now comfortably ascendant in places like Evo Morales’ Bolivia, Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s Brazil and the Argentina of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and her late husband, Nestor. But criminals who attack and kill Jews may have as safe a haven in today’s “progressive” Argentina as they ever did in the heydays of junta-led Latin dictatorships.

A stunning report released this week alleges that Argentina has offered to stifle investigations into two deadly antisemitic terrorist attacks in order to improve relations with Iran. The idea of improved relations between the two countries should be an affront in itself. Iran should be the pariah of the world, led as it is today by apocalyptic theocrats who kill their own people and threaten genocide against Jews. In our current world, however, Iran finds more international friends than its prospective victim, Israel. With South American leaders like Chavez still standing by their man in Tripoli, no matter how many of his own people he slaughters, it seems no depth is too low. But the Argentine government, if this report is true, may have just reached it.

In 1992, a bomb went off at the Israeli embassy in Argentina, killing 29 people and injuring 242. In 1994, at the AMIA Jewish community centre, in Buenos Aires, another explosion killed 85 and injured more than 300. These crimes have not been solved, but it is common knowledge that the trail leads directly to Iran. Everyone believes this, it seems, including Argentina and Iran, who are allegedly working on a behind-the-scenes deal to forget both bloody episodes if they can jumpstart a bilateral trade relationship that once reached $1.2 billion a year. The offer to sweep justice (and the blood of the dead) under the carpet in the interest of international trade with a terrorist regime was allegedly made through Syrian interlocutors and conveyed to Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

There is another wrinkle. The Argentine publication Perfil, where the story appeared, alleged that Foreign Minister Hector Timerman – the first Jew to hold the position – is directly involved in the negotiations. If this seems preposterous, it should be remembered that Jews in positions of authority have, on occasion, ingratiated themselves with their superiors by acting in ways that have harmed the Jewish people. A cynical political leader would certainly see an advantage in having her Jewish foreign minister do such dirty work, perhaps knowingly putting Argentina’s Jewish population in the position of criticizing such foreign policy only in conjunction with condemning one of their own.

To his credit, Timerman recommitted his country to bringing justice to the cases just two weeks ago at the March 17 commemoration of the violence, reminding his audience that Kirchner, at the United Nations last year, called on Iran to allow Iranian citizens suspected in the attacks to be brought to justice in a third country. As of our press time, his ministry had not commented on the recent report, and so it remains to be determined whether the official Argentine policy toward the mass murder of Jews is an unquenchable thirst for justice or a pragmatic willingness to swap justice for pesos. If the latter is proved to be the case, then it will become a matter for other countries. The attacks in Buenos Aires may seem like an internal Argentine matter, and perhaps they were as long as the international community was confident that efforts were being made to see justice finally served. But if the government of Argentina demonstrates a willingness to grant amnesty to those who kill people – it shouldn’t matter that they were Jewish – by the dozens, this must morally become a matter of international concern, just as the slaughter of civilians by Libya, Syria, Iran and Yemen is a matter that goes beyond internal affairs.

What we face now is the possibility that the pro-Iranian, pro-Libyan rhetoric of some South American leaders is manifesting into actual actions that hearken back to the days of the juntas, when Jew-killers knew they could find a safe haven in parts of Latin America, if nowhere else. If this is the case, Canadians and the rest of the world need to convey our abhorrence.

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