The executive director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Jonathan Greenblatt, considered that the impunity in the case of the attack on the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) in Buenos Aires, which turns 30 this Thursday, is due to a lack of political interest.
"There was an administration here in Argentina that was unwilling to denounce the Hezbollah killers and their paymaster, Iran, who directed these attacks because of political considerations here. The laws in Argentina make it difficult to try people in absentia,” Greenblatt said during a press conference in Buenos Aires.
With this, he referred to the Memorandum of Understanding with the Islamic Republic of Iran, signed in 2013, during the Government of Cristina Fernández (2007-2015), which supposedly had the objective of bringing closer positions to advance with the investigation.
Despite its approval by the Argentine Congress, the measure was judicialized and, in May 2014, the unconstitutionality of the law that approved the pact was declared, which never came into force, because the Iranian Parliament never ratified it.
Last week, the Milei Government announced that they will present a bill to carry out 'trials in absentia' of those accused of serious crimes, which includes terrorist acts such as those perpetrated in 1992 against the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and in 1994 against the AMIA, both attributed to Iran and the Lebanese Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah, in which more than 100 people were killed and some 550 injured.
«It is not just a legal issue, it is a moral issue with political ramifications when your sovereignty is violated and you choose to do nothing about it. There is a direct line between 1992, 1994 and October 7. The same people and motives, committing the same type of crimes with impunity,” said Greenblatt, referring to the Hamas massacre in Israeli territory.
For his part, the president of the Delegation of Argentine Israeli Associations, Jorge Knoblovits, considered that terrorism has the ultimate objective of attacking democracy and warned of an anti-Semitic awakening after October 7.
«Terrorism has a much more important objective, which is democratic values. After the Shoah (Holocaust), the leaders of the most important Jewish communities in the world thought that anti-Semitism was, at least, controlled, but after October 7 we realized that it was dormant and disguised as anti-Zionism," he warned.
The national director of the ADL chaired the J7 Global Working Group against antisemitism, representatives that bring together the seven largest Jewish communities in the world - the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Argentina, Germany and Australia.
All reported increases in hate speech and anti-Semitic attacks, and Greenblatt even commented that the “presumption of Zionism” as racist has taken root in left-wing political circles.
«Zionism began 3.000 years ago and is a Jewish value. The idea of Jews returning to where we come from is not a political project that was started by Benjamin Netanyahu; It is a fundamental aspect of our faith. “We suggest that we need to do a better job of explaining that when you say you are anti-Zionist, you are deeply anti-Jewish,” Greenblatt concluded. Aurora and EFE