As the example of Israel’s Relations with Argentina’s Neo-Nazi Junta, 1976-1983, proves, Arms Sales and Military Alliances took Priority Over Saving Jews
.jpg)
https://tinyurl.com/4u3xkj7h
The
mainstream Zionist narrative is that the Holocaust was ‘an unshakable justification’ for
the establishment of a Jewish state.[1]
Yet as the case of Argentina under the military Junta proved, the only
guarantee against a revival of anti-Semitism is opposition to fascism and
racism. Zionism simply reproduces European anti-Semitism as
anti-Palestinian racism.
If we follow the logic of Zionism,
all victims of racism should flee their persecutors and set up their own
racially based states.[2]
If this were adopted universally then it would mean the triumph of racism. The
Zionist answer to racism is to replicate it not fight it.
It is one of the most powerful and enduring myths that Jews hold
onto that if times get bad and anti-Semitism raises its ugly head, Israel, as a
Jewish State, will provide them with a refuge. What happened in Argentina
proves that Israel will provide no refuge from fascism.
The Commemoration Plaque to the Jews Murdered in the Kielce Pogrom
It was understandable, in the wake of the Holocaust, when Jews
returning from the concentration camps to Poland were met with pogroms, at Kielce in Poland over 40
Jews died and a similar number injured, that the idea of a Jewish state proved attractive.
The Holocaust represented the defeat of the Left and Anti-fascism in Europe. The failure of the Communist Parties in Eastern Europe to confront anti-Semitism, in Poland and Czechoslovakia they actually stimulated it, led to Zionism being an attractive solution. However Zionism was yet one more false messiah.
Israel is a far-right settler state and it is natural that
it seeks allies amongst similar regimes. During the years of Apartheid in South
Africa it became the closest military partner of the Apartheid regime.
Prime Minister John Vorster had been interned for his openly
pro-Nazi sympathies during the war but that did not prevent the Israeli Labor government
of Yitzhak Rabin inviting him on a state
visit. Nor did it prevent the Holocaust
Propaganda Museum (Yad Vashem) inviting
him in as an honoured guest.
Israeli Prime Minister Rabin and future PM Menachem Begin greet the Apartheid Prime Minister & former Nazi John Vorster in 1976
Little more than 3 months ago I wrote an article
asking why Israel was supporting a law, proposed by the heirs to Hitler’s
allies, the Ustaše, which prevented Jews in Bosnia standing for election.
The answer is simple. Israel has no interest in combatting anti-Semitism
or defending the rights of Jews in the diaspora. Instead they redefine anti-Zionism
as anti-Semitism. Where there have been anti-Semitic attacks such as the murder
of four Jews in the Hypercacher Supermarket in Paris, the advice
of Israeli leaders was to leave and go to your ‘natural’ home in Israel.
Avi Gabby - Leader of the Israeli Labor Party's Advice to Victims of the Terror Bombing in Pittsburgh was to Emigrate to Israel and become racists like him
When 11 Jews were murdered at the Tree of Life synagogue in
Pittsburgh, Avi Gabbay, leader of the Israeli Labor Party told the survivors to
emigrate to Israel. The Jewish Forward accused
him of having a ‘tin ear’.
Zionism has never had an interest in
opposing anti-Semitism because without anti-Semitism there is no Zionism and no
‘Jewish’ State. As Theodor Herzl, the
founder of Political Zionism observed in his Diary:
In Paris... I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I
now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognise the
The
Junta
In 1976 the Argentinian army staged a coup. Nothing unusual about that, especially in
Latin America. But this was a coup with a difference. It was
not merely a right-wing coup but a coup by officers imbued with an anti-Semitic hatred
who were convinced that a variation on the International Jewish Conspiracy, the
Andinia Plan, was
being waged against Argentina and they were its defenders. At the centre of this
plan were Marx, Freud and Einstein!
The far-right had a long history of infiltration and
involvement in the Argentinian military and in 1976 their time had come.
Immediately they came to power anyone on the left was arrested and tortured.
All told at least 30,000 Argentinians were murdered. It is estimated that up to
12.5% of their victims were Jewish despite Jews being less than 1% of the Argentinian
population.
An
article
Jews targeted in Argentina's dirty war referred to a
196-page
report presented to the Spanish judge Baltazar Garzán in Madrid on the
sufferings of Argentina's more than 300,000 Jews during the dictatorship that
lasted from 1976 to 1983 also reveals that at least two international Jewish
organisations requested support from the governments of Brazil and the United
States in case an evacuation of Argentine Jews proved necessary.
Anyone who has heard about the Zionist Campaign for Soviet Jewry
in the 60s, 70s and 80s would be familiar with the massive publicity and the
appeals to peoples’ heart strings about how Russian Jews were being denied the ‘right’
to emigrate to Israel. Of course this ‘right’
did not entail the right to go where they wanted. The Zionists leaders campaigned
incessantly to persuade the United States to refuse them admission and for non-Zionist
welfare bodies like the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and the Joint Distribution Committee not
to aid them if they didn’t want to become settlers in Israel. [See
Refugee Status for Soviet Jewish Immigrants to the United States, p.425]
Menachem Begin even made a special trip to the United States to lobby Ronald Reagan to refuse entry to Soviet Jews. No effort was spared in the Cold War Soviet Jewry Campaign. Allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ were rife. Yet no one alleged that Soviet Jews were being tortured to death or murdered, which was the case in Argentina. Why then the Zionist silence when it came to Argentina?
Jacobo Timerman
Jacobo Timerman
The most famous victim of the Junta was Jacobo Timerman, the editor of
the liberal paper La Opinion. As his NYT obituary recounts:
Early on April 15, 1977, 20
armed men broke into Timerman's home… He was held in three clandestine houses
of confinement and two regular prisons for more than a year, during which he
was beaten, given electric shocks to his genitals, put in solitary confinement
under humiliating circumstances and interrogated endlessly.
It was
only Timerman's high-profile which elicited a diplomatic response from Israel. According to Raanan
Rein and Efraim Davidi,
"Israel's official
policy can be described as an effort to show the junta that it had committed a
serious error in arresting the journalist but to avoid rousing international
public opinion against the regime and, even more important, to avoid
attributing antisemitic proclivities to the leaders of the dictatorship."
The Israeli government secretly pressured Argentina to free Timerman, but
it did not make public demands as it did on behalf of Jews in the Soviet Union.[3]
When
Timerman asked Israel Gur Arieh, the Director-General
of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, why there was
a massive public campaign over Soviet Jewry whilst in the case of Argentina there was no campaign, he answered:
Very simple: the Soviet Union was
in the enemy camp and Argentina was
a strategic ally.
Timerman ‘wondered if that was why Argentina could torture prisoners because they were Jews’.
Yishayahu Anug, director-general
of Israel's Foreign Ministry, wrote:
"I would say not that
Timerman is crucial for us but rather that we are crucial for his release. It
is not an emotional issue but one of cool judgment. The formula consists in
creating the sense that his release is vital for Argentina's image and also for
Israel and the positive development of our relations with them." Rein
& Davidi, "Exile of the World" (2010), p. 12]
On at least one occasion the former Undersecretary of State
for Human Rights in the Jimmy Carter administration, Patricia Derian, discussed arms sales to
Argentina with the Israeli government and received a
response that Israel does not discuss
issues of security and that arms sales fall into that camp... Derian told them that the
weapons in question were used to kill Jewish prisoners. [4]
As
Ben Gurion had laid down, when there is a choice between
the Jews and the Jewish State, the latter wins out.
Relations
between Israel and Argentina flourished after the Junta took power despite the Junta’s virulent
anti-Semitism.[5]
This was under both the Labor Alignment and Likud governments of Yitzhak Rabin and Menachem Begin.
Argentina had long been Israel’s
largest trading partner in Latin America. When in 1978 the US decided to restrict arms sales to the
Junta on human rights grounds, Israel stepped into
the breach. One-third
of Israel's total arms sales of $1.2 billion in 1980 went to Argentina and El
Salvador alone. By 1981, Argentina was buying 17% of
its arms from Israel.
The
perception was that ‘the Jewish state’s concern for the disappeared was
subordinated to political and commercial considerations.’[6]
Marcel Zohar of Yediot
Aharanot reported that Israel preferred friendship with Argentina over
saving Jews.[7]
Israel’s Silence Over the Persecution
of Argentinian Jewry – A Mirror Image of Zionist Behaviour During the Holocaust
Not content with refusing to campaign
against the Junta’s anti-Semitism, in March 1981 the American Jewish Committee sent
a delegation to General Viola, just before his inauguration as President, in
an effort to improve the Junta’s
reputation. Delegation members were impressed with his knowledge of Jewish
affairs. Eichmann too was reputed to have a good knowledge of Hebrew and
Yiddish.
Israel Shahak, a noted Israeli human rights activist
and a holocaust survivor, wrote that
‘in the face of this
well-known anti-Semitism in Argentina the State of Israel, the Jewish state, the defender
of the Jews, made not a single protest...’ [8]
A report presented to Spanish judge Baltazar Garzán revealed that HIAS had secured a promise from Brazil to provide temporary asylum for 350,000
Argentine Jews and that Rabbi Alexander Schindler of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations had obtained a promise from US State Department officials in 1976 to provide 100,000 visas to Jewish refugees from
Argentina if necessary.[9]
The Knesset Refused
to Even Debate the Plight of Argentina’s Jews
Shulamit
Aloni, the founder of Ratz, Israel’s Civil Rights Party,
described how she tried to get the situation in Argentina debated in the Knesset:
‘Not only did they shut me up, but the
late Knesset member Yigal Horowitz threatened me
personally and ordered me not to open my mouth.’
She was
told that the subject could not be debated despite the fact that the parents of
children who had disappeared came asking members to raise their plight.[10] Prime
Minister Yitzhak Shamir made sure that ‘in the name of security’
the issue was not aired in the Knesset.[11]
Menachem
Savidor, the Speaker, refused to allow a
debate until the parents appealed to the Supreme Court. Only in late June 1983 did the
Knesset hold a debate. Six months later the Junta was toppled.[12]
Savidor admitted that he had prevented a Knesset
debate on the situation of Argentina's Jews at the Government's request in
order not to harm Israel's military links with Argentina.[13]
Members of the Knesset presented eight urgent
motions regarding the issue between 1976 and 1981. None were approved for
debate. Years later the Knesset debated the issue and formally demanded
extradition of killers of Jews. It acted following reports that 40 former
officers of the military Junta were arrested in
Argentina on the orders of President Nestor Kirchner, who was prepared to extradite them to Spain. MK Yossi Sarid (Meretz) proposed the
move, saying that it was a
“hypocritical discussion since all the facts have long
been known and the government of Israel never once lifted a finger and cooperated with
the Argentine murders because of their interest in arms deals.” [14]
Sarid told how ‘In Argentina,
Israel sold even the Jews for the price of its
immediate interests.’[15]
In 1985, President Raul Alfonsin cut off military contact with Israel entirely.
What Israel did in Argentina was no different from what the Zionist movement did
during the Holocaust.
While the Jewish factor has an effect on Israeli foreign policy, it is not a decisive one nor the main one taken into account in the policy calculations of the Israeli government. The heritage of David Ben-Gurion determined that ‘in our relations (with foreign countries) we should be guided by one criteria…and that is whether it is good for the Jews.’ [16]
The ‘Jewish factor’ refers to
actual living Jews whereas ‘the Jews’
means Israel as the collective Jew. Ben-Gurion believed that
‘the state constitutes the highest goal of Zionism and the Jewish people…whose mere
existence serves the needs of the Diaspora.’[17]
On
2 April 1982 the Falklands war broke out between Britain and Argentina. Israel became Argentina’s major arms supplier. It supplied Argentina with emergency
replacement military equipment. After its defeat, Argentina spent more than $1 billion on arms from
Israel.
Like a Victorian grave robber, Israel called for the murdered
Jews who were not wanted when they were alive to be brought to Israel for
burial. Israel’s last service for the Junta occurred in 2017. It
ignored an Interpol warrant and refused to extradite to Argentina an Israeli citizen, Teodoro
Gauto, accused of war crimes. Gauto, a
non-Jew, came to Israel from Argentina with his Jewish wife.[18]
The person who brought the Junta’s
anti-Semitic terror to the world’s attention was Jacobo Timerman,
a liberal Zionist and editor of La
Opinion. Arrested and
tortured from April 1977 onwards, Timerman was released under house arrest a year later
and expelled to Israel in October 1979.
At
his ‘trial’ before a military tribunal, every session of Timerman’s
interrogation began with the question, ‘Are you a Jew?’ [19]
Whilst interrogating non-Jews was a job, interrogating Jews was a pleasure. A
political opponent could be turned, but a Jew remained a Jew forever.[20]
The Buenos Aires Herald told how Jews took it
for granted that if ‘they go to prison, they will be treated far more
harshly than Gentiles.’ [21]
Jewish prisoners were given ‘a double dose of torture and harassment’
which ‘was known to the Israeli embassy which maintained relations with
“moderates” within the military junta.’
[22]
According to Timerman's
son, Héctor,
Israeli Ambassador Ram Nirgad visited their house, after he had been
released and asked Timerman to sign a letter saying that he was
well-treated. Timerman refused and said he'd rather remain in detention.[23]
Once in Israel,
Timerman came under attack. The Jewish Chronicle’s
correspondent in Argentina,
Jose Smilg,
an apologist for the Junta and Argentine’s Jewish leadership, alleged
that it was Timerman’s
fight for human rights which was ‘inspiring
a rash of anti-Semitic articles in the Argentine press.’
[24]
He also alleged that La Opinion had ‘supported the Left wing of the
Peronist Party’. It was a lie. Timerman’s real offence was that it had
protested against acts of anti-Semitism. The Jewish community organisations
stayed silent because, according to Nehemias Resnizky,
the former President of Daia,
Argentina’s Judenrat ‘that would create a confrontation with highly powerful
sectors of the army.’
Ma’ariv withdrew from agreeing to publish Timerman’s
book Prisoner Without a Name, Cell
Without a Number because it was ‘not interesting’ and would not
sell. It became an international best seller.
The ‘Jewish’ state was more important to
the Zionist lobby in the US than Argentina’s Jews.
Timerman was attacked by right-wing Zionists who
believed he ‘asked for what he got’.[25]
US neo-cons argued that the Junta enjoyed good relations with Israel,
which was ‘an important supplier of arms
and military equipment to Argentina.’
This was cited as evidence that the Junta could not be called anti-Semitic. Once again Zionism
and Israel was used to kosher anti-Semitism.
During a visit by former Israeli Deputy
Prime Minister Yigal Allon,
Timerman told him that he had not been humiliated by
the torture but by the ‘silent complicity of Jewish leaders.’
[26]
This was equally true of Israeli leaders. Israel normally takes great pride when its citizens
are given international awards. Not so when Timerman received the Golden Pen of Freedom Award.
The venue was shifted from the Knesset to the Hebrew University.[27]
In
Israel Timerman wrote The Longest War, criticising Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. He
became ‘almost persona non-grata’. Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister,
Yehuda Ben-Meir, described his
book as ‘a collection of calumnies and lies arising from his own
self-hatred.’ [28]
When Timerman died, on 11 November 1999 he received glowing
obituaries internationally but Israeli papers ‘provided only terse reports
of his death.’ [29]
The Jewish Disappeared
In 1988 Dr Marcus Weinstein set up the Asociación
de Familiares de Desaparecidos Judios for Jews who had disappeared.[30]
Marcus’s son Mauricio was the only Israeli citizen to be murdered.
The
relatives of the Jewish Disappeared wrote that they were
‘deeply
disappointed by the fact that the Israeli state, the
international Jewish organisations and the Jewish leadership in Argentina are taking no interest in this subject’.
Weinstein told how ‘Israel's
indifference to the matter began back during the days of the dictatorship, and
has continued to this day.’ [31]
Marcel Zohar,
Yedioth Ahronoth correspondent in Argentina between 1978 and 1982, described how Israel’s
government refrained from processing immigration applications from left-wing
Jews.[32]
The unwritten instruction was to refuse any help to Jews defined as ‘too
left-wing.’ [33]
And who did the defining? The Junta.
In 2002 the Israeli Government set up a committee to investigate the
disappearance of Jews but it took care not to offend the Argentinian Government.
Its interim report omitted Israel's
role during the dictatorship. It also rejected the demand to take legal action
against the officers who tortured and killed Jews. Weinstein recalled how:
We and other Jewish families knocked again and again on the door of the embassy, and we were always sent away…. Was this a policy that was dictated from Israel, was it a policy that was decided upon at the embassy … I did not find even a single word about this in the report.[34]
The
anti-Semitism of the Junta set it apart from other repressive regimes that
Israel co-operated with.[35]
The Israeli state had a choice between selling military
equipment to the Junta or waging a campaign against the torture and
murder of Argentina’s
Jews. It chose the former.
Mothers of the Disappeared
Daia and Amia – The Judenrat of Argentinian Jewry
Renee Sofia Epelbaum,[36]
mother of three desaparecidos and one of the leaders of the Mothers of the
Plaza de Mayo,
accused Daia of silence and extreme caution towards cases
of arrests and disappearances of Jews.[37]
In sharp contrast, the paper Nueva
Presenda expressed its support for the cause of the
Mothers and the Jewish desaparecidos. Daia even tried to improve the image of the Junta abroad, ‘particularly in the USA’.
Shockingly ‘prominent sections of the Jewish community’ even pressurised
Israeli representatives ‘not to interfere in Argentina's
internal affairs’.[38]
The Mothers of the Disappeared at their regular spot in Buenos Aires
After
the fall of the Junta,
Amia held its 90th anniversary celebration:
A group of women whose children disappeared during the Argentine military regimes crackdown on Left-wing opponents shouted ‘Nazi-Nazi’ at those attending the Congress here of Amia …
The guest of honour was Mr Itzhak Navon, formerly President of Israel. The mothers attempted to prevent his entrance to the Conference as well as that of the Israeli Ambassador to Argentina. [39]
Zionism had not changed since the Nazi era. Geoffrey Paul,
the then Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, described how a senior American diplomat
denounced to him ‘this spineless Jewish community...’ But it wasn’t the
community but its Zionist leadership that was spineless. What Argentina demonstrated was that an anti-Semitic regime
will be a creature of US imperialism. In other words, a regime with which
Israel is only too willing to do business with.
Zohar recounted the struggle between Danny Rekanati of the Jewish Agency,
who tried to help Jews escape and Israel’s ambassador, Ram Nirgad who argued that people defined by the Junta as subversive should not be rescued.[40]
Nirgad’s
successor, Dov Schmorak,
recalled how the Junta’s
interior minister, General Albano Harguindeguy congratulated him on how well he had done ‘not
to allow the main leaders of the Jewish community in Argentina to intervene on his [Timerman’s]
behalf.’ Israeli representatives had discouraged his
family from any public campaign on the grounds that this would hinder his
release. This later extended to blackmailing Timerman not to go ahead with a series of six articles
in Ma’ariv detailing his experiences.
Menachem Begin had previously stated that ‘Israel has to help every persecuted Jew…. They can
associate with Matzpen in Israel for all I care.’
Yet once in power, Begin reneged on this.[41]
Above all Israel avoided attributing anti-Semitic proclivities to the Junta’s
leaders.[42]
The New York Times has always been a propagandist for the US State Department - the 'defector' was bribed to confess
When Timerman’s son Hector became Argentina’s Foreign Minister, Israel raised the 1994 bombing of the Amia centre and the alleged connection with Iran. Timerman told Israel’s ambassador:
Israel has
no right to ask for explanations. …Israel does not speak for the Jewish people…
Jews who live in Argentina are
Argentinian citizens. The attack was against Argentina, and Israel’s desire to
be involved in the matter only gives ammunition to anti-Semites who accuse Jews
of dual loyalty. [43]
Bergoglio, the future Pope Francis enjoying a joke with President General Videla. He was reputed to be a strong supporter of the Junta
In
May 2013 Videla died in prison having been convicted of the
murder of 31 prisoners and the kidnapping of children:
‘To this day...
local Jewish leaders are embarrassed by the role played by Jewish
organizations or by their avoidance of action during the years of dictatorship.’
Daniel
Muchnik told Ha’aretz how ‘Throughout this awful period of
oppression, most Jews... had a problem. This was the relations of Israel with the dictatorship.’
The Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires ‘kept a stance of non-intervention in
internal affairs’.[44]
The aftermath of the fascist bombing of the Jewish community centre that killed nearly 100 Jews. Israel preferred to exonerate the culprits and blame Iran/Hezbollah instead
The Bombing of Buenos Aires Jewish
Community Centre
In 1980 when bombs exploded in Argentine synagogues and Jewish schools Israel said nothing but when a bomb exploded at the AMIA Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires on 18 July 1994, it lost no time in blaming Iran and Hezbollah. Evidence has since emerged that points to a deliberate attempt by the US and Israel to deflect attention away from the real culprits, Israel’s anti-Semitic friends in the Argentinian state.
In an August 1994 cable to the State
Department, US Ambassador James Cheek boasted of a ‘steady campaign’ the
embassy had waged that ‘kept the Iranians in the dock where they belong.’
In 2007 Cheek admitted that ‘To my knowledge, there was never any real
evidence’ of Iranian involvement. Bill Brencick, chief of the political section in
the US embassy from 1994 to 1997, acknowledged in a 2007 interview that
suggestions of Iranian responsibility were based solely on a ‘wall of
assumptions’ and that there was ‘no hard evidence’.[45]
In 2014 a former police spy, Jose Alberto Perez, who had infiltrated
the Jewish community in Buenos Aires on behalf of Argentina’s Federal Police, revealed to two investigative
journalists, Miriam Lewin and Horacio
Lutzk, that he had been
ordered to turn over blueprints to the AMIA building to his Federal Police case officer.
Perez
became consumed by guilt about having enabled the bombing. He had since married
a Jewish woman. Perez was convinced that the building plans were
used by the real culprits behind the bombing. His revelations prompted a series
of articles in the Argentine press.
Perez also
revealed that those who had employed him as a spy were motivated by the same
anti-Semitic beliefs that had led the military dictatorship to single out Jews
during the “dirty war”. His case officer, “Laura”, had ordered him to find out
as much he could from the Jewish community about the “Andinia Plan.”
Another key factor was the role of the state
intelligence agency, SIDE, in influencing prosecutor, Judge Juan Galeano. Not only was a special unit within SIDE tasked with
overseeing Galeano’s investigation, another SIDE unit
operated directly inside his office.[46]
As Moreno and Termine reported in La Prensa
(28.11.94.) the SIDE unit
handling the AMIA investigation
was notorious for its hatred of Jews. The group consisted of veterans of the
dirty war known as the ’Cabildo’ group, inspired by the magazine of the same name.[47]
There
has been no resolution of this case because the Argentinian secret state still wields enormous power. Both
Israel and the US preferred to divert attention from the real culprits, who
were the same forces who had tortured and murdered Argentinian Jews
That Israel, even after the collapse of the Junta with which it was such close friends, could attempt to deflect blame away from Argentinian neo-Nazis onto Iran and Hezbollah, demonstrates that the ‘Jewish’ State’s military and foreign policy interests will always trump the needs of diaspora Jewish communities.
[1] Yechiam Weitz, Jewish Refugees and Zionist Policy during the Holocaust, p. 351.
[3] Rein & Davidi, "Exile of the World" (2010), pp. 9–11
[4] OPINION, Israel, the dictatorship and Avivi's advice, Hector Timerman, https://tinyurl.com/yjyzpuav
[5] Raanan
Rein & Efraim Davidi, Exile of the World: Israeli Perceptions of Jacobo
Timerman, p. 6.
[6] Latin
American Weekly Report 17 February 1984, cited by Bishara Bahbah, ‘Israel's Military Relationship with
Ecuador and Argentina,’ Journal of
Palestine Studies, Vol. 15:2, 1986: 94.
[7] Aharon
Kleiman, ‘A Double-Edged Sword’, p. 80. The Jerusalem Post, 27.1. 84.,
cited in Israeli Foreign Affairs, April 1985. Marcel Zohar, p. 31 .
[8] Stanley
Heller, p. 76.
[9] The Guardian, 24.3.99. ‘Jews targeted in
Argentina's dirty war,’ https://tinyurl.com/set6o72
[10] Rein & Davidi, Exile of the
World: Israeli Perceptions of Jacobo Timerman, pp. 6-7.
[11] Shamir was
Speaker of the Knesset from 1977-1980. ‘Israelis demand state open up past ties
to Argentine junta’, +972 Magazine, 22.3.16. https://tinyurl.com/w49zgtz
[12] Rein &
Davidi, Exile of the World: Israeli Perceptions of Jacobo Timerman, p.
7.
[13] Marcel
Zohar, Let My People Go To Hell, cited in ‘Israel Denied Shelter To
Leftwing Argentine Jews During Junta Rule,’ Hadashot, 28.9.90. See
letter from Tony Greenstein, The Guardian
19.2.02, ‘Argentina - Proof that
Israel is no Refuge from Anti-Semitism,’
29.11.09. https://tinyurl.com/br93g4t Tony Greenstein, ‘The Scandal of the Jewish
Disappeared,’ Tribune, 6.4.00.
[14] ‘Knesset
demands extradition of Argentinean Junta officers,’ Ha’aretz, 29.7.03, https://tinyurl.com/y37gxjzp
[15] ‘Yes, I Accuse,’ Ha’aretz, 31 August
1989, [Hebrew] cited in Yitzhak Mualem, Between a Jewish and an Israeli Foreign Policy, fn. 39; MK Yair Tzaban in Divrei Ha-Knesset, 29.6.83., pp. 2810-12 [Hebrew].
[16] Mualem,
‘Between a Jewish and an Israeli
Foreign Policy,’ Jewish Political Studies Review 16:1-2 (Spring 2004), citing Kleiman, A Double-Edged Sword, p. 170.
[17] Ibid.
[18] John
Brown, Ha’aretz 3.5.17, ‘Israel
Refuses to Extradite Alleged War Criminal Wanted in Argentina’ https://tinyurl.com/rg43gyb
[19] Ibid., p. 112.
[20] Ibid.,
p. 66.
[21] Ibid.,
p. 136.
[22] JC 25.5.84., ‘A White Book’ Leader.
[23] Héctor Timerman, “Israel,
la dictadura y los consejos de Avivi,” Página12, 30.7.01. https://tinyurl.com/yjyzpuav Rein & Davidi, Exile of the World (2010), p. 16. 4.1.14.
[24] JC.
14.8.81 ‘Timerman Stirs Jewish Discord’.
[25] JC
31. 7. 81.
[26] Timerman,
Prisoner Without a Name, Cell without a number, p. 78.
[27] Rein & Davidi, ‘Exile of the World’, p. 17.
[28] Ibid.,
pp. 3, 19-20.
[29] Ibid.,
p. 23.
[30] Association of Relatives of the
Disappeared Jews, https://tinyurl.com/y2k62vap
[31] Aryeh
Dayan, ‘A disappearing act,’ Ha’aretz
3.1.03. https://tinyurl.com/bdp2eazj
[32] Marcel
Zohar, Let My People Go to Hell - Blue
and White Betrayal, p. 31 (Tel Aviv: Zitrin, 1990) [Hebrew].
[33] Mario
Sznajder and Luis Roniger, p. 363, fn. 35. Mayer and Graetz didn’t have
diplomatic immunity and endangered themselves and their families. When the
Junta stepped down, Mayer received the highest Argentine decoration, the Order
of General San Martin.
[34] Aryeh
Dayan, ‘A disappearing act,’ Ha’aretz
3.1.03 https://tinyurl.com/bdp2eazj
[35] Aaron
Klieman, Israel’s Global Reach: Arms Sales As Diplomacy, p. 12, New York,
1985,.
[36] See
Rene de Epelbaum, 77, Argentine Protester, 9.2.98, https://tinyurl.com/y46m4squ
[37] ‘Behind the Headlines a Nightmare
Continues in Argentina,’ JTA, 22.5.86., https://tinyurl.com/vewx6nj8
[38] Mario
Sznajder and Luis Roniger, p.
356, ‘From Argentina to Israel: Escape, Evacuation and Exile,’ Journal
of Latin American Studies, Vol. 37:2 (May, 2005), Cambridge University
Press.
[39] ‘Bitter
Protest by Grieving Mothers’, The JC, 23 March 1984.
[40] Zohar,
pp. 19-24
[41] Sznajder
and Roniger, p. 356, citing, Aryeh Dayan, 'Thanks to Menachem Begin,' Kol
Ha’ir, 9 Sept. 1987, p. 34 [In Hebrew].
Matzpen was a small, socialist anti-Zionist group in Israel.
[42] Rein
& Davidi, “Exile of the World”
(2010), pp. 9–11.
[43] Gabe
Fisher, ‘Israeli ambassador upbraided in Argentina’, ToI 6.2.13. https://tinyurl.com/y3rhcsje
[44] Ha’aretz 22.5.13. ‘Videla and the Jews
of Argentina: The Closing of a Painful Circle,’ https://tinyurl.com/sr5nzub
[45] Gareth
Porter, ‘How a police spy’s stunning testimony threatens the official
US-Israeli AMIA bombing narrative,’ The Greyzone, 26.7.20, https://tinyurl.com/yckkaha3
[46] Sergio Kiernan, ‘Waiting for justice:two
years after the AMIA bombing,’ AJC, 1996, https://tinyurl.com/y8u5mesp
[47] Gareth Porter, LA
Progressive, ‘AMIA
Bombing: New Evidence Points to Federal Police’, 29.7.20. https://tinyurl.com/bdehdn2u
Great post Tony. Off topic, but can you do a post looking at the Lebanese Civil War ? It often gets blamed on Palestinians so it would be good to hear different tales on it.
ReplyDeleteI learn more about the history and polatics of the Jewish community from this writer than any where else
ReplyDeleteExcellent piece.
ReplyDeleteIsrael's infatuation with antisemites of various stripes remains mind boggling.