A personal look at the 25 years that have passed since the bombing of an Argentine Jewish center that killed 85 people, with no progress toward justice.
It was
probably the most surreal situation in all my years as an activist for Jewish
causes. A mere 48 hours after arriving in Argentina, a country in which I knew
nary a soul and did not speak the language, I found myself at the residence of
President Carlos Saúl Menem, ensconced by his side in a seat of honor at an
emergency meeting of his full cabinet, called for the express purpose of
convincing me that I, only lately arrived from New York, was wrong.
The
background: a few days earlier, on July 18, a ferocious car-bombing of the
headquarters of AMIA—the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association, the largest
Jewish community center and social-service agency in Buenos Aires—had killed 85
people and wounded 300 more. It was the largest single attack against a Jewish
community in the Diaspora since the Holocaust. It was also, as the historian
Martin Kramer would argue presciently in Commentary a few months
later, the opening of a new phase in jihadist strategy: a shift from
anti-Israelism to war against Jews everywhere, a form of anti-Semitism “so
widespread and potentially violent that it could eclipse all other forms of
anti-Semitism over the next decade.”
In one
instant, I knew I had to go. Two years earlier, on March 17, 1992, terrorists
had also bombed the Israel embassy in Buenos Aires, resulting in 29 dead and
many more injured, and in the intervening years not a single person had been
apprehended. When terrorist activity is left unpursued, it sends a message:
you’re a soft target, and can be attacked with impunity.
Which is
exactly what had now happened again in Argentina, even more explosively. On
July 18, CNN’s graphic coverage of AMIA’s shattered seven-story building
revealed the broken bodies of men and women amid the smoking wreckage of the
blast as, outside, screaming friends and relatives tried desperately to push
through police lines for word of their loved ones.
I asked
a colleague who ran the Chabad synagogue in my neighborhood if his counterparts
in Buenos Aires could help me find my way once there. I also asked Rudy
Giuliani, then the mayor of New York City, and Mario Cuomo, then governor of
New York State, if they could provide signed letters to President Menem
supporting my trip—and urging the Argentine government to find, arrest, and
punish the perpetrators. They obliged within a matter of hours.
In
traveling to the scene, I hoped to make some impact on the morale of Argentine
Jewry, to bring them the message that the Jewish people everywhere cared about
them and were horrified by the murderous assault against them. And I hoped
personally and publicly to underline the message contained in the letters from
the mayor and governor.
What I
didn’t necessarily expect then, what I didn’t have time to consider before I
left, was the possibility of an even more outrageous cover-up than the one that
followed the 1992 bombing. Today, after the 25th anniversary of the AMIA
bombing, justice still has not been served.
But let
me begin from the beginning.
BUENOS
AIRES: JULY 20-24, 1994
Upon
arrival in Buenos Aires on July 20, I was met by the Chabad rabbi, Avraham
Benchimol, who drove me to the scene at AMIA. Though I tried to steel myself, I
was sickened by what I found. The AMIA building in the crowded city center had
been reduced to a pile of contorted metal, concrete, and brick. The ruins were
being poked and prodded by rescue workers engaged in the grisly task of
searching for human remains—and the increasingly hopeless hunt for survivors.
All around I could hear cries of anguish as workers emerged with plastic bags
containing scraps of clothing and pieces of flesh.
As
Israeli soldiers and Argentine demolition experts pressed the search for
survivors, the loud noise from cranes, picks, and shovels shattered our
ears—except for once on that first day when the rescue workers’ sensors needed
absolute quiet in order to detect even the faintest sounds of life, and a
sudden silence fell as if the world had stood still.
Rabbi
Benchimol dragged me away from the scene to AMIA’s makeshift headquarters
several blocks away, where families were gathered awaiting news. They sat in
somber clutches, hoping against hope, dreading the news that would confirm
their fears. With the rabbi as my translator, I stayed there for many hours,
offering what little healing I could, otherwise just keeping watch.
Two
meetings with victims’ families from that day have stayed with me most vividly.
One was with Ana Blugerman, an employee of AMIA, whose twenty-one-year-old
daughter Paola Czyzewski had accompanied her to work that fateful morning.
Sobbing, at first unable to speak, Ana haltingly explained that, moments before
the blast, she had asked Paola to fetch coffee from a machine down the hall.
When the explosion hit, Ana, badly shaken, had somehow managed to escape the
building, but Paola had not been seen since, and hope was fading fast. At that
very moment, word was expected from the morgue about a just-recovered female
corpse, badly burned and unrecognizable.
“It’s my
fault,” Ana kept repeating in a shattered voice. Later a morgue worker would
inform the family that the corpse in question was not Paola. Momentarily
relieved, they struggled not to raise their hopes too high; the next day would
indeed confirm that their child had died.
In the
second encounter, I was sitting with the Averbuch family when they learned that
the body of their daughter Yanina, a social worker at AMIA, had been
identified. Absorbing the news, Yanina’s father, Dr. Mario Averbuch, and her
twelve-year-old brother Jonathan sat facing each other with their knees interlocked,
unspeaking, shaking and sobbing in unison.
Beyond
the anguish, there was also great fear that the terrorists would strike again,
that a Jewish school or synagogue would be the next target. And there was a
secondary fear as well: that, as wary Gentiles took steps to keep a safe
distance between themselves and such proven targets, the Jewish community of
Buenos Aires would become effectively quarantined—in a word, ghettoized.
And then
something strange happened. As I made my rounds among the families, I was
approached by an elegant-looking man who, guiding me to a quiet alcove where we
wouldn’t be overheard, explained that as one who lived part-time in Buenos
Aires and part-time in New York, he knew of my activism and wanted to help me.
Cautioning me never to refer to him by name in public, he said: “I have little
trust in the Jewish establishment here. I do not believe they are willing to
press our government to pursue the truth about the bombings. But I have some
influence in Argentina and excellent contacts with people in government and the
media. Would you like me to arrange a meeting with the president?”
He was
Baruch Tenembaum (as I’m now permitted to say): teacher, professor, interfaith
activist, humanitarian, a founder of the International Raoul Wallenberg
Foundation, and much more. Stunned, I immediately gave my assent, overjoyed to
have found not only an ally but one as convinced as I that, without sustained
pressure and protest, the murderers would never be exposed.
The
following morning, I visited several hospitals where many victims of the blast
had been taken. Some were badly wounded and only just clinging to life; for
others, the devastation was more mental and psychological than physical, as
with one uninjured but traumatized woman, Rosa by name, who lay mute and
motionless. A nurse explained that she had been walking in front of the AMIA
building with her five-year-old son Sebastian when the blast hit. Though the
mother had emerged physically unscathed, a piece of shrapnel had pierced the
boy’s head, killing him instantly.
I also
recall vividly the agony of Angel Kreiman, a Conservative rabbi and a wonderful
man. (The Conservative movement was strong in Argentina, though unfortunately
its rabbis were largely shunned by their Orthodox colleagues.) Angel’s wife,
Susy, worked at AMIA helping people find employment. When I saw him that night,
he and his daughters were sitting in the temporary building, waiting fearfully
for news. We sat together, sometimes conversing in short bursts. When, three
days later, I ran into Angel just before flying home, he said tearfully that he
had still not received word concerning his wife. I promised I would call the
minute I reached New York. By the time I did, Angel and his children were
already sitting shiva.
Later
that afternoon on my second day, there was a huge rally in the square near the
annihilated building. In total, 150,000 people turned out for the
demonstration, carrying signs and chanting slogans demanding that the guilty be
brought to justice. President Menem appeared on the podium but did not speak.
When his name was announced, there was an unmistakable chorus of boos.
It was
clear to anyone with ears to hear that the public distrusted Menem to pursue
the terrorists. His administration had made no progress on the prior attack on
the Israel embassy, in whose wake the security services had shown a puzzling
indifference to highly credible warnings from various intelligence sources of
likely further assaults against Jewish targets. In general, security in
Argentina remained appallingly lax, both at entry points like the Ezeiza
International Airport and along the traditionally porous borders with Paraguay
and Brazil that for decades had allowed former Nazi mass murderers like Adolf
Eichmann and Josef Mengele to slip back and forth with impunity.
As rain
fell over the demonstration, we began singing Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach’s haunting
melody to the Psalmist’s cry: “I pour forth my heart like water, seeking God’s
favor.” The heavens seemed to be shedding tears with us.
Early
the next morning, a Friday, I had breakfast with Joe Goldman, a veteran Buenos
Aires-based correspondent of UPI and a highly knowledgeable observer of the
Argentine political scene. His co-written book, Curtains of Smoke,
outspokenly critical of the security forces’ investigation of the 1992 embassy
bombing, would appear a few months later.
Our
personal connection—I had performed Joe’s first marriage many years
before—engendered trust between us, and he readily gave me an insider’s
analysis of the bombings. There were concerns among many, he said, about
President Menem’s Syrian connections. Of Syrian ancestry himself, Menem was
raised Catholic by parents who had converted upon emigrating to Argentina.
Meanwhile, Menem’s estranged wife, Zulema, also a member of Argentina’s large
Syrian community, had remained an Alawite Muslim, the same sect to which the
Syrian president Hafez al-Assad belonged.
When
Menem first took over, he had pleasantly surprised people by traveling to
Israel, proclaiming his friendship for the Jewish state, and vowing to protect
Argentine Jews. Yet, in a worrying sign, he also maintained warm relations with
the Syrian dictator.
By then
I was aware of a well-known Washington whistleblower, Martin Edwin Andersen,
who wrote almost a month before the AMIA attack, on a day when President Bill
Clinton was meeting Menem in Washington, urging the former to keep the latter
at arm’s length and warning that Menem was “incorporat[ing] many gangsterish
elements once purged from public life into his own administration. Under Mr.
Menem, Argentina has become a waystation for Middle East terrorists.”
Among
the most prominent of those “gangsterish elements” was Colonel Oscar Pasquel
Guerrieri, whom Menem had appointed as an adviser to the state intelligence
agency (SIDE). During the harsh military regimes in the 1970s and early 80s,
Guerrieri had overseen two detention camps, and in 1985 had been a central
figure in trying to topple Raúl Alfonsin, Menem’s liberal-democratic
predecessor. He did so in part by phoning in death threats to schools
throughout the country, the first of which was a Jewish preschool. (In
describing Guerrieri’s nefarious activities I draw from Andersen’s piece.) That
Guerrieri had been praised and awarded with high positions by Menem—instead of
being jailed for participating in a reign of terror—spoke volumes about the latter’s
political principles.
As for
the Syrian connection and Argentina’s role as, in Andersen’s words, “a
waystation for Middle East terrorists,” Menem had, for example, appointed his
Syrian brother-in-law, Ibrahim al-Ibrahim, as head of security at the international
airport—despite the fact that al-Ibrahim hardly spoke Spanish.
It was
also known that Menem had designated “ZaZa” Martinez—a notorious criminal—as
director of immigration. Martinez had allowed the entry into the country of
Monzer al-Kassar, a Syrian thought to have taken part in planning and executing
a number of terrorist attacks, including the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. Soon
afterward, al-Kassar was granted Argentinean citizenship.
It was
thus beyond doubt that well before the AMIA bombing, Menem and his allies had
helped render the Jewish community vulnerable to attack. In sum, it was highly
likely that a nexus of homegrown “gangsters” and Arab jihadists had planned the
AMIA attack and could be planning further anti-Semitic violence. Even without
proof of the bombers’ specific identities, I believed the best hope for
preventing another tragedy lay in warning Menem that failure to pursue the
perpetrators could sabotage his all-important relationship with Washington.
That day
I’d planned to hold a demonstration to reinforce that message. But to my
surprise I learned that my anonymous stranger/friend had indeed already secured
a meeting with the president, and I was soon taken to his palatial residence
and ushered into the living room.
Menem,
accompanied by a woman translator, smiled broadly and shook my hand with a show
of great warmth—“show” being the operative word. Immediately after shaking
hands he launched into a recital of his agonized emotions over the AMIA attack
and the heavy loss of life of his Jewish compatriots.
I waited
for a pause in this flowery outburst before interjecting, “Mr. President, why
Buenos Aires? Why a second time?” Handing him the letters from Cuomo and
Giuliani, I emphasized especially the mayor’s strongly worded point: “It is
imperative that those who committed the crime be brought to justice. The swift
resolution of this case will send the message that future attacks will not be
tolerated.” Then I asked why the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing in New York could be found soon thereafter while, two years after the
Israel embassy bombing in Buenos Aires, no one had yet been apprehended.
Predictably,
Menem embarked on a defense of his government’s actions. Argentina’s situation,
he said, was shared by many countries victimized by acts of terror—but was I
aware that he had invited an elite Israeli army unit to pick through the rubble
of the AMIA bombing, even though the invitation had angered many powerful
people, especially in the military? Besides, his intelligence services had
already concluded that a terror group, based in southern Lebanon and backed by
Iran, had been behind the earlier bombing.
Menem
shook his head dismissively when I pointed out that, if the terror group in
question operated out of southern Lebanon, then Syria, which at the time
physically controlled the area, was also likely involved. Whether for reasons
of ethnic and familial solidarity, or because Syria was then a “respectable”
member of the world community, he seemed to prefer laying full blame on Iran.
After
again stressing his deep sympathy for the victims, Menem changed the subject by
launching a personal attack on Rubén Ezra Beraja, president of the preeminent
Argentine Jewish community organization DAIA (Delegación de Asociaciones
Israelitas Argentinas). Angrily, he charged Beraja with failing to silence
those who had booed him at the mass rally the day before.
From my
point of view, while it was true that Beraja had not quieted the crowd, his
speech at the rally had been bland; it lacked intensity and emotion, and didn’t
challenge Menem to do more. While listening to the speech I had wondered
whether Beraja was free enough to speak out given that the large bank he headed
was dependent on the Menem government.
Notwithstanding
those concerns, I was determined not to let Menem use me to discredit the
Jewish leader. “I agree with Beraja 100 percent,” I answered. “It was important
for you, Mr. President, to hear the sentiments of the crowd.” And I continued:
“You are accusing Iran of being behind these bombings. Why not investigate the
possibility that they were carried out by Syrians, or by domestic neo-Nazis, or
by some combination of the two?”
“It is
inconceivable that Arabs and neo-Nazis could have worked together,” Menem
rejoined. He seemed especially sensitive to the charge that neo-Nazis were
involved, perhaps because they could have included some whom he had placed in
high intelligence and security positions.
“Why
not?” I asked. “Hitler worked closely with the mufti of Jerusalem. It is
critical that you open a serious and comprehensive investigation, one that
examines all possible variants.”
If Menem
was stung by my impertinence, he didn’t show it. Instead, after more than an
hour of give-and-take, he invited me to attend a full cabinet meeting that same
afternoon. Why so solicitous? Perhaps the letters I gave him from Giuliani and
Cuomo led him to believe that I had more influence than I did. And perhaps
Baruch Tenembaum had convinced him that if he could win me over, I’d be useful in
defusing the criticism of others.
Whatever
the reason, Menem urged my attendance even after I noted that the early onset
of the Sabbath prohibited my showing up at the appointed time. He solved the
problem by offering to hold the cabinet meeting earlier, and—breaking his
previous stipulation that I be the only Jewish leader there—even accepted my
condition that the DAIA president also be allowed to take part.
The
scene when I arrived back at the presidential residence that afternoon was even
weirder than earlier. There must have been 40 men in the living room. Taking me
by the arm, Menem introduced me to the foreign minister, the defense minister,
and then to the interior minister, Carlos Corach—who, the president hastened to
inform me, was Jewish. Next he gestured me to sit beside him in front of the
room. Noticing Beraja standing in the very back, and brooking Menem’s
irritation, I gestured him to come forward and sit next to me.
On a
signal from Menem (who had also encouraged me to take notes), the defense
minister played a video documenting his department’s efforts to solve the
Israeli embassy bombing—efforts, he noted, that had never been made public. The
film reenacted the government’s scenario of how the attack took place and
identified the Iranian-linked Ansar Allah group as the prime suspect. The
president dozed off during the video; roused after it ended, he pressed into my
hands a supposedly confidential report on the embassy bombing.
Realizing
that it was now almost sunset, I explained to a taken-aback Menem that I
couldn’t stay; in fact, the imminent onset of the Sabbath required that I leave
immediately. “Please understand,” I told him, “the Sabbath Queen is very
loving, but very demanding.” “I like people of faith,” he responded, and then added:
“I, too, know some women who are very demanding.”
Over the
next several days, I shared Menem’s report with Israeli security operatives who
were helping to search for the missing. Their unanimous opinion, pithily stated
by one, was that it amounted to “a lot of horse manure.” Every expert I would
later consult verified that the report was basically a compilation of rumors
and speculation, the net result of which was to confirm that the government had
made no serious effort to crack the case.
My final
two days before leaving Buenos Aires were devoted mainly to visiting with
families still anticipating their grim tidings. After the end of Shabbat I sat
with the Goldenberg family, who had set up a permanent vigil at the makeshift
AMIA building, awaiting word about their twenty-year-old daughter Cynthia
Veronica. Like the rest of the family, her brother Damian, a bright-eyed,
long-haired young man, hadn’t been home since the blast six days earlier, so I
joined Abraham Skorka, another prominent local Conservative rabbi, in trying to
convince him to take a break. Our efforts were cut short when news broke that
his sister’s body had been found. Damian sobbed and cried out with fury: “You
are rabbis. You are supposed to have the answers. How could this happen? Tell
me!” Subsiding into silence, he then cried out: “Elohim! Where is God?”
The
worst response from a spiritual leader at such a moment is to intellectualize
about the mystery of God’s will. We held Damian in our arms and tried to
reassure the family that Jews the world over were grieving with them.
On the
final day of my trip, I attended the funeral of Yanina Averbuch and visited the
home of the Czyzewskis as they sat shiva for their beloved Paola. Those painful
encounters reinforced my will to act.
Just
before heading to the airport, I held a well-attended press conference near the
site of the bombing. Determined to make clear that I had not been bought off by
Menem’s reception, I asked the assembled reporters: “If Menem is so sincere
about having done everything to prevent further terrorism after the Israel
embassy bombing, why is the Buenos Aires airport still so unsafe? Why is there
an almost complete lack of security at the border crossings?”
Arguing
that this made smuggling a bomb into the country child’s play, I ventured my
opinion that, until security was improved, the U.S. government should consider
forbidding flights to Buenos Aires. At a minimum, American citizens should be
warned that the country’s security standards were wholly unacceptable.
NEW
YORK: SEPTEMBER 26, 1994
Arriving
home, I was disheartened to learn that the AMIA bombing had not gotten the
attention it deserved in the American media. Fortunately, however, the House
committee on foreign affairs was about to conduct hearings on the matter. And
so, I flew to Washington where I hoped to discuss my trip with Rep. Tom Lantos
(D-Cal), the committee chairman. Lantos was the only Jewish Holocaust survivor
serving in Congress; surely, I thought, in him I would find an ally. But instead
he was aloof, showed only perfunctory interest in my report, and said it would
be impossible for me to participate in the hearings since the list of
speakers—mainly, DAIA president Beraja and Raúl Ocampo, Argentina’s ambassador
to the U.S.—had already been set.
The
hearings did not go well. Ocampo blandly assured the committee that the Menem
government was vigorously investigating the bombing. Beraja was also
disappointing, declining to criticize his government directly. As a result, the
event was largely a squib, eliciting little media interest and accomplishing
nothing toward pressuring the Argentine government to investigate more
seriously.
Painfully,
soon after attending the hearings I would learn that the Appeal of Conscience
Foundation, a Jewish-sponsored initiative, was holding a glittering event at
New York’s Pierre Hotel on September 26 to honor, as its World Statesman of the
Year, none other than Carlos Menem. The announced guest list read like a “Who’s
Who” of American Jewish leadership, featuring the heads of many major
organizations and, to boot, Israel’s consul general.
This was
obscene: while Argentine Jews were mourning their dead and remained fearful of
another murderous attack, Menem, under whose watch two major bombings of Jewish
institutions had taken place, would be feted and in effect tendered a free pass
by the world’s largest Jewish community. The award wasn’t just an affront to
the Jews of Argentina; it could place them at even greater risk.
I
decided to organize a protest outside the hotel and then to attend the event
along with Rabbi David Kalb. Our intention once inside was not to disrupt the
proceedings but to find a way of posing a number of direct questions to Menem
about his promise to crack the AMIA case. Unfortunately, we never got the
chance. Hotel security approached to say they’d been requested by the Appeal of
Conscience leadership to ask us to leave. We replied that we couldn’t in good
conscience accede to their request. As the security team moved to escort us
out, the two of us sat down on the floor.
Sitting
there on the floor, we were subjected to angry insults by dinner guests
denouncing us for being “an embarrassment” and “bringing shame” to the Jewish
people. We retorted that we were there for the families of AMIA victims, and
that they, by honoring Menem, were desecrating the memory of the murdered.
The
police grabbed David and dragged him by the shoulders head first down two steep
flights of stairs and out of the hotel. Two officers, pulling me by the arms,
did the same to me. They then threw us into a paddy wagon. At the local
precinct, we were placed in a holding cell for several hours, fingerprinted,
and—despite the fact that we’d been passive throughout—charged with criminal
trespass and resisting arrest. The media reported that our arrest had been
requested by the Appeal of Conscience Foundation.
In time,
the organized American Jewish community would come to recognize that Menem was
a fraud and would do what it could, in its way, to hold him accountable. But
that day, its representatives erred grievously.
As for
us, while the arrest was brutal, we were heartened by the wide coverage given
our protest both in the Argentine media and in Latin American newspapers in New
York. To that extent, at least, not all of Menem’s efforts to sweet-talk the
American Jewish community had succeeded.
Eight
more months went by with little discernible progress having been made toward
solving either bombing. In all that time only one man, Carlos Alberto
Telleldin, had been detained—though not indicted—in connection with the AMIA
bombing. Telleldin was the last owner of the automobile thought to have
transported the fatal device. His arrest smacked of a stratagem to produce a
low-level scapegoat, thereby shielding higher-ups from suspicion. The
investigation was a sham.
BUENOS
AIRES: JULY 17–19, 1995
I
returned to Buenos Aires for the first anniversary of the AMIA bombing. It was
important, I felt, to express solidarity with Argentine Jews—as well as to
exert whatever further pressure I could on the government. About a month
earlier, it was announced that several Middle Easterners believed connected to
the attack had been extradited from Paraguay to Argentina. But no solid
evidence was subsequently produced against them, and in fact they would be
quietly released once the events marking the anniversary were over.
If I’d
arrived anonymously the previous year, by my second visit I’d become something
of a public figure. Upon my early-Monday arrival, bleary-eyed, I was met at the
airport by reporters and television cameras. Specifying that I’d returned to
demand that the Menem government stop dragging its heels, I headed off to
several emotional meetings with survivors’ families, who after all were the
primary reason for my return.
Then I
plunged into a series of interviews with reporters from several of the
country’s leading newspapers. This time I was accompanied to all of my meetings
by Andy Worms, a bright, indefatigable eighteen-year-old and a member of the
local B’nei Akiva religious-Zionist youth movement. Andy spoke fluent Spanish
and English, and appeared to be absolutely committed to the cause of winning
justice for the victims.
The most
important interview turned out to be the one with La Nación, a leading
Argentine newspaper. The reporter, Adrian Ventura, pressed me hard as to
whether I could concretely prove my assertion that the government was covering
up for the real culprits in the two bombings. I was careful with my words. “I
believe the government has the wherewithal to find the culprits, but does not
have the will,” I said, voicing my expectation that in fact there would be no
thorough investigation, since such an investigation “would reveal that high
officials in the government or those who worked for them would be implicated.”
Noting that the lack of progress in the AMIA case rendered Argentina
vulnerable, I told Ventura: “I believe that Buenos Aires is a city that awaits
its next terror attack.”
Though
Ventura dutifully probed for weak points in my account, he also seemed sympathetic
to my claim of a government cover-up. The front-page news story containing my
accusations ran in La Nación the following morning. In an op-ed piece
published a few days later, Ventura wrote: “What is certain is that after the
rabbi’s visit the volume of the discussion has been raised and is now centered
on the actions of the security forces.”
Menem,
of course, angrily rejected my charges and attacked me personally as “totally
delirious.” Beraja concurred, declaring that he “categorically” rejected my
accusations. Menem then went farther, pronouncing that whatever I had to say
about the investigation had “hurt the Jewish people.” This last comment clearly
seemed aimed at Jewish leaders, a warning that if they knew what was best for
them, they would separate themselves from me and disavow my charges. Andy told
me that Menem’s choice of words wasn’t surprising. In recent days, the
president had begun to differentiate between “Argentine” and “Jewish” victims.
Despite
my having been criticized by Beraja, scores of Jews greeted me warmly at the
morning’s commemorative event. The message from each was essentially the same:
“Thank you for saying out loud what we are unable to say.”
That
evening, in the largest and most official event, almost 2,000 worshippers
crammed into the large Conservative synagogue on Liberdad Street to pay tribute
to the AMIA victims. I was escorted to the event by Abraham Skorka, the
Conservative rabbi with whom I’d counseled grieving families the year before.
Skorka led me to the bimah, filled with many of the top leaders of the
Jewish community, and began introducing me to the assembled dignitaries.
Beraja
stepped forward to shake my hand. Looking him straight in the eye, I said, “You
know I’m right about Menem.” In a voice tinged with disgust, he
responded sotto voce, “Do you want to know what kind of man our president
really is? Did you know that he played golf last night, on the eve of the
anniversary of this terrible bombing?” Privately, at least, the DAIA president
seemed to consider Menem a conscienceless lowlife.
Skorka
then moved to introduce me to a man I’d seen before but couldn’t immediately
place: it was Interior Minister Corach, the Jewish henchman of Menem’s whom I’d
met at the ginned-up cabinet meeting a year earlier. I offered to shake his
hand, but he turned away, creating a noticeable stir on the dais. Skorka
hurriedly steered me from my assigned seat next to Corach (“inadvisable for
political reasons,” he whispered delicately) to one near the synagogue’s rabbi.
I later learned that Corach had been the only political leader to appear at a
memorial program earlier that afternoon, where he’d been roundly booed.
Cantor
David Montefiore’s voice filled the vast hall with the kaddish prayer for the
dead. From the dais I could see young Jonathan Averbuch and his parents, with
whom I had been sitting a year ago as they learned their daughter Yanina’s body
had been identified, and Ana Blugerman, who had said she’d never forgive
herself for sending her daughter Paola on a fatal mission to fetch coffee.
Afterward
on that same evening I went off to a live interview on
the Grandona television program. The show, hosted by Mariano
Grandona, was a mix of personality profiles and investigative journalism à
la 60 Minutes.
Grandona
offered to question me in English and translate my responses into Spanish. He
began by reading passages from my accusations in La Nación, summarizing for
his millions of viewers the thrust of my message. He then asked me: “Do you
have any proof for what you have charged, or is this just speculation?” I
responded: “My charges are far more than speculation,” and proceeded to spell
out my reasons for them. And so it went.
Later
that evening I received a frantic call from Andy. Juan José Galeano, the
federal judge leading the probe into the bombing, had called
the Grandona show after I’d left and demanded that I appear in court
the next morning. Was this an invitation, or a subpoena? Unclear. To complicate
matters, the next day’s schedule was packed. I was flying back to New York the
following evening, but not before joining a small group I’d organized to cross
the river separating Argentina from Uruguay in order to test what, if any,
security measures were in effect on each side. If they were as bad as those at
the airport, they would help prove that Argentina’s borders presented no
obstacle to terrorists. Not wanting to change plans, I decided that if Galeano
really wanted to see me. he could call me directly.
Early
the next morning we headed to the harbor for the hour-long trip by ferry across
the Rio de la Plata. We boarded without encountering any demand for passports
or a security inspection. My baggage—including a tape recorder and camera,
devices commonly used to hide sophisticated bombs—was not checked. Upon our
return to Argentina, I jumped over the side railing of the boat onto the street
without being required to pass through passport control. The exercise had
confirmed our worst suspicions.
I had
barely put my feet again on Argentine soil when I received a call from Joe
Goldman. “Avi,” he said urgently, “it’s hit the fan. It’s all over television
and radio that you didn’t show up at Galeano’s office as required. This is
serious.” Clearly I had no choice but to appear in court.
For a
judge to have taken this kind of action against a foreign national strongly
suggested pressure from high government officials, possibly the president
himself. Given that Menem had denounced me as “delirious”—and given that
Argentina was only a few years removed from an authoritarian regime known for
murdering its citizens—my trepidation was palpable. Arriving, I was caught up
in a swirl of reporters shouting questions before being quickly swept away into
a tiny room with several youngish-looking legal staffers. Then Galeano walked
in and directed me to another small room where his assistant sternly read out
an endless series of laws and warned me that if I lied I would be subject to
prosecution.
The
longer this exercise went on, the more I became convinced that the real point
was to scare me into recanting my allegations. Energized by the thought, I
quickly and visibly lost patience at being treated like a criminal when all I
had done was to state, albeit forcefully, what I believed to be the truth about
the government’s culpability. There I was, deprived of my liberty and being
relentlessly cross-examined while the perpetrators of two horrific bombings
remained at large. Angrily I told Galeano that I felt under semi-arrest and
resented being treated like a criminal. “I will not tolerate this kind of
treatment,” I shouted. “I have done nothing wrong.”
His
demeanor abruptly softened. “All we are trying to do is to get at the facts in
this case. We want you to give us as much information as you have.” In reply, I
challenged him to expand the investigation by seeking out those responsible for
Argentina’s egregious security lapses—recent proof of which I was only too glad
to provide.
In this
way, six hours passed, until finally Galeano said I was free to leave. As I
emerged from the building, I was again surrounded by a crush of reporters
shouting questions. Then a man pushed his way through the knot of reporters and
embraced me. Explaining that he had lost a relative in the bombing, he said:
“Thank you for saying what we feel but are afraid to say.” Soon after, I
learned that a high official of DAIA had defended me in similar terms, stating,
“I agree with Rabbi Weiss, but I can’t say what he says to the media.” If only
temporarily, the words lifted a heavy weight from my heart.
Before
leaving for the airport that evening, I stopped off at Rabbi Skorka’s Benei
Tikva synagogue. By meeting with Conservative leadership, I was trying to send
a message that it was critical for Jews of all denominations to come together.
At the meeting we devised the idea of a twinning program between synagogues in
the U.S. and Argentina. This, I hoped, would create a connection that might
help ease the fear felt by Argentine Jews of more terror attacks or of another
overthrow of democracy like the mid-1970s military coup.
As my
plane took off, images from this visit flashed through my mind:
• Sergio
Bergman, a Reform rabbi, leading a demonstration in front of the Supreme Court
building on the morning before the July 18 anniversary—just as he had done
every week for the previous twelve months.
• The
widows Diana Malamud and Liora Ginsburg proclaiming that “all that we can do
for our murdered husbands,” Andres and Kuki, “is to find justice.”
• Moshe
Chaufan, whom I had seen close to death in the hospital the year before,
telling me “I cannot hear or see from the left side, but I’m here alive.”
What
bravery. By comparison, it was easy for me to come in and stir things up for a
few days before heading back to New York while they lived every day in fear of
local neo-Nazis and Islamist terrorists, and without justice for their loved
ones.
In fact,
some people, then and now, have questioned my right as a foreigner to
parachute in, as it were, make waves for a few days, and then leave, thereby
possibly exposing the local Jewish community to even greater danger. It is a
serious question. But if the Holocaust, and for that matter, the successful
struggle to free Soviet Jewry, taught us anything, it is that strong,
nonviolent protest, far from rendering a threatened community more vulnerable,
tends to secure it more protection. Thus, it is the sacred responsibility of
Jews worldwide to raise a powerful voice of outrage and protest and to mobilize
at every level the active intervention of their own governments.
Once
back in New York, I contacted Congressman Ben Gilman (R-NY), the new chairman
of the House committee on international relations, who readily agreed to hold a
new set of hearings on the bombings. I was among those invited to address the
September 1995 hearings, as was Beraja as head of DAIA. We locked horns. Beraja
refrained from criticizing Menem; I denounced Menem.
At the
close, through an interpreter, Beraja spoke again: “I will not have a
confrontation with Rabbi Weiss,” he said, “but I cannot agree on such a
dramatic vision of Argentina. We, the Jewish leadership, have the total freedom
to say what we believe we have to say. If we don’t say more, he can criticize
us.” While these comments did not surprise me, they saddened me greatly.
BUENOS
AIRES: JULY 16–19, 2004
I
returned to Buenos Aires to join many thousands of Argentine Jews in observing
the tenth anniversary of the bombing of AMIA. After the Sabbath, on the night
before the main commemoration, ten people blew shofars in successive waves of
notes as, carrying torches, we marched from the Supreme Court to the AMIA site.
There, young people gathered to offer a moving presentation of song, dance,
drama, and video. Many had been just toddlers when the blast hit—but still they
remembered, and reminded us never to forget.
At the
next morning’s official event, each victim’s name was read out aloud, to which
the crowd respectfully, firmly, cried, “Presente.” The dead were not only
present but counted. The names were read by Jonathan Averbuch, the boy, now a
young man, whom I’d embraced as he learned his sister’s body had been found.
His voice broke as he read Yanina’s name.
The
rabbis whom I had joined ten years earlier in offering comfort to the bereaved
were also present: Daniel Goldman of Conservative Congregation Beth El, Abraham
Skorka, Avraham Benchimol of Chabad—dear friends and colleagues.
There
was a newcomer as well: Nestor Kirchner, the recently elected president of
Argentina. “The eyes of the world are watching you,” some in the crowd called
out. During the rally, speaker after speaker excoriated the Argentine
government for its gross and duplicitous mishandling of the investigation of
the AMIA bombing.
Three of
the major figures in the investigation were roundly booed whenever their names
were mentioned. All three had by then been disgraced. President Carlos Menem
was in exile in Chile, having fled to avoid trial for embezzling tens of
millions of dollars. Justice Galeano was removed from the AMIA case for
offering a bribe to Carlos Telleldín in return for false testimony implicating
local police officers in the bombing. And Rubén Beraja, head of DAIA, was
spending time in jail after being found guilty of financial improprieties.
At the
exact moment of the attack, 9:53 a.m., a siren wailed to signal a moment of
silence in memory of the victims. Some in the crowd were openly weeping.
A wall
in front of the new AMIA building bore the names of all the dead. In front of
that wall, on the morning of the tenth anniversary, stood empty chairs, each
one inscribed with the name of a victim. As the ceremony concluded, I along
with scores of others lit a candle, placed it in a holder on one of the chairs,
and said a prayer.
BUENOS
AIRES: JULY 15-18, 2019
Fifteen
more years have passed since 2004—a full quarter-century since the July 1994
bombing.
One
might think that no one could have done a more thorough job of covering up than
Carlos Menem. After all, experts say the best time to capture terrorists is
immediately after the attack; for every day they are not found, the trail gets
colder. Yet for years afterward, in the face of continuing widespread
criticism, his successors faithfully did what they could to stymie any
investigation that might have ended in bringing the guilty to justice.
The most
egregious insult may have been a memorandum of understanding with Iran,
masterminded by the late foreign minister Hector Timerman and the
then-president Cristina Kirchner (Nestor’s wife, elected several years after
his term ended). In this outrageous document, signed in 2013, Argentina joined
with Iran in establishing a “truth commission” (!) to investigate the AMIA
attack. This was as absurd as asking al-Qaeda to join in investigating the
pilots who flew the planes into the World Trade Center.
Alberto
Nisman, then the federal prosecutor in charge of the AMIA case, railed against
the memorandum’s architects. Back in 2006, Nisman had identified eight high
Iranian officials, including the former president Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani, as
having been involved in the AMIA attack, and added one Hizballah operative,
Imad Mughniyeh, then the head of the terrorist group’s “external security”
branch. Soon afterward, an Argentinean federal judge issued international
arrest warrants for these individuals, and Interpol subsequently placed five of
the Iranians and Mughniyeh on “red notice.”
Although
Mughniyeh and Rafsanjani are now dead, the other Iranians are still alive and
at large, traveling the world freely and advocating on behalf of Iran. One, Ali
Akbar Velayati, is senior adviser on foreign affairs to Iran’s Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Now, a
decade later, on January 18, 2015, Nisman was about to present evidence proving
Kirchner and Timerman’s own roles in the cover-up and revealing the bloody hand
of Hizballah backed by Iran. A day before his scheduled appearance, he was
murdered. He had become AMIA’s 86th victim. And today, rather than having been
hauled into court and tried for their egregious crimes, both Menem and Kirchner
serve as senators in Argentina, positions that have given them immunity from
punishment.
I must
not overlook the halting steps taken by others, and especially by Mauricio
Macri, Kirchner’s democratically elected successor and Argentina’s current
president. Not only did Macri void the infamous memorandum with Iran
immediately upon assuming office in December 2015, but this year—on the day
before the commemoration—he signed an executive order naming Hizballah as a
terrorist organization, freezing its assets in the country, and creating a list
of groups and individuals tied to terrorism. In addition, as the Buenos
Aires Times reported, Argentina’s lower house of Congress has initiated
steps toward a trial of the AMIA perpetrators “in absentia”—and former federal
judge Galeano has been jailed for “concealment and violation of evidence” in
the AMIA case.
These
moves, however belated, can only be gratefully welcomed and praised. And yet
they are fragile signs, capable of being overturned: Argentina is struggling
economically, and October will see a new presidential election, in which Macri
will be challenged by, among others, now-Senator Cristina Kirchner, running for
vice-president on another ticket.
Meanwhile,
over the past years, those of us in New York had been gathering often at the
office of the Argentinean consul general and the Argentinean mission to the
United Nations to protest the absence of progress in the case and express
solidarity with our brethren in Argentina.
Concomitantly,
American Jewish defense agencies were doing their share, more softly, to urge
the Argentinean government to action. As the 25th anniversary of AMIA drew
closer, they together with Argentinean officials announced joint commemoration
ceremonies throughout the U.S. Still, no major street protests were planned or
mobilized to raise a voice of moral conscience, loud and clear.
And so I
felt the need to continue doing my own share by returning once more to Buenos
Aires. I knew the trip would not be easy. The flight is long and arduous, and
the agenda for the week leading up to the major commemoration would be both
rigorous and, given my past history in Argentina, perhaps on some level
dangerous. As, very wisely, my wife Toby no longer allows me to travel alone, I
was fortunate to be accompanied by Rabbi Michael Stein, whose help throughout
the trip was indispensable.
Waiting
at the Buenos Aires airport to greet us was Rabbi Avraham Benchimol, who had
been at my side throughout each of my first visits. Our first stop was to see
his parents; decades earlier, they had calmed my nerves with music when I was
subpoenaed to Judge Galeano’s office. His father Itzjak, almost ninety, still
plays the violin magnificently—and did so again for us on the spot.
That
evening I spoke at an AMIA memorial program in Rabbi Benchimol’s synagogue. On
another evening, I shared thoughts at Rabbi Uriel Romano’s Conservative
synagogue and gave a class to rabbinic students in memory of the AMIA victims
at the Conservative Seminario Rabbinico. As I intimated earlier, such
ecumenicism is uncommon in Buenos Aires, where the Orthodox clergy maintain few
relations with non-Orthodox rabbis.
Nor, sad
to say, is this the only division within the Jewish community. In a pattern all
too familiar in Jewish history, even or perhaps especially when under extreme
pressure from without, splits have opened not only in the area of religion but
also over issues of politics and strategy.
The
bereaved families themselves differ, and indeed have done so from the
beginning. Although most identify with the AMIA/DAIA establishment, almost
immediately after the bombing an activist group, Memoria Activa, emerged, with
whom I felt a deep sympathy as they seemed to me to speak out with greater independence.
Imagine
my disappointment, then, when on this trip a few leaders of the latter group
told me that some members support Kirchner and, even, her 2013 memorandum of
understanding with Tehran; some also believe that Nisman committed
suicide. So deep and wide are the divisions that this year two separate
memorial events were scheduled at the exact same time.
I
appealed to leaders of Memoria Activa to put differences aside and join the
mainstream event—but it was not to be. Even as I will always view these leaders
of Memoria Activa as heroes, I disagree profoundly with the position they
have taken on these issues.
In this
same connection, perhaps my most emotionally exhausting meeting was with Rubén
Beraja, the man with whom I had publicly disagreed and now felt the need to
make peace. After all, as one who cared about his community, he had been caught
in a bind as the head of a major bank dependent on government support, which
hindered his freedom to advocate the cause of his people as president of DAIA.
One cannot, he acknowledged, wear both hats simultaneously.
I asked
his frank opinion of my actions on previous visits. In reply, he raised the
complaint I’ve mentioned earlier: that I had come from the “tranquility of
America” to demand justice but would soon be safely returning home, leaving him
and other Jewish leaders to bear the consequences not only of their own words
and actions but of mine. He also pointedly mentioned one occasion when he had
stood up to an infuriated Menem on behalf of one of the bereaved who had
accused the president of being an accessory to the attack. Although disagreeing
with the accusation, he’d said to Menem, every individual had the right to
speak his or her mind. To this, Beraja now added that a few months later
the government launched the investigation of his bank that would land him in
jail.
As our
meeting ended, we embraced and exchanged blessings.
There
can be no threading this needle. The establishment, by dint of its very nature,
makes political calculations, wary lest speaking out forcefully render its
community more vulnerable. I persist in my belief in the value of demanding
more. So, buoyed as I was by the Macri government’s designation of Hizballah as
a terrorist organization, by any measure an important step forward, I strongly
urged in interviews with newspapers and TV stations, and later with some
leaders of DAIA, that pressure be put on the government to cut relations with
Iran altogether, the regime of which Hizballah is a puppet and proxy. Everyone
knew that Iran masterminded the bombing. Since it couldn’t have taken place
without inside help, it’s plausible the Iranian embassy was involved as well.
Who knew what was in the works now?
As
expected, the DAIA leaders I spoke to were reluctant to make such a demand;
severing ties with Iran would be too much to ask. With elections just a few
months away, they did not want to say or do anything that could be viewed as
critical of Macri. For myself, I was carrying a letter to Macri from my
congressman, Eliot Engel, current chairman of the House committee on
international relations, encouraging him to be even bolder. I’d also been
promised a one-on-one meeting with the president to which I would be escorted
by Claudio Avruj, the minister for human rights. But I was told that at the
last minute the appointment had been canceled. No doubt this meeting, just as
when my seat in the synagogue had to be hurriedly changed, had become
“inadvisable for political reasons.”
All
through my days in Buenos Aires I heard in my ears the words of God to Cain:
“the voice of your brother’s bloods cries out to me from the ground.” Why
“bloods,” in the plural, ask the rabbis? The AMIA attack offers an answer. The
victims’ bloods were shed once on July 18, 1994. Every day no arrests are made,
they are shed again, and again, and the bloods will continue crying out until
justice is done. The dead won’t come back to life, but a moral reckoning, and
an historical cleansing, will give the dead and their still-grieving survivors
a measure of peace.
But I
also cannot conclude on that note, for I left Buenos Aires once more moved to
the root, and uplifted anew, by the families whom I’d returned to Argentina to
see. One of my deepest moments was with Damian Goldenberg, the young man who
had despairingly cried out “Where is God?” when told his sister Cynthia
Veronica’s body had been found.
Over the
years, I’d kept up with him, flying to Buenos Aires in 2007 to co-officiate at
his wedding. Blessing Damian and his bride Jazmin at the ceremony’s conclusion,
just before the traditional breaking of a glass to remember at our moment of
joy the destruction of the ancient Temples, I prayed that we would remember
also the brokenness of the AMIA victims and their families, continue to work to
bring the murderers to justice, and, to the extent we could, respond to
brokenness with good deeds and acts of lovingkindness. As the ḥasidic masters say, a little bit of
light pushes away the darkness.
And so,
a dozen years later, the highlight of my hectic week in Buenos Aires was
spending time not only with Damian, Jazmin, and their daughters Chana and
Shiri, the latter of whom is soon to be bat mitzvah, but also with the other
astonishing human beings whom over the decades I’ve had the honor of coming to
know and to cherish.
My life
has been forever altered by the miraculous fortitude of these individuals whose
ultimate response to catastrophe, a quarter-century on, has been to live and to
love, to bring children and grandchildren into the world, to celebrate births,
weddings, anniversaries, and bar and bat mitzvahs in Argentina, in Israel, in
America, and around the world: these friends, these survivors, these
indomitable menders of the broken pieces.
***About
the author: Avi Weiss is founding rabbi
of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in New York City and founder of the
rabbinical schools Yeshivat Chovevei Torah and Yeshivat Maharat. His
most recent book is Journey to Open Orthodoxy.
https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/politics-current-affairs/2019/08/the-shameful-cover-up-of-the-worst-attack-on-diaspora-jews-since-the-holocaust/