Buenos Aires suffered two major attacks on Jewish sites in the 1990s: A 1992 attack on the Israeli Embassy killed 29, while the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center left 85 dead.
Alberto Nisman had accused the Argentine government of covering up Iranian involvement in 1994 attack. “Nisman claimed that the president had decided to “not incriminate” former senior Iranian officials for their roles in planning the bombing, and instead has sought a rapprochement with Tehran, “establishing trade relations to mitigate Argentina’s severe energy crisis,” the Buenos Aires Herald reported. “The president and her foreign minister took the criminal decision to fabricate Iran’s innocence to sate Argentina’s commercial, political and geopolitical interests,” the newspaper quoted Nisman as alleging.
Prosecutor Nisman traced the authorization for the July 18, 1994, terrorist attack to a meeting of Iran’s National Security Council held a year before, and compiled sufficiently compelling evidence of Iran’s role in the crime as to have several leading Iranian figures, including Vahidi and former presidential candidate Mohsen Rezai, placed on an Interpol “red notice” list. The final decision to attack the AMIA center was allegedly made by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and then-president Rafsanjani.
Last May, an Argentine court declared unconstitutional an agreement Between the Argentinian government and Iran to jointly probe the 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires Jewish center. (Imagine if the Supreme Court suggested that they should, along with Al-Queda, jointly probe the events of 9/11.) The agreement had been approved in 2013 by Argentina’s congress, at the request of the executive branch. Nisman consistently argued that the agreement constituted “undue interference of the executive branch in the exclusive sphere of the judiciary.” Many Argentine judges agreed. Since 2006, Argentine courts have demanded the extradition of eight Iranians, including former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former defense minister Ahmad Vahidi and Mohsen Rabbani, Iran’s former cultural attache in Buenos Aires, over their alleged involvement in the bombing.
Nisman was scheduled to testify before lawmakers this morning – Monday, January 19, 2015. But he was found dead in his apartment with a gunshot wound to the head instead. Police have already ruled it a suicide – an unusual act for someone finally about to literally have his day in court after working for years on this case. A much more plausible explanation is that he aggravated too many senior Argentine and Iranian leaders.
Full ARTICLE HERE
This appears to reinforce the idea that money talks and murders can be overlooked if lots of money talks very loudly. I hope Argentina’s leaders were at least able to negotiate a remarkable energy deal with Iran.
For what it’s worth, Argentina a century ago was an economic powerhouse rivaling the United States. Buenos Aires was often compared to Chicago. Argentina was ranked among the richest nations of the world, AHEAD of France and Germany, the two dominant military powers. In the article “One hundred years ago Argentina was the future. What went wrong?” the Economist cites many issues including a lack of education. “Argentina had among the highest rates of primary-school enrollment in the world and among the lowest rates of secondary-school attendance. Primary school was important to create a sense of citizenship, says Axel Rivas of CIPPEC, a think-tank. But only the elite needed to be well educated.” The lack of advanced education over several generations led to reduced modernization and minimal technological innovation.
A predominantly poor and uneducated population also trends towards socialism, which always destroys a nation in the long run. Socialism offers little motivation for intelligent, hard-working people to reach their full potential when they can’t keep the benefits of their work. It does offer the motivation for such people to leave for another country where they will be rewarded. (Which is why there was a “brain drain” from many other nations to the United States for so long.) Socialism also punishes those investors who risk their money to develop modern equipment and technology in Argentina. “Property rights are insecure: ask Repsol, the Spanish firm whose stake in YPF, an Argentine oil company, was nationalized in 2012.” (link)
What does this have to do with the original topic of this article? I think it ties back in quite well. You see, in socialist cultures wealth and success are “unfair” advantages. Like Barry’s comments about business owners not having built their own businesses – socialists see wealth as something that is only created on the backs of the oppressed – and therefore wealth is meant to be redistributed to the “deserving” poor. Anti-semitism is a likely development in a nation where wealth is harshly associated with greed and taking advantage of the common people. I think if Iranians had bombed something like a YMCA and killed 85 Catholic Argentines, the nation might have taken it more personally and may have been less likely to look the other way and make a financial deal with the terrorists. Iran could have performed a similar bombing closer to home – in Europe, for example – but the Iranians undoubtedly chose to act in a nation where they knew authorities would not aggressively investigate the bombing of a Jewish community center.
In any case, an Argentine prosecutor went public last week. He had hundred of pages of documentation and was ready to establish that Iran was behind the bombing of a Jewish center in Argentina years ago and that the leaders of Argentina, including the president, swept evidence under the rug and even jointly investigated with Iran while negotiating a sweet energy deal for Argentina. The prosecutor was found shot in the head the day he was scheduled to present his evidence in court.
Perhaps it reminds me of Genesis 6:5 because I was reading about the days of Noah recently: “the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” God soon started a global catastrophe that almost wiped out humanity – much as I conclude we will see again in a few years (read End Times and 2019.)
Argentina may be where it is today – with a weak economy and lots of corruption – because of socialism and a lack of higher education. I worry that these same trends are growing in the United States – a dumbing down of the population with reduced standards of education, along with the simultaneous growth of socialism and mockery of religious values. How can we encourage our youth to value truth for its own sake; to value ethics and morals in a culture where they are not clearly respected or rewarded? We must teach them from a young age. The Book of Psalms opens with “How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers! But his delight is in the law of the Lord.” Galatians 6:7 says “whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.” I believe that in the long run, this is true for a single individual, a nation like Israel, or Judah, or Argentina, or America – and that it is true for humanity as a whole. If there is even one child you can help by instilling a deep respect for the law and for truth and integrity – I believe it will make a difference. Thank you for putting up with my thoughts and commentary and making in through to the end of this article.
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