February 11, 2013

Galtieri a better friend of Israel than Kirchner

But Cristina Kirchner is a better friend of Jews.

There's a bit of a spat going on between Israel and Argentina.  See this from +972:

The State of Israel overdid it two weeks ago, when it summoned the Argentinian ambassador for a reprimand. The reason behind it? Argentina had the audacity to include Iran in the investigation of the terror attack against the Buenos Aires Jewish Community building. They will set up a truth commission, with neither Argentinians nor Iranian citizens as representatives. Previous investigations attributed the attack to Hezbollah.
This week, Argentina kicked back, with gusto. Argentinian Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman summoned the Israeli ambassador, Dorit Shavit, for his own brand of diplomatic reprimand. The ambassador reported that the conversation was “harsh, tense and unpleasant.”
During the conversation, Timerman said things that Israeli representatives haven’t heard in a while. He told Shavit that Israel’s meddling with the investigation is interfering with his country’s internal matters and that it encourages anti-Semitism. He stressed that “Israel doesn’t speak on behalf of the Jewish people and does not represent it. Jews who wanted and want to live in Israel have immigrated there and have become Israeli citizens and those who live in Argentina are Argentinian citizens. The terror attack was against Argentina and Israel’s desire to be involved in the matter only gives ammunition to anti-Semites who accue Jews of a dual loyalty.” Every word. And it is about time that more countries say this to Israeli representatives.
This reminds of another Jewish Argentinian Timmerman (ok, the spelling is different). See this from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs:
Jacobo Timmerman was a journalist and publisher of the newspaper La Opinion, which was published since 1971. In April 1977, he was arrested by the military authorities, imprisoned, and badly tortured. He was released in September 1979 after being acquitted of the security offence charges, which was followed by an ultimatum of collective resignation from the judges of the Supreme Court if he would not be released.61 He was deported to Israel after his release.


But other Argentinian Jews didn't fare so well:
As Yossi Sarid put it: "In Argentina, Israel sold even the Jews for the price of its immediate interests."73
According to Sarid, this was done through cooperation with the military junta in the economic area, and by not arousing international and Jewish public opinion about the fact of the disappearance and arrest of young Jews in that country.
It's a lengthy article which comes down mostly in favour of Israel but it does demonstrate how Israel got on a lot better with an antisemitic military junta than with an elected government with at least one Jewish minister.

UPDATE: This is a bigger loss for zionism than I realised.  Stephen Marks in the comments has just pointed out that Héctor Timerman is the son of Jacobo Timmerman.  I wonder where that M came from or where it went.

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