Argentina’s shameful pact with Iran

Ever since I left my country, Argentina, 10 years ago, I have remained silent and made no statements to the press regarding Argentinian internal affairs.

But what has just happened in relationship to the attack on the AMIA (The Jewish Center in Buenos Aires) in 1994 is so outrageous that my country, its reputation, its citizens, the justice system and those who died in the Jewish Mutual Association bombing force me to write these lines.

Argentina, whose government holds high the standard of human rights and justice, has signed an agreement with the government of Iran to review all the documentation filed with the Argentine courts in the investigation of the bombing of the AMIA.

The lawyers from the proposed commission will be chosen by both governments, which means that Iran, whom the Argentine courts of justice have already declared guilty for the attack, will have the power and the discretion to choose individuals they believe “morally competent,” to interrogate those who have already been found guilty for the massacre.

Giving Iran this moral authority is the equivalent of asking Hitler to participate in the Assessment and Judgement Committee for the leaders, officials, and collaborators in the Nazi regime. Hitler would go with gusto, and his presence would be like spitting in the face of the dead. The only hope that remains is that the Argentine parliament, the legislative power, rejects this stain that president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her foreign minister have imposed upon us.

The president declared that she “will not allow the cause of the AMIA to be used as a pawn in the game of foreign geopolitical interests.”

Those of us who love our country can only hope that our legislators do not act as “pawns” in this game of presidential chess, but rather as “rooks,” guaranteeing that Argentina hold a higher vision.

Argentina, the great country, deserves human rights to be protected, not for the justice system to be disgraced or for the memory of the dead to be humiliated. Argentina must not enter into the perverse game of the assassins.

Mario Rojzman is rabbi at the Beth Torah Congregation in North Miami.