Last week the Simja Torah, a Holocaust memorial in Montevideo, Uruguay, was vandalized with phrases taken from books and articles written by Holocaust deniers.

The city’s local government and the mayor immediately ordered the insulting anti-Semitic graffiti to be removed. Representatives of all political parties also condemned the fact that the memorial was vandalized.
Three days after, the memorial was vandalized again.

The political reaction increased. Not only did the mayor order the memorial to be cleaned again immediately, but the Human Rights Commission of the House invited the Jewish leadership to discuss how to confront this new wave of anti-Semitism in the country.

There are two clear points to be watched in this scenario.

The first is that there is no Nazi political party in the country, Nazi propaganda is punished by law, none of the political parties in Uruguay remain silent when there are anti-Semitic attacks and the government has never endorsed anti-Semitism. There is an anti-discrimination law and all of the governments have commemorated Holocaust Remembrance Day every Jan. 27, and discrimination, xenophobia, racism in all forms are combated from political parties to academia.

Anti-Semitism is not new in Uruguay. We must remember that the country (politicians, academia and media) has always thought that anti-Semitic attacks were lone actions. Lone or not, a year and a half ago David Fremd, a well known Jewish businessman, was killed by a terrorist who said that he had received “a call from Allah.” This was an anti-Semitic hate crime. Six months ago, during basketball finals between Hebraica y Macabi and another team, there were “songs” against Hebraica during the finals; all sort of aggressions were made on social media; and the most popular radio entertainer in Uruguay (who is Jewish) was brutally insulted because he publicly said he liked Hebraica. During the Gaza war in 2014, Jews were assaulted, insulted and buildings were graffitied with swastikas in Montevideo and other cities.

Those who reject anti-Semitism should show the rejection with much more strength, and political parties must all speak out against it. We must know if all political parties allowed by the democratic system are on board that education is an essential tool to eradicate anti-Semitic hatred.

Academia must show the same. If academia blasts anti-Semitism, we want to see all academia together without exceptions against anti-Semitic attacks.

If the government, political parties and civil societies are together, anti-Semitism may have no future. But if anti-Semites watch that not everybody is on board, then the democratic coexistence is in danger.

The sight of Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani now globetrotting his way to world capitals on what he surely sees as a victory lap after signing the nuclear agreement is yet another reminder of how quickly the Tehran regime is being rehabilitated.

He’s not yet made his way to Latin America, but he may yet do so: Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua have been staunch friends of Iran over the years. Surely those countries will want to bask in Tehran’s newfound diplomatic luster and supp at the trough of its economic promise, now that most sanctions have been lifted.

Iran’s penetration of Latin America goes back more than 20 years. The bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992, and the attack on the AMIA social welfare building in 1994, which killed more than 80 people, can be laid at the doorstep of Iranian operatives and their terrorist proxies, Hezbollah.

With the coming to power of the late Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Iran ratcheted up its operations in the hemisphere, including the infamous Tehran-Caracas IranAir flight, which symbolized the close ties the two regimes established. Fellow travelers Bolivia and Ecuador — part of the South American anti-West club — soon joined eagerly, surely benefiting from Tehran’s “walking around” largesse, used to expand its influence in the region.

Indeed, Venezuela has fallen further into an economic abyss under Chavez’s successor, Nicolas Maduro, making more likely Caracas will become even more indebted (and not just financially) to the Iranians.

The result has been not only an Iranian friendship circle, but a bloc of countries pledged to anti-Israel rhetoric and activity at the United Nations and other multilateral fora.

A recent report in London’s Al-Awsat Arabic newspaper speaks of Hezbollah cells operating in at least five countries in the hemisphere, which comes as no surprise. Similar reports have been cropping up over the now nearly 25 years since the terrorist acts in Buenos Aires.

Against this backdrop of Iranian activity in our backyard, there is some encouraging news. The new government in Argentina, led by Mauricio Macri has rolled back a “memorandum of understanding” between the previous Argentine government and Iran, the purpose of which was to bury the longtime investigation into the AMIA bombing — and with it Tehran’s clear fingerprints — and its terrorist presence in that country. It has also given new impetus to an investigation into the mysterious death of Alberto Nisman, the chief Argentine prosecutor in the case — and who was on the verge of disclosing details that may have incriminated Argentine government operatives, as well as the Iranians.

As a result, Argentine-Israeli relations are expected to vastly improve. That may also be the case in Uruguay, which now holds a UN Security Council seat, and whose previous government was often seen as sympathetic to Palestinian and radical positions on a wide range of issues. Uruguay’s new (and former) President Tabare Vazquez did post-doctoral work at the Weizmann Institute years ago, and takes a much more open-minded view of Middle East issues than his predecessor.

And then there is Paraguay. For years, the locus of one third of the infamous tri-border area (together with Brazil and Argentina), a lawless center for smuggling and hospitable to radical elements, the country is led by a president, Horacio Cartes, who has taken principled stands — at odds with his neighbors — including votes at the United Nations relating to the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

Our attention is often so riveted on the concentric circles of chaos, terrorism and violence in the Middle East and North Africa, we sometimes lose sight of what transpires south of our border. For more than two decades now, Iran has seen our neighborhood as a target of opportunity, and has cultivated it with impunity: terrorist bombings for which it has never paid a price, flattering the likes of Chavez and his circle for strategic gain and creating cells of agents moving about from here to who-knows-where.
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Now out-and-about that they are free of official international opprobrium, the ties they have created in Latin America bear special scrutiny. Rather than having to work largely out of the public eye, they can do so now to a large extent above board. Look for “official visits” of Rouhani and others to our hemisphere, in short order. Ignoring this threat, like so many others that characterize the regime in Tehran, would be at our peril.