B'nai B'rith Special Advisor on Latin America Affairs Adriana Camisar wrote about how there is hope for Argentine Federal Prosecutor Alberto Nisman's complaint against former Argentina President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and her Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman to see the light of day.

Nisman charged that they secretly negotiated a pact with Iran in order to get impunity for the Iranians accused of plotting and executing the AMIA attack. Nisman's complaint will finally be investigated. He “mysteriously” died days after making extremely these serious allegations.

The blog was published by The Times of Israel. ​Click the button below to read it on their website or scroll down. 

Camisar's blog was also published in Spanish by the Argentine news outlet El Tribuno. Click below to read the Spanish version.

Jan. 18 will mark the second anniversary of the “mysterious” death of Argentine Federal Prosecutor Alberto Nisman. For more than ten years, Nisman had been in charge of the investigation of the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) building in Buenos Aires.
 
He was found dead in his apartment four days after making extremely serious allegations against then President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, her Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman and other people close to the government. Nisman stated he had extensive evidence that the government had secretly negotiated a pact with Iran in order to get impunity for the Iranians accused of plotting and executing the AMIA attack. 
 
The pact the prosecutor was referring to—known as the Memorandum of Understanding—was signed in January 2013. Through this agreement, both governments pledged to create a "truth commission" to jointly investigate the AMIA bombing, something as absurd as creating a Nazi commission to investigate the Holocaust. At the time, the government justified the signing of this pact on the need to discover the truth. However, it seemed clear to most people who knew the case, that the signing of this pact represented a major shift in Argentina’s foreign policy, as it attempted to improve relations with Teheran at the expense of the bombing’s many victims.

​The pact never came into force because the Iranian Parliament did not ratify it, and also because it was ultimately declared unconstitutional by an Argentine Federal Court. But it would have given the Iranians access to all the documentation of the case, and made it easier for them to get rid of the Interpol red alerts that Nisman had secured against the accused.

​Nisman’s death left the country in shock and there are still no clear answers as to what exactly happened to him. However, there is now some hope that his complaint will finally be investigated.

Right after Nisman’s death, a brave prosecutor tried to get the courts to open a serious investigation into his allegations. But Daniel Rafecas, the judge assigned to the case, dismissed his complaint in a very expedited way and with questionable legal arguments. His ruling was appealed but the Federal Court quickly dismissed it as well. A federal prosecutor subsequently appealed this decision before the Court of Cassation—the last resort that the Argentine criminal system admits before resorting to the Supreme Court. But the prosecutor who needed to allow the case to get to the Court of Cassation failed to do it (probably because of his known ties with the former government) and therefore, all doors seemed to get closed and most Argentineans believed that a proper investigation would never take place.

​However, several things changed since then. On Dec. 10, 2016, Mauricio Macri took office as the new president of Argentina, and one of the first things he did was to let the pact with Iran die. He did this by not appealing the ruling that had declared it unconstitutional. Macri also said that he expected the judiciary to act with independence and to get to the truth.

Several months ago, the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA), which is the Jewish umbrella organization in Argentina, made a new presentation alleging that the case should be re-opened because of “newly found evidence,” and requested to be admitted as a plaintiff. The new pieces of evidence submitted were a recording that was found in which  Timerman—in a conversation with the former head of the AMIA—conceded that he was negotiating with the ones that “placed the bomb,” and the ruling that declared that the pact with Iran was unconstitutional.

Rafecas, the original judge of the case dismissed the request and so did the Federal Court, but when the issue got to the Court of Cassation once again, they finally decided to re-open the investigation. The Court of Cassation accepted the DAIA as a plaintiff and ordered Rafecas and the other judges that had intervened to withdraw from the case.

For the first time in two years the possibility to get to the truth seems real. And, of course, this case could shed light on what really happened to Nisman, as his death is undoubtedly linked to his complaint.
It is still too early to know if the investigation will go as far as it needs to go, but the re-opening of the case is certainly a promising sign

The outbreak of fires in Israel is already being termed “pyro-terrorism,” as at least 24 persons have been arrested over the past several days in connection to the blazes. With hundreds of homes destroyed ( by some estimates, half a billion shekels in damage in Haifa alone) and tens of thousands displaced, the total acreage burned now exceeds that which was destroyed in the Mt. Carmel fires six years ago.

Aiding and abetting those who may have started these fires have been messages carried by social media, praising the outbreak: according to Ynet News, one Tweet said “All of Israel’s neighbors must aid it — I suggest they send planes filled with gasoline and rain it down on the burning areas. I want to inhale the smell of barbecue from the Zionists.”

According to Haaretz, the hashtag #israelisburning included, among the thousands being sent, one from Fatma Alqu (“What a good day”), and another from Kamil (“Israel burns and I love it! What will you do VS Allah’s power you zionist (sic) dirt-bags…”). The Israeli media has published many others, from the Palestinians territories and the Arab world.

While the messages celebrate the wildfires, they also serve to exhort others who might want to join the party. But while this social media campaign is tied to the rash of blazes, the language used is from the same canon that has fueled incitement against Israel and Israelis for decades.

Since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, the one constant on the Palestinian side has been incitement. Called upon to end it when the agreement was signed, it has remained a daily weapon deployed by Palestinian political and religious figures, the media and in schools. By now, the incitement roster is well known, including most recently, charges that Israel is poisoning Palestinian water supplies; has no connection (Israel and the Jewish people) to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall; and denies medical care to Palestinian in the territories, a libelous charge if ever there was, given the hundreds of Palestinians treated in Israeli hospitals daily.

Indeed, a Palestinian baby born on the day the Oslo Accords were signed is now a 23-year-old adult raised on daily doses of hatred. So it should come as no surprise that this new (and surely there are others to follow) hashtag campaign is punctuated by the language of hate and a desire to see Israel’s end.

To be fair, the Palestinian Authority sent 50 firefighters to Israel to help extinguish the fires, a gesture which produced many Tweets from Israelis and others expressing appreciation (they joined more than 300 foreign firefighters from many countries, including Russia, Egypt, Jordan, Greece, Cyprus and Turkey). Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called PA President Mahmoud Abbas, to express thanks for the assistance, which the latter described as “humanitarian.” The Prime Minister’s office also noted that both Jews and Arabs opened their homes to victims of the blazes.

Perhaps the deployment of the firefighters is the gesture that breaks the ice over the stalled peace process. Whether it is, or is simply an aberration, time will soon tell. A new presidential administration will surely have its own assessment about the “process” and more broadly, the chaos and strategic wildfires burning out of control in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and by Iran’s unabashed support for terrorism and creeping hegemonism in the region.

The social media incitement and the #israelisburning campaign may not have originated in the PA’s Ramallah offices. But the years of incitement emanating from there, spewing out over so many years, provided the tinder for the matches of hatred thrown out on Twitter and Facebook  during the course of the wildfires in Israel.

The PA and its leadership, if they were ever serious about a negotiated peace with Israel, have frittered away the past 20 years by, on the one hand, inciting its own people against Israel, and on the other, by counting on international support for the Palestinian narrative. The current hashtag campaign, and its incessant use of the United Nations and its agencies to further the Palestinian narrative, are the fruits of their labor. In the process, increasing numbers of Israelis ask if there is a serious partner for an accommodation — of any kind. Perhaps the fires in Israel and the language of the hashtag campaign are a wake-up call for those who have looked the other way at incitement against Israel. It is not a winning strategy. But past history would not be a cause for optimism on this point.

The social media revolution has given us the ability to immediately reach out to the public, to government officials and to colleagues, family and friends in unprecedented ways. It has also given those who hate the unimpeded opportunity to injure and maim in 140 characters or less, and to exhort others to join the fray, oftentimes, as we have now seen, with violent and dangerous consequences.

The social media campaign connected to the pyro-terrorism that has played out in Israel in recent days is a new strain of a growing virus.

Until now, the Palestinian leadership has seen no need to “educate for peace.” It should look at the content of the fire-related Tweets, and contemplate what that nihilistic policy has wrought.

​On Ron Dermer
Israeli Ambassador to the U.S.

[...]


On November 1, Federica Mogherini will succeed Catherine Ashton as the union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy. Less than a week later, she is scheduled to arrive in Israel for her first official visit, sources in Jerusalem confirmed Tuesday. 

Mogherini — currently Italy’s foreign minister — will arrive in the region on November 7 and stay for two days. She is expected to also visit senior Palestinian Authority officials in Ramallah.


“It’s very important that Ms. Mogherini comes to Israel on November 7. It’s her first official visit,” said Fulvio Martusciello, a member of the European Parliament from Italy and the new president of its delegation for relations with Israel. 


Having known her for a while, he believes she understands Israel’s many predicaments, he added, but refused to elaborate.


“I hope we will be able to work together,” Martusciello, who is currently visiting Israel at the invitation of B’nai Brith International, told The Times of Israel Tuesday during an interview in the Knesset.

[...]

Mogherini is a member of Italy’s center-left government led by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who is known to be generally friendly toward Israel and tough on Iran’s nuclear program.

[...]

Don’t Play Politics With Genocide

At the United Nations, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas asserted last month that Israel’s efforts to protect its citizens have amounted to “genocide.”

He did so, in language never remotely reciprocated by Israel, despite well knowing the nature of his current partners in Hamas, which had violently ended Abbas’s rule in Gaza, tossing his loyalists off buildings there.

In 1948, three years after the end of the Holocaust, two events represented a pivotal rejoinder to that most systematic of genocides. The State of Israel was founded – stemming a 2,000-year Jewish exile pervaded by persecution. And the U.N. General Assembly adopted its Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to help ensure that no people would again be subjected to massive violence of the most unprovoked, calculated and indiscriminate kind.

The world body’s adoption of the Genocide Convention was celebrated as a deeply hopeful achievement by Jews. Yale legal scholar Raphael Lemkin – a Jewish émigré who lost nearly his entire family to the Nazi atrocities – coined the term genocide in 1943, defining it as “the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group.” Later, he drafted the Genocide Convention.

While the Holocaust was a distinct event in history, the appeal “never again” must apply to other people as much as it does to Jews.

However, not every loss of life can be labeled genocide. If genocide means everything, it could, dangerously, come to mean nothing.

Some of the world’s worst violators of human rights have an interest in stripping the term genocide of its purpose and potency through misuse.

More generally, ours is an era of stridency and populism, too often lacking nuance. When it comes to the most grave of charges, though, context matters and details matter, concerning both intentions and actions.

‎Iran pledges Israel’s destruction while illicitly pursuing nuclear capabilities and sustaining the groups, including Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, responsible for perennially forcing Israeli counterterrorism. Despite this, some commentators condemn as overblown any comparison of the Tehran regime to those, historically, who made good on remarkably open threats of monumental aggression.

By contrast, the subjection of Israel to the most inflammatory of rhetoric has again over recent months been met with astounding silence.

Iran’s supposedly moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, accused Israel of a “huge genocide” in Gaza – this from the leader of a government enabling bloodshed in Syria that has claimed far more Arab life in three years than Israel has in sixty-six.

Not given pause by the absence of gas chambers or crematoria, Turkey’s leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said Israel has “surpassed Hitler in barbarism.”

And in an interview with the BBC, Hamas’s official spokesman (who, separately, alleged that Jews use Christian blood in matzo) charged Israel with “Nazism.” The allegation was met with a bumbling response from the BBC’s normally opinionated interviewer.

All this is not without consequence. Singular abuse of Israel in international forums creates the distortion that Israel has one of the worst, not one of the best, records as a progressive society.

When 56 U.N. member states – including nearly all of the world’s foremost oil exporters – belong to the Arab and Muslim bloc, a Human Rights Council resolution on Gaza can assail Israel but not even mention Hamas.‎ And, of course, countries deemed to be perpetrating crimes like “apartheid,” genocide and Nazism – all-too-often interchanged – are expected to be dealt with accordingly.
If Israel has intended apartheid, it has proven mind-bogglingly inept, having created the freest and most pluralistic society in the Middle East in the face of relentless warfare.

And if Israel has intended genocide, it is among history’s most abysmal failures. Despite its military abilities, the population of Israeli and Palestinian Arabs has multiplied dramatically, even as the number of Jews, Christians and other minorities has tellingly plummeted elsewhere in the region.

After the genocides of the last century, there were among the victims no “victory” parades, as there were in Gaza after the latest hostilities. There was silence.

And during past genocides, there were no refusals of ceasefires by the beleaguered or pledges of new violence, as by Gaza’s factions – typically because the victims were not doing the firing.

Notably, despite the rush to equate Israel with Hamas in indiscriminate fire, males of fighting age appear to have been the most overrepresented group among recent Palestinian casualties in Gaza, the overwhelming majority of which went untargeted by Israel.

These facts, though, don’t suffice to penetrate international politics. Not in an age when a pop culture personality like Russell Brand can smugly invoke Israeli “occupation” in questioning Hamas’s categorization as a terrorist movement. No matter that Israel, which has supported a two-state peace, completely withdrew from Gaza in 2005 – and that if Jews lack even a right to exist in their historic homeland then Brand would hardly have a right to legitimately reside anywhere.

The British funnyman even likened Hamas to Gandhi – a comparison that might be worth discussing if not for Gandhi’s insistence upon non-violence, and the fact that Gandhi never aspired to the obliteration of Britain itself.

The continuing Arab-Israeli conflict has unquestionably claimed all too many lives, and those losses are heartrending. But not all loss of life constitutes murder, let alone genocide.

In the 1940s, in the face of a fascist onslaught, Britons and others responded, despite the heavy toll, not with complacency but with the necessary force.

Today, an array of countries is committed to combating such groups as Boko Haram, al-Shabab, Jemaah Islamiyah, the Taliban, al-Qaeda and ISIS.

As Palestinians again threaten to take Israel to the International Criminal Court over its struggle against fanatics deliberately operating among, and targeting, non-combatants, we must consider the implications of precluding counterterrorism by recklessly mislabeling it as genocide.

In the 20 years since the tragic bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) building in Buenos Aires, no progress has been made to hold the Iranians accountable.

That is the premise of an op-ed penned by B'nai B'rith International Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin, which appeared in the Times of Israel the day before the 20th anniversary.

Mariaschin walks through the timeline and the politics surrounding the event, which remains the most devastating terrorist act ever in Latin America.

Read his full op-ed below:

Buenos Aires: The other Iranian crime

The deadline for reaching an accord between the P5+1 (the United States, United Kingdom, China, France and Russia, plus Germany) and Iran on the country’s secretive nuclear program — July 20 – is fast approaching. Reports in recent days have indicated the usual foot-dragging and prevarication on Iran’s part, which we have come to know over the years, reinforcing skepticism that a genuine deal to move Tehran from its objective of developing nuclear weapons can actually take place.

But there is another July date focusing on Iran, important in its own way, which may escape international attention in the midst of the meltdown of Iraq: July 18 marks the 20th anniversary of the bombing of the AMIA Jewish social service center in Buenos Aires. On that day in 1994, a massive terror bombing in the heart of the Argentine capitol killed 85 and wounded another 300. It stands as the most devastating terrorist act ever in Latin America.

In the aftermath of the bombing, the international community was led down a primrose path of arrests and a trial. It came to naught when it was clear that all of this was based on a faulty investigation and trumped-up charges. The masterminds and perpetrators of the crime — now universally believed to be Iranian agents and their higher-ups in Tehran — nor any local accomplices, have to date been brought to justice.

In 2005 then-President Néstor Kirchner’s government issued a decree formally accepting a share in the blame for the abject failure of the investigation, calling it a “national disgrace” and a widespread cover-up of the facts. That was followed by the appointment of a highly competent prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, who set out, in some detail, how top Iranian leaders had ordered Hezbollah to carry out the attack.

Nisman, working quickly, formally charged Hezbollah and its Iranian masters with the bombing, and called for the arrest of then-Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani and seven others, including Ahmad Vahidi, Iran’s defense minister and former commander of the Revolutionary Guards. Nisman’s case was compelling, and in 2007, Argentine authorities secured Interpol arrest warrants for five Iranians and a Lebanese national. With these Interpol “Red Notices” issued, some assumed the case was on its way to being resolved.

Even a casual observer of Iranian behavior would have come to the quick conclusion that Tehran never had any intention of arresting, extraditing or otherwise cooperating on the AMIA case. Matters stalled for five additional years, until Argentine President Cristina Kirchner, in a U.N. General Assembly speech in 2012, inexplicably announced that meetings with Iran would take place on the sidelines of the United Nations to resolve the matter, as if Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had undergone veracity transplants.

And then, the ultimate Iranian ruse: Early last year came the announcement that the governments of Iran and Argentina had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to establish a “truth commission” to investigate the bombing. Defending the agreement, Argentine authorities explained that while trials in absentia cannot be held in the country, prosecutors could travel to Tehran to depose witnesses.

Sounds good if you’re going to Canada or the Netherlands to gather evidence. But did anyone remotely familiar with how Iran conducts business really think that, for example, it would serve up Vahidi to be questioned by a visiting Argentinian judicial official?

By a narrow vote, the Argentine Chamber of Deputies approved the MOU. Shortly thereafter, the indefatigable and undaunted Nisman, now working under the weight of the ill-conceived MOU, published a 502-page indictment, accusing Iran of establishing terrorist networks throughout Latin America, dating back to the 1980s.

Earlier this year, the Argentine Federal Criminal Appeals Court struck down the MOU, stating that it conflicts with, and undermines an on-going investigation approved years ago by the government’s executive and legislative branches, an order both the Kirchners endorsed. The court ruled the agreement with Iran unconstitutional. The government recently appealed the ruling. Some Argentinian legislators and legal experts make the case that trials in absentia are indeed constitutional. But those suggestions will now be on hold while the appeal process soaks up valuable time, further stalling the drive to bring much-needed closure to this horrific act.

A year-and-a-half later, the MOU has produced zero results. No surprise in that. A country that seeks nuclear weapons, threatens its neighbors, sends rockets to terrorist organizations, supports the ruling regime in Damascus and is a serial abuser of human rights, would not likely own up to the murder and mayhem in caused on that July day in Buenos Aires in 1994. And because of that, 20-years and counting, there continues to be no justice for the victims and their families.

The prizes were awarded by the B’nai B’rith World Center in memory of Dr. Wolf Matsdorf, a journalist and social worker, and his wife, Hilda, who was a leading social worker.

[...]

Maltz was a former economics reporter for The Jerusalem Post; Horovitz, who started out as a reporter for the Post, later became the paper’s editor-in-chief, and before that was editor-in-chief of its sister publication, The Jerusalem Report.

Although it was claimed by Government Press Office director Nitzan Chen and several other people at the recent Jewish Media Summit that the Israeli media does not deal with the Jewish Diaspora unless there is a crisis or tragedy, this has proven to be untrue in the case of the annual BBWC competition – where the number of entries grows from year to year. This year, there were 33 applicants who submitted 82 news and feature stories.