MIAMI — July 18 marked the 32nd anniversary of the 1994 Tehran-backed Hezbollah bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, that killed 85 people and wounded over 300. It was commemorated in Buenos Aires July 17 and in Miami July 27 at Beth Torah Benny Rok Campus in North Miami Beach.
Osvaldo Armoza, president of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA), as the Buenos Aires Jewish Community Center is known, was present at both events. He pointed to the fact that over three decades little has been done to bring those responsible to account. Iranian and Hezbollah officials have been charged, but no one has ever been convicted. Jewish leaders in Argentina hope that a new law there allowing trial in absentia will bring some measure of justice.
Under this law, Federal Judge Daniel Rafecas has now ordered a trial for the current chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Ahmad Vahidi, as well as nine others accused by the late Argentine prosecutor assigned to the case, Alberto Nisman. They are Ali Fallahijan, Ali Akbar Velayati, Mohsen Rezai, Hadi Soleimanpour, Mohsen Rabbani, Ahmad Reza Asghari, Salman Raouf Salman, Abdallah Salman and Hussein Mounir Mouzannar.
Argentine courts have classified the bombing as a “crime against humanity,” based in part on Nisman’s findings. There is no statute of limitations there for such a heinous crime.
Nisman, who was Jewish, was murdered in his apartment in 2015 a day before he was to report his findings, including incriminating evidence that then President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner had been involved in efforts to cover up Iran’s involvement in the attack. Nisman’s killing remains unsolved.
Deadliest attack since Holocaust
The AMIA bombing was the deadliest single attack against Jews since the Holocaust, before Hamas’ 2023 pogrom in Israel. It was one of a series of Jew-hating terrorist attacks carried out by Hezbollah that included the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 and the bombing of a Panamanian airplane that killed 21 people in 1994. Twelve members of Panama’s Jewish community died in that attack, which took place one day after the AMIA bombing.
An explosive-laden truck was driven into the Israeli Embassy in March 1992 and set off, destroying not just the embassy but a neighboring Catholic Church and a school. The majority of those killed were children. Islamic Jihad, an affiliate of Hezbollah, took credit. Exactly this same method of attack was used in the bombing of the AMIA two years later.
Rabbi Mario Rojzman at Beth Torah moved to Miami from Argentina in 2003. He said that the bombing was an “attack on humanity, on decency, on civilization.” And that for all these years “the world ignored those responsible, and still does. We have to be honest about the world we live in.” The goal of Jew-hatred “remains exactly the same, to isolate Jews, to illegitimate Jewish existence, and to make Jew-hatred appear morally respectable.
“We arrived yesterday in Miami after spending weeks in Argentina. What I experienced there during the Mundial gave me a profound sense of deja vu. The same forces that for years have described Israel as a colonialist white supremacist racist state, part of a supposed axis of evil, transferred almost word for word that same vocabulary to Argentina during the World Cup,” Rojzman said. “Suddenly, the best soccer team in the world, and its famous player [Lionel Messi], became the white racist nation.”
The Argentine team’s soccer stars had been prominent in marking the 17th anniversary of the bombing in 2011. Messi, just named FIFA World Player of the Year, and Carlos Tevez, the Premier League’s leading scorer playing for Manchester City, posed for a photograph holding a sign saying, “The national team does not forget the 85 people killed in the AMIA bombing 17 years ago. Neither should you.”