The Shameful Cover-Up of the Worst Attack on Diaspora Jews Since the Holocaust

It was probably the most surreal situation in all my years as an activist for Jewish causes. A mere 48 hours after arriving in Argentina, a country in which I knew nary a soul and did not speak the language, I found myself at the residence of President Carlos Saúl Menem, ensconced by his side in a seat of honor at an emergency meeting of his full cabinet, called for the express purpose of convincing me that I, only lately arrived from New York, was wrong.

The background: a few days earlier, on July 18, a ferocious car-bombing of the headquarters of AMIA—the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association, the largest Jewish community center and social-service agency in Buenos Aires—had killed 85 people and wounded 300 more. It was the largest single attack against a Jewish community in the Diaspora since the Holocaust. It was also, as the historian Martin Kramer would argue presciently in Commentary a few months later, the opening of a new phase in jihadist strategy: a shift from anti-Israelism to war against Jews everywhere, a form of anti-Semitism “so widespread and potentially violent that it could eclipse all other forms of anti-Semitism over the next decade.”

In one instant, I knew I had to go. Two years earlier, on March 17, 1992, terrorists had also bombed the Israel embassy in Buenos Aires, resulting in 29 dead and many more injured, and in the intervening years not a single person had been apprehended. When terrorist activity is left unpursued, it sends a message: you’re a soft target, and can be attacked with impunity.