The government of Argentina issued a statement placing the blame for the violence at the Israel-Gaza border squarely on Hamas. 

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Argentina’s foreign ministry issued a statement Friday that put the blame for the recent clashes between Israel and Hamas squarely on the terrorist organization.

“The Argentine Republic expresses its deep concern over the recent escalation of violence in Gaza, caused by the firing of rockets into Israel,” the statement began, without mentioning the Israeli counterstrikes, let alone condemning them.

It continued with a call for the peace process to be resumed so that Israel could “exist peacefully alongside its neighbors, within secure and internationally recognized borders” and the Palestinians could have “a viable state based on the 1967 borders and in accordance with the agreements reached by the parties in the negotiation process.”

The change in tone from South America’s third most populous country is apparently a direct result of the change in government in 2015, when Mauricio Macri replaced Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

Kirchner maintained a cold relationship with Israel during her time in office. She recognized ‘Palestine’ as a state in 2010 and was accused of deliberately refusing to go after Iran as the alleged planner behind Hezbollah’s infamous bombings of Jewish and Israeli targets in Buenos Aires that killed 114 and injured hundreds in 1992 and 1994.

She signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Islamic Republic in 2013 that would have the two countries jointly investigate the attacks – a move widely seen in Israel as an attempted cover-up of the crimes. The state prosecutor who was planning to submit testimony against her in 2015 was murdered the night before he was to present his evidence to the government.

In contrast, as soon as he was elected, Macri promised to annul the MoU, appointed a prominent rabbi as his environment minister and told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Argentinian-Israeli relations would change for the better.

As the first acting Israeli prime minister to visit South America last September, making Argentina his first stop, Netanyahu praised Macri for his “commitment” and “integrity” in searching for the truth behind the bombings .

He immediately invited Macri to come to the Jewish state, which he had last visited as mayor of Buenos Aires, and arrangements for the trip are currently being made.

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Argentine senators discuss the removal of the former president’s immunity from prosecution in the bombing of the AMIA Jewish center and subsequent murder of prosecutor Alberto Nisman.

By: Ben Cohen, The Algemeiner

Argentine senators began discussions on Tuesday on the possible removal of former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s immunity from prosecution — less than a week after a federal court in Buenos Aires ruled definitively that Alberto Nisman, the federal prosecutor who was investigating the 1994 terrorist bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in the Argentine capital, along with the Kirchner government’s alleged cover-up of Iran’s culpability, was assassinated in January 2015.

Nisman’s body was found in his Buenos Aires apartment hours before he was due to present a formal complaint to Argentina’s Congress that detailed the alleged role of Kirchner and her government colleagues in covering up Iran’s responsibility for the AMIA atrocity. Eighty-five people died and hundreds more were wounded when a truck packed with explosives rammed into the AMIA building in downtown Buenos Aires on July 18, 1994.

While government-appointed investigators initially tried to depict Nisman’s death as a suicide, in December 2017 federal judge Julian Ercolini issued the first ruling that Nisman had been murdered. In the same month, the federal judge investigating Nisman’s original complaint against the former Kirchner government, Claudio Bonadio, indicted the ex-president and several of her close colleagues on treason charges related to a secret pact that effectively exonerated the Tehran regime for the AMIA bombing. Bonadio also requested formally that the Argentine Senate — of which Kirchner is an elected member — remove her legal immunity.

Tuesday’s discussions at the Argentine Senate resulted in a decision to respond to Judge Bonadio’s request within 180 working days. Several observers of Argentine politics, however, have expressed skepticism that the necessary votes could be mustered against the former president.

“Even if the senate removes her immunity, which I doubt, she’s unlikely to face arrest,” Eamonn MacDonagh, an expert on the AMIA case, observed on Twitter. Commenting on the Argentine Senate’s decision on Tuesday, MacDonagh observed that the 180 working days deadline meant “that ball is in the long grass until November.”

Turning the spotlight back to Iran

But progress in uncovering Nisman’s killers will leave Kirchner exposed and even turn the legal spotlight back onto Tehran regime, according to Toby Dershowitz, a senior vice president at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank in Washington D.C., who has researched the AMIA case for several years.

Dershowitz argued that last week’s judicial confirmation that Nisman was murdered for attempting to expose the Kirchner’s government’s alleged cover-up “prevents Iran from murdering 85 people with impunity, even with the passage of time.”

“The court’s action disrupts the efforts of those who sought to sow seeds of confusion by saying the world will never find out who killed Nisman,” Dershowitz told The Algemeiner. “And it begins to hold accountable those who appear to be accessories to the assassination of Nisman himself.”

Dershowitz remarked that Nisman — whose investigative efforts resulted in the global law enforcement agency Interpol issuing “red notices” for the wanted Iranian AMIA bombers in 2007 — had “paid the ultimate price for exposing the truth.”

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