Impossible to measure the scandal of the continued impunity enjoyed by the 1994 terrorist bomb destruction of the AMIA Jewish community centre since those first moments of horror 31 years ago yesterday but let us set it in the context of some current news items overshadowing yesterday’s commemoration.
Huge attention is being given to today’s midnight deadline for naming the lists of candidates for the September 7 provincial elections in a Buenos Aires Province widely tagged the “mother of all battlefields” (with some exaggeration since 92 of the 127 deputies and all the 24 senators will be elected elsewhere) – since that fateful winter vacation day this lengthy electoral process has been followed no less than 15 times (together with seven primaries even if out of fashion this year) through 11 presidencies with closure of the AMIA atrocity coming no nearer.
While the voters go to the polls every two years, the dollar has been almost daily news throughout these three decades with extreme fluctuations between acute devaluations and the current appreciation ever since convertibility ended with the century. This week there has been concern about the dollar rising at three times the speed of June inflation in the first half of this month due to peso liquidity between state bonds and fuelled by the midyear bonus, the winter vacations and electoral jitters among other factors – back in the July of 1994 (as in all months that year and others) a peso and a dollar were approximately equal while the official exchange rate this midweek was 1,278.62 pesos. If the currency has been devalued so many hundreds of times during that period, how much more truth, justice and credibility (but not memory) by the continuing failure to clarify the AMIA bomb massacre?
No less than 85 lives were lost that day – the original count was 86 with a pseudo-victim exploiting the confusion to try starting a new life and recently becoming the inspiration of a Ricardo Darín film but since 2015 he has been replaced by AMIA special prosecutor Alberto Nisman as the 86th victim – with hundreds more lives shattered but today money, mere words and even non-existent fake videos seem to claim more value in the news than human life. That Manhattan ruling of US$16.1 billion against Argentina over the irregular 2012 nationalisation of YPF oil company looks overwhelming but that judicial sloth crippling the AMIA investigation will surely blunt its momentum and everybody knows that this massive sum will never be given cash down to the hedge fund creditors but will end up in bond payments after prolonged negotiations. The torrents of gratuitous presidential abuse are increasingly leading some media to lose sight of this administration’s very real achievements (which must nevertheless stand the test of time) but they remain mere words written in sand. In this week far more has been written about an aeroplane skipping Customs last February with the focus on its numerous suitcases (where there are plenty of dark hints with nobody actually saying that they contained money and far less that it could be linked to the ‘$LIBRA’ cryptocurrency scandal around that time) than about yesterday’s AMIA anniversary but is there really any comparison between the two?
Even if commemorated in the Knesset last Monday, the AMIA bomb massacre remains a local tragedy long ago which is eclipsed by the terrifying scenes in much of the Middle East today. These events have somewhat dimmed the victim image of the AMIA dead due to the controversial Israeli backlash to the sanguinary Hamas invasion 21 months ago – as Israel bombards the Gaza strip, Iran and Syria among other targets, some people are starting to see them as the main aggressors with Palestinian children presented as the victims if not yet Iran. Thus far anti-Zionism sometimes concealing anti-Semitism is mainly to be found on the left but if the Middle East continues to spiral, among its worldwide dangers the repudiation of Israel’s preventive attacks might spread here with electoral consequences which might cause some followers of President Javier Milei to start questioning his unwavering alignment with Premier Benjamin Netanyahu (his fascination with a Donald Trump pursuing a protectionism at all odds with his principles is already a problem).
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