Silent memory is golden

Buenos Aires Herald
By: Michael Soltys

When Jewish graves are desecrated here (an outrage more common than it should be), such vandalism is duly repudiated but perhaps there should be more concern about how the annual commemoration of the 1994 terrorist bomb destruction of the AMIA Jewish community centre is being increasingly profaned — not only was the 17th anniversary last Monday more politicized than ever at home but some insolent cynicism from Tehran replaced the previous stony silence.
Perhaps we should blame an election year but Sergio Burstein went out of his way to drag the ongoing municipal campaign into the community mourning with some harsh attacks against City Mayor Mauricio Macri and his leading legislative candidate rabbi Sergio Bergman (not entirely innocent of playing politics either).
Burstein might have been inspired by the presence of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (in an election year), a fact which seems to have unsettled AMIA head Guillermo Borger, whose “thanks, but no thanks” commentary may or may not have been the right mix of respect and skepticism.
Despite the dense political overtones, it would be simplistic to link all the irrelevant aggression to the election — Burstein (whose address was praised in some anti-Kirchner circles) cast a wider net than the local ruling party, including the press and DAIA Jewish associations umbrella grouping, and there seems to be plenty of ego circulating in various quarters with the AMIA atrocity and justice largely forgotten.

Meanwhile the impudent Tehran offer of “co-operation” (while blaming Argentina for its lack until now) has met with a cautious respect from the Foreign Ministry which seems at total variance with the international arrest warrants for several Iranian officials or ex-officials issued at the behest of both Kirchner presidencies and with CFK’s offer to try these suspects in a third country of Iran’s choosing (“co-operation” in good faith would surely start with their extradition).
Given that the terrorist organization Hezbollah rather than Iran itself is officially accused, the assurance that none of its 70-plus million citizens are involved sounds almost like an oblique admission of guilt.
Surely anywhere else such a monstrously clumsy intervention would have overridden all the political and community divisions to produce a united front but Iran was as much a sideshow for the Monday event as the terrorist atrocity itself.

Hopefully when the time comes to mark the 20th anniversary of the terrorist bomb destruction of the Israeli Embassy next March, the focus can return to the victims rather than this cheap blame game