Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

This week my wife and I are on a Jewish Heritage Tour of Argentina. On Tuesday we visited the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), the Jewish Community Center that was bombed in 1994. By coincidence, I came across a sermon I wrote exactly thirteen years ago to the day. Here is the opening of that sermon:

Parashat Vayikra (March 16, 2013)
“March 17 marks a significant anniversary in modern Jewish history: the 21st anniversary of the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires. That attack killed 29 people and injured 250—Israeli diplomats, children, clergy from the church across the street, and passers-by. Although the state Supreme Court investigated, the case was never vigorously pursued, and no action was taken.

Inaction has consequences. Two years later, on July 18, 1994, the AMIA Jewish Community Center was bombed. Eighty-seven people were killed and more than 100 injured. It remains one of the deadliest antisemitic attacks anywhere in the world since World War II. Yet the investigation was plagued by incompetence, obfuscation, and outright cover-up. Despite evidence pointing to direct Iranian involvement, Argentina’s only response was to expel Iranian diplomats in 1998. A serious investigation was never undertaken.

Last week it was announced that a joint Argentine–Iranian commission would be formed to pursue justice. With all due respect, that is like Eliot Ness inviting Al Capone to co‑investigate the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.”

Reading those words again—here in Buenos Aires, after standing in the rebuilt AMIA building just days ago — felt uncanny. What I once wrote from a distance, I encountered this week with my own eyes. The names, the dates, the failures of justice I described in 2013 suddenly had physical weight.

In 2016, prosecutor Alberto Nisman died under mysterious circumstances the day before he was scheduled to present evidence to the Argentine Congress implicating senior government officials in a cover-up. His death was initially ruled a suicide; five years later it was determined to be murder.

To this day, no one has been charged. It remains widely believed that Iran and Hezbollah were behind both attacks.