In an atmosphere of shock and demands for justice, a new day of reflection on antisemitism and discrimination was held, organized by the Latin American Jewish Congress (CJL) at the School of Law of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). The event, which featured high-ranking judicial officials from Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, was framed within the 32nd anniversary of the AMIA attack, which occurred on July 18, 1994.
“If we want to live in a democracy, what defines it is not only that it is the government of the majority, because totalitarianisms are also majorities. What distinguishes them is how that society treats minorities, the most vulnerable,” said Horacio Rosatti, president of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation. His words resonated in an auditorium packed with students, faculty, and representatives of the Jewish community.
Leandro Vergara, dean of the UBA School of Law, was emphatic: “Hatred does not discriminate, so the response to hatred cannot come from a single community.” The panel also included Bernadette Minvielle Sánchez, minister of the Supreme Court of Justice of Uruguay, and Manuel Ramírez Candia, minister of the Supreme Court of Justice of Paraguay.
Claudio Epelman, executive director of the CJL, drew a chilling analogy with the Nazi extermination: “Terrible events like those that have occurred throughout history do not arise spontaneously. Those who studied the Holocaust teach us that it did not begin in Auschwitz but with the segregation and discrimination of Jews in previous years. That process ended in the gas chamber.”
The attack, which destroyed the AMIA headquarters at 633 Pasteur Street in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Once, left 85 dead and more than 300 injured. 32 years later, the judicial case still has no convicted perpetrators, generating deep indignation in the community.
Mariano Borinsky, judge of the Federal Criminal Cassation Chamber and Commissioner for Judicial Diplomacy of the CJL, warned: “Impunity can never become resignation. Memory only retains its meaning when it translates into stronger institutions and an effective commitment to truth.”
Ramírez Candia, for his part, noted that “antisemitic acts not only attack religious freedom but also a large number of human rights, especially against human will.”
Rosatti closed the event with a final reflection: “Exemplary memory is that which, starting from the past, moves toward the present so as not to forget, because although it is true that events do not repeat themselves in the same way over time, some events have a similar matrix, a lesson for the future that makes them worthy of being remembered. We must not forget the attacks, we must not forget the Holocaust. The events that bring us together today are events that can in no way be forgotten.”
The day was coordinated by AMIA, DAIA, the Jewish Community of Paraguay, and the Central Israelite Committee of Uruguay, and became a new call for justice and the fight against discrimination in all its forms.
Para mí estos jueces son unos caraduras, bancan el genocidio en Gaza y vienen a hablar de antisemitismo. Me parece que se rien de las víctimas de la AMIA mientras encubren la impunidad sionista. Mamita, qué hipócritas.
Para mí 32 años de lloriqueo judío ya cansan. La AMIA fue un error pero basta de judiadas. Rosatti y sus amigotes hablando de antisemitismo mientras la inflación nos mata. Esto huele a cortina de humo. ¡Viva la libertad carajo!