Jews will never again be silenced, Lauder tells WJC in Buenos Aires

DAVID SAKS

Pictured: SAJBD President Mary Kluk and National Director Wendy Kahn at the AMIA Jewish Centre in Buenos Aires  

Delegates attended a commemorative event at the Israel Embassy marking the 24^th anniversary of the bombing that took place there on March 18, 1992. Afterwards, they visited the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) building, the communal headquarters of Argentinian Jewry, where an even deadlier terrorist bombing took place just over two years later, on July 18, 1994. A total of 114 were killed and 540 injured in the two attacks, the worst ever to have occurred in Argentina.

The WJC meeting, the first held in Latin America, was attended by over 400 delegates and observers from 67 Jewish communities. SAJBD representatives played an active part in the programme.

National President Mary Kluk presented a resolution at a plenary session and Gauteng Council member Marc Pozniak presided over the session of the WJC Jewish Diplomatic Corps, of which he is chairman.

African Jewish Congress (AJC) President Ann Harris chaired the AJC meeting, which was attended by, among others, AJC CEO Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft and representatives of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia, Mauritius, Kenya, Swaziland and Lesotho. 

The AJC also participated in meetings with smaller Jewish communities held during the conference. Simultaneously, in Geneva, SAJBD (KZN) Vice-President Alana Baranov was representing the WJC Diplomatic Corps at the 31^st session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, where she presented statements on the incompatibility of racism and democracy, racial discrimination, countering religious extremism and minority issues.

The gala dinner was addressed by Argentinian President Mauricio Macri and attended by, among others, SA Ambassador Zenani Mandela and the president of Paraguay.

Macri promised to “make headway” in investigating the 1994 bombing which, like the preceding attack on the Israeli Embassy, remains unresolved.

WJC President Ronald Lauder described the bombings as having been attacks not just on Jews, but on Argentina, while the subsequent assassination of Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor in charge of investigating the AMIA bombing, had been an attack not just on a Jewish lawyer, but on “Argentina’s entire system of justice”.

Among the resolutions adopted at the WJC was one calling the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel a manifestation of anti-Semitism and commending those countries that had taken steps to confront it.

BDS, along with all other attempts to delegitimise Israel, was held to be “manifestations of anti-Semitic discrimination against the only truly democratic country in the Middle East and damaging to any genuine efforts for peace in the region”.

In his keynote address, Lauder vowed that the Jewish world would answer the lies about Israel on the Internet and in the media with the truth.

 “We are not the Jews of the 1930s. We have influence; we have great power, we have tremendous resources, and we have creativity that is the envy of the world. We will not be silent. The world will hear our voice,” he declared.