Address of ECAJ Deputy Pres­i­dent Robert Goot AO SC to World Jew­ish Con­gress in Buenos Aires, Argenti­na. Robert Goot AO SC is also chair of the World Jew­ish Con­gress’ pol­i­cy coun­cil.

This ver­sion of his address with intro­duc­to­ry notes was first pub­lished in the Aus­tralian Jew­ish News.

Kol Yi are­vim zeh ba zeh – all of Israel are respon­si­ble for each oth­er.

Espe­cial­ly since Octo­ber 7, the heart of Jews every­where beat togeth­er. So it was that last Thurs­day, lead­ers of the Jew­ish world – in the pres­ence of the Pres­i­dents of Argenti­na, Paraguay, and Uruguay, min­is­ters, spe­cial envoys to com­bat anti­semitism, ambas­sadors, par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, and oth­er lead­ers of civ­il soci­ety from 47 coun­tries – joined thou­sands of Argen­tin­ian Jews gath­ered in Buenos Aires.

They met at the ple­nary ses­sion of the Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence of Spe­cial Envoys, Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans and Jew­ish lead­ers under the aus­pices of the World Jew­ish Con­gress and its region­al affil­i­ate the Latin Amer­i­can Jew­ish Con­gress, to com­mem­o­rate the 30th anniver­sary of the bar­bar­ic act of ter­ror­ism per­pe­trat­ed on 18 July 1994, when a bomb laden van was det­o­nat­ed in the AMIA com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre in Buenos Aires, killing 85 and injur­ing over 300 inno­cent Argen­tin­ian civil­ians. I was giv­en the hon­our on behalf of the Jew­ish lead­er­ship, of address­ing the audi­ence of more than 1,000 at that ple­nary ses­sion.

The AMIA bomb­ing which fol­lowed the 17 March 1992 bomb­ing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 and injur­ing 242 inno­cents, remains the dead­liest ter­ror attack in Argenti­na and until the unspeak­able events of Octo­ber 7, the dead­liest sin­gle attack against Jews since the Shoah.

Both events in Buenos Aires were ter­ror­ist attacks on Jew­ish insti­tu­tions designed to kill as many Jews as pos­si­ble. Both attacks were spon­sored and planned by the Iran­ian Islam­ic theoc­ra­cy. Both events were part of a pat­tern of heinous crimes, not just against the Jew­ish peo­ple, but against non-Jews as well – indeed they were crimes against human­i­ty. A pat­tern that con­tin­ues to this day.

We stand with our broth­ers and sis­ters of the Argen­tin­ian Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, to pay homage and to hon­our the vic­tims and express our endur­ing and heart­felt sup­port to their fam­i­lies and to the sur­vivors of those bomb­ings.

They are the ones who for 32 years have griev­ed, have ago­nised over and suf­fered from, not just the cat­a­stroph­ic events them­selves, but also from the alleged, mis­han­dling, intrigue, incom­pe­tence and cor­rup­tion, that has marred the inves­ti­ga­tion into the bomb­ings and has failed to bring any­one to jus­tice. 114 dead, 542 injured and not one con­vic­tion – no jus­tice.

Argen­tine pros­e­cu­tor Alber­to Nis­man pub­lished an indict­ment accus­ing the Iran­ian Gov­ern­ment of direct­ing the bomb­ing, and Hezbol­lah of car­ry­ing it out. In Jan­u­ary 2015, Alber­to Nis­man, filed a 300-page com­plaint mak­ing accu­sa­tions of a “cov­er up” of the Iran­ian cit­i­zens alleged­ly involved in the AMIA bomb­ing. Three days lat­er, on the day he was to address the gov­ern­ment on his com­plaint, Alber­to Nis­man was found dead at his home in Buenos Aires, in sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances. In a very real sense, the coura­geous and prin­ci­pled Nis­man whose wid­ow is in the audi­ence, became the 86th vic­tim of the AMIA bomb­ing.

But final­ly some pos­i­tive devel­op­ments. On 11 April 2024, almost 30 years after it occurred, the high­est crim­i­nal court in Argenti­na, held that: the AMIA bomb­ing was orga­nized, planned, financed and exe­cut­ed under the direc­tion of the Islam­ic State of Iran; was car­ried out by Hezbol­lah; was a crime against human­i­ty; and that Tehran was also to blame for the Israel Embassy bomb­ing.

And the Argen­tin­ian Par­lia­ment has before it pro­posed leg­is­la­tion giv­ing Argen­tin­ian Courts the juris­dic­tion to try in absen­tia, those behind the bomb­ings and just last week the Gov­ern­ment pro­scribed Hamas as a ter­ror­ist organ­i­sa­tion.

This has been an ago­nis­ing and tor­tur­ous road trav­elled by the fam­i­lies of the vic­tims and the sur­vivors. But their jour­ney for jus­tice is not yet over.

The tyran­ni­cal theoc­ra­cy of Iran and its proxy Hezbol­lah, were respon­si­ble for the 1992 and 1994 bomb­ings, just as that regime and its proxy Hamas, were respon­si­ble for the utter deprav­i­ty that was vis­it­ed upon Israel and its cit­i­zens on Octo­ber 7.

We are hor­ri­fied by the trag­ic and sense­less loss of life and the suf­fer­ing of the fam­i­lies of vic­tims and of the sur­vivors, as well as by the gen­er­a­tions of Jews who will con­tin­ue to be trau­ma­tised by these events.

Let us under­stand, that each of these mur­der­ous attacks, were not sim­ply attacks on Jews or Israelis, but jihad, seek­ing to under­mine and even­tu­al­ly replace: the rules of law; west­ern demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues; and ulti­mate­ly, our gov­ern­ments and way of life.

And let there be no mis­un­der­stand­ing either, that there can nev­er be any equiv­a­lence between the bar­bar­ic acts we com­mem­o­rate here and Israel’s right to defend itself in its exis­ten­tial bat­tle against Iran and its ter­ror­ist prox­ies.

Gov­ern­ments and civ­il soci­ety togeth­er, must bear firm­ly in mind, the words of the Ger­man play­wright Bertolt Brecht, in his unmis­take­able ref­er­ence to Hitler, in the play “The Rise of the Resistible Arturo Ui”, when he wrote, with bru­tal accu­ra­cy:

“For though the world has stood up and stopped the bas­tard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again.”

We will pre­vail. We must pre­vail. Togeth­er we will redou­ble our efforts, to put a stop to the scourge of anti­semitism. Am Y’Israel chai.