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Argentina’s chief rabbi injured in attack at home
BUENOS AIRES, Feb 26, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Argentina’s chief rabbi was beaten
and seriously injured by assailants who broke into his home, in an attack
condemned by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as part of an anti-
Semitic wave.
Jorge Knoblovits, the president of the Argentine-Israelite Mutual Aid
Association, said seven men were involved in the assault Monday in Buenos
Aires on Gabriel Davidovich, who is 56.
Netanyahu said Davidovich and his wife were “viciously assaulted.”
“We must not let anti-Semitism rear its head. I strongly condemn the recent
acts of anti-Semitism and call on the international community to take action
against it,” Netanyahu said.
The attack comes against the background of increased anti-Semitism in
western countries.
Germany — where anti-Semitic offenses rose almost 10 percent last year —
has watched with alarm as anti-Semitic and other racist hate speech and
violence has increased in recent years, as the political climate has
coarsened and grown more polarized.
In France, President Emmanuel Macron told Jewish community leaders last
week that anti-Semitism had reached its worst levels since World War II.
“Our country, and for that matter all of Europe and most Western
democracies, seems to be facing a resurgence of anti-Semitism unseen since
World War II,” Macron told an annual gathering of French Jewish institutions
last week.
He was speaking after nearly 100 Jewish tombstones were spray-painted with
blue and yellow swastikas at a cemetery in the Alsace region near Germany.
A mass influx of mostly Muslim refugees and migrants to Germany from 2015
drove the rise of the far-right and anti-immigration Alternative for Germany
(AfD) party, which is now the biggest opposition group in parliament.
Leading AfD members, aside from railing against Islam and multiculturalism,
have also made comments that play down the Holocaust.
– ‘Anti-Semitic act’ –
Argentina has one of the largest Jewish communities in the world, with
around 300,000 people.
Argentina’s Jewish association, AMIA by its Spanish acronym, quoted the
Davidovich’s assailants as saying, “We know you are the rabbi of AMIA.”
The rabbi and his wife put up no resistance, but the assailants threw
Davidovich to the ground.
“They broke nine of his ribs, affecting a lung, and left him disfigured,”
Knoblovits said.
They made away with money and personal effects, he said.
Knoblovits said the robbery was merely a pretext for “an anti-Semitic act.”
“In the world, there is a lot of room for ignorance, and where there is
ignorance, there is space for anti-Semites,” he said.
Argentine authorities have opened an investigation into the attack, which
followed the desecration of nine tombs at a Jewish cemetery in the province
of San Luis over the weekend.
Isaac Herzog, chairman of the Jewish Agency, a quasi-governmental body that
deals with Jewish immigration to Israel, said he has spoken personally to the
rabbi.
“He suffers from severe pain and fractures, but his spirit is strong. I had
the sense from his remarks that the incident had obvious anti-Semitic
characteristics. I wished him a full recovery from all of us. The Jewish
Agency will help him and his community as much as necessary.”
– 1994 bombing –
The AMIA was the scene of a 1994 bombing that killed 85 people and wounded
300. Netanyahu made his first visit to Latin America in 2017, attending
memorial ceremonies for the bombing and an earlier 1992 bombing of the
Israeli embassy.
The embassy bombing killed 29 people and wounded 200, with members of the
Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah blamed for the attack.
Argentine investigators accuse five former Iranian officials of ordering
Hezbollah to carry out that bombing. Iran denies any involvement.
BSS/AFP/RY/20:55 hrs