Argentina Launches Campaign To Remember Jewish Center Attack
Argentina’s president and several of the country’s international sports stars are among those featured in a new campaign to remember the 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires Jewish center.
The campaign, launched a week before the 17th anniversary of the attack, is called “Attack the Neglect.” Its objective is to gain media attention before Monday’s memorial ceremony commemorating the July 18, 1994 attack calling on not only Jewish institutions or Jewish opinion leaders but all walks of society to ask for justice.
President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, global soccer stars Lionel Messi and Carlos Tevez, and U.S. Open tennis champion Juan Martin Del Potro are among its participants.
The AMIA attack killed 85 and wounded more than 300. Though the government of Iran has been accused of directing the bombing, and Hezbollah of carrying it out, no arrests have been made in the case.
“We face the hard challenge of fighting with the effects of time and the impunity, so this year’s campaign is taking place before the remembrance day and is composed of actions that disrupt life and everyday issues, to re-remember what happened 17 years ago,” AMIA director of communications Gabriel Scherman told JTA.
Kirchner appears in an ad holding a T shirt in front of her with the words “This T-shirt is an attack on the neglect.” AMIA has distributed the photo through social networks.
In a photo of the Argentine national team, Messi and Tevez are holding a sign with the message, “This is an attack on the neglect.” Messi was named the best player in the world; Tevez was the top scorer in the last Premier League championship.
The national tennis squad, which is playing in the semifinals of the Davis Cup, is holding a banner in its team photo that reads: “The national team does not forget the 85 people that were killed in the bombing of the AMIA 17 years ago. You should not either.”
“The president’s support and the participation of great Argentine sports figures together multiply the spread of a message to all of society,” Scherman said, “and we think that the impunity of the AMIA case involves our society as a whole.”
Kirchner told AMIA that she will be attending the memorial ceremony at the center, which rebuilt its facilities on the same site of the bombing.
The main speaker will be a non-Jewish judge, Daniel Rafecas, who is well known in Argentina for applying the country’s anti-discrimination law in a case centering on skinheads. Rafecas ordered them to visit the Holocaust Museum in Buenos Aires for their probation.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Culture Cardinals are Catholic, not Jewish — so why do they all wear yarmulkes?
- 2
Fast Forward Ye debuts ‘Heil Hitler’ music video that includes a sample of a Hitler speech
- 3
News School Israel trip turns ‘terrifying’ for LA students attacked by Israeli teens
- 4
Fast Forward Student suspended for ‘F— the Jews’ video defends himself on antisemitic podcast
In Case You Missed It
-
Yiddish קאָנצערט לכּבֿוד דעם ייִדישן שרײַבער און רעדאַקטאָר באָריס סאַנדלערConcert honoring Yiddish writer and editor Boris Sandler
דער בעל־שׂימחה האָט יאָרן לאַנג געדינט ווי דער רעדאַקטאָר פֿונעם ייִדישן פֿאָרווערטס.
-
Fast Forward Trump’s new pick for surgeon general blames the Nazis for pesticides on our food
-
Fast Forward Jewish feud over Trump escalates with open letter in The New York Times
-
Fast Forward First American pope, Leo XIV, studied under a leader in Jewish-Catholic relations
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.