Hector Timerman Quits Argentina Jewish Center Over Iran Feud
Hector Timerman Image by getty images
Argentina’s foreign minister has resigned his membership in the Buenos Aires AMIA Jewish Center that was targeted by a terrorist bomb in 1994.
Hector Timerman, who is Jewish, sent a letter on Tuesday to the president of AMIA expressing his “indeclinable resignation” due to the “obstructionist actions” that the institution has made against a deal with Iran to investigate the attack.
Timerman, the first Jewish foreign minister in Argentina’s history, said after his resignation to AMIA that the Argentinian Jewish political umbrella DAIA also has lost the right to represent him. “I withdrew from the DAIA the right to speak on my behalf,” he said.
“The decision was motivated by the certainty that with their obstructionist actions both institutions continue hindering the investigation of the terrorist criminal attack which occurred on July 18, 1994, while at the same time they are feeding, maybe unintentionally, campaigns by those who are willing to use such a strategy for purposes which are contrary to the national interest,” Timerman wrote in his resignation letter.
In his more than 1,000-word letter addressed to AMIA president Leonardo Jmelnitzky, which also was sent to the media from his personal e-mail account, Timerman criticized AMIA and DAIA for blocking a deal with Iran that the foreign minister signed on Jan. 27, 2013 to set up a joint “truth commission,” prompting condemnations from members and leaders of Jewish communities in Latin America and beyond.
According to the late prosecutor Alberto Nisman, Argentina’s president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner decided to “not incriminate” former senior officials of the Islamic Republic and tried to “erase” their alleged roles in planning the bombing. Timerman also was included in this accusation by Nisman against the current government, which was thrown out by three Argentine courts in recent weeks.
Timerman’s resignation letter, which was published by the government’s national news agency, ends with harsh criticism saying that he resigned from an institution “that we were once proud of but now puts us to shame.”
Timerman is well-known in the Jewish community for his previous career as a journalist and also as the son of newspaper editor Jacobo Timerman, who was kidnapped in 1970 by the military dictatorship and later released in 1979. In December 2010, Timerman issued an official government statement recognizing a unilateral Palestinian state, joining Brazil and triggering mass Latin American support for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. On January 2015 two AMIA members requested that Timerman be expelled as a member of AMIA.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
