If you’re a news junkie like me you’ll often find aspects of articles you’ll disagree with. Reporters who clearly have an axe to grind or who distort an idea or historical event. But rarely have I seen such a flat-out wrong historical fact as in this one from a Reuters story about a judgment in U.S. federal court against Iran involving the bombing of the Israeli embassy in Argentina:
U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle said Iran was responsible for the truck bombing at the Israeli Embassy in Argentina. The blast killed 29 people, including David Ben-Rafael, who was born in the United States before emigrating to Israel.
Hezbollah accepted responsibility for the bombing, and the United States has held Iran responsible for helping finance and organize the group’s activities.
Hezbollah has been ACCUSED of responsibility for this bombing by Israel and the U.S. Most of the MSM took as a given, without adducing much in the way of proof, that the recently assassinated senior Hezbollah operative, Imad Mugniyah, was the evil genius behind this act of terror. But the group has never, to my knowledge, accepted responsibility. So there you have it. The MSM gets it dead wrong. Next time you read a journalist or newspaper editor complain that blogs are unreliable sources because they don’t enjoy the rigorous fact-checking that goes into professional journalism, remember this incident.
Your somehow amazed the Reuters could be wrong. Like gambling going on at Ricks cafe. BTW, if not Hezbollah and Iran, who? And please don’t rehash the Lavon affair to me, I actually think your smarter than that. Amazingly misguided but smarter.
I’m having this debate privately with an Anglo-Israeli reader dubious of my political views. What I wrote to him is that I don’t know who did it. Hezbollah & Iran certainly have motive & the Argentines looked carefully at them as suspects. The U.S. & Israel think they did it.
But The Nation ran a very thorough, well-researched investigative piece debunking the Hezbollah theory.
I’ve heard pretty plausible theories that it was a group of high level Peronist Nazi-sympathizer anti-Semites. As you know, Argentina has some pretty strong philo-Nazi groups. I’ve also heard the possibility that Carlos Menem might be implicated.
And thanks for that vote of confidence in my smartness. We may disagree on a lot of things, but you sometimes can be an awfully decent person.
Stephen Roth Institute (Israel) has the most illuminating of info and stats on the rise of philo-nazism in 90s Argentina and attacks by home-grown Argentinian groups against Jewish individuals and group targets. It suits such groups to see the mainstream both pit Islam and Judaism against each other (they hope we will destroy each other and save them the job of doing so) and it suits them to have the connection between philo-nazi attacks on Argentinian Jews ignored (because their aims are to force Jews to leave Argentina and to buy time to increase their strength). These philo-nazis are the number one suspects, in my opinion.
I’m unsure as to connections between Christian Far-right and these philo-nazi groups in Argentina, but a little digging should reveal results.
As I understand it, the Argentinian chief prosecutor has said the Iranians and HIZBULLAH did it. Now, I have already heard that “well what do you expect, he is a Jew”, but I don’t believe the Argentinians would appoint someone to that position who would be so amateurish. I believe INTERPOL has arrest warrants out for the Iranians involved. They would wouldn’t do this unless there was some evidence.
In October 2006, this ‘story’ was used to justify continuation of IDF action after a majority call for ceasefire, in the aftermath of the destruction wreaked by the clash between IDF and Hezbollah’s militia.
The atrocity in Argentina was committed in 1994, some 12 years before the conveniently timed ‘suspicions’ are turned to Hezbollah/Iran. We have to look back, to the political situation between Israel and Hezbollah 12 years ago to judge for ourselves whether this ruling post-Lebanon II is to be taken at face value, or whether it’s an attempt making a link between the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, killing 85 & leaving hundreds injured, with what had just happened in Lebanon/Israel during the conflict in the Summer of 2006.
It is possible that the Argentinian prosecutors made a spurious link based on the conflict with Lebanon/Hezbollah and had nothing to do with the originators of that bomb in Buenos Aires but having everything to do with justifying, mainly to an Argentinian/south American audience, Israel’s action in Lebanon that summer.