Argentine police officials have reported that hundreds of members of the force have received anti-Semitic pamphlets charging that Jews are trying to blame “good Argentines” for the July 18, 1994, bombing of the Jewish headquarters here.
The officials said last Friday that the pamphlets defend several members of the Buenos Aires provincial police who are currently facing charges in connection with the still-unsolved bombing of the Argentine Jewish Mutual Aid Association, also known as AMIA, which left 86 dead and more than 300 wounded.
“Jews created 3,000 years ago the figure of the scapegoat, and now they are using the Buenos Aires police force as a scapegoat,” reads one of the pamphlets.
It further claims that the bomb that leveled the Buenos Aires Jewish community center was “planted by Jews who sent it from the AMIA building in Cordoba to the AMIA building in Buenos Aires.”
Sources in the Buenos Aires provincial police said in interviews that several other similar letters and pamphlets had been distributed anonymously in recent days.
Argentine authorities have promised to identify and punish the pamphlets’ authors.
In a separate incident last week, vandals desecrated the Jewish cemetery of San Vincente, in the northern Argentine province of Cordoba.
The vandals destroyed 56 tombstones and stole brass plates and vases from the cemetery.
Police officials said the case did not involve racism.
But some local Jews disagreed.
“Thieves seem never to steal anything from the Christian cemetery next door,” one member of the community said angrily.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
