Knesset Committee to Take Up Issue of Missing Argentine Jews

A special Knesset committee made up of members of the Foreign Affairs and Aliya committees will take up the question of the some 1500 Jews that have disappeared in Argentina.

This was decided today after pressure from Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir persuaded the majority in the Knesset not to adopt a resolution by three MKs from different parties condemning the disappearances in Argentina and urging an independent inquiry. Shamir said that such a statement from the Knesset would harm the discreet, but energetic, efforts being made by Israel to find out the fate of disappeared Jews. As the Knesset heard the motions of the three MKs–Yair Tzaban (Labor Alignment). Geula Cohen (Tehiya) and Dror Zeigerman (Likud) — relatives of missing Argentine Jews sat in the gallery with white kerchiefs around their head, the same symbol used by relatives of the disappeared in Argentina.

Cohen declared that as “a Jewish mother” she felt that she spoke for Jewish mothers throughout the centuries in demanding an inquiry. She said she spoke because they were “kidnapped as Jews.” But, she added. “But even if not, if they disappeared as leftists, I have to fight and struggle for them, as I would for any citizen in Israel.”

Zeigerman, recently back from a visit to Buenos Aires, spoke passionately against Israeli arms sales to Argentina. During the Falklands War last year, Israel had announced it would not enter into new arms deals with Argentina, he recalled. “Why should it be business as usual now? …”

SPECIAL CRUELTY TO JEWS

Tzaban said the Knesset was one of the last democratic legislatures on earth to address itself to the issue of the disappeared persons in Argentina. Buenos Aires should be required to disclose what had happened to them, when they disappeared, who arrested them, if they were tried, imprisoned, executed, where they were buried, he declared.

Shamir, replying, said he joined his voice to the grief and outrage. There seemed to have been special cruelty shown towards Jews, he noted.

But it was unjustified to accuse the government of inaction, he continued. A Foreign embassy was naturally restricted, but Israel’s Embassy in Buenos Aires had “gone beyond, far beyond, those restrictions” in its intercessions — and “a considerable number, not nearly sufficient, but still a considerable number” had been rescued and some of them were living now in Israel. “You can ask our Ambassador,” Shamir said. “Ask the Jews in Argentina …”

Shamir disclosed to newsmen a month ago that he had submitted to the Argentine authorities, during a visit to Buenos Aires in December, a list of 340 missing Jews and had subsequently been provided information about 33 of them. He said he had summoned the Argentine Ambassador to say that this was insufficient, and had been assured that Buenos Aires would make further efforts.

He said that this assurance seemed to mean that Argentina’s April 28 declaration that the “disappeared” should be regarded as no longer alive was not necessarily “their last word.”