The debate over pluralism in the Argentine Jewish community centers in large part on the question of what action Jews should take on behalf of democracy and human rights to best ensure the survival of both democracy and of the community–and who should decide.
The debate takes place in the aftermath of eight brutal years of military rule following a half-century in which every elected government was overthrown by coup. The junta’s 1976-83 reign of terror has left a legacy of raw memories and of fear that the past may be prologue.
Young Jews told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that during the junta, people were afraid to read, to think or to be involved. Said a young communal leader in Cordoba, the city with the second largest Jewish population: “During the junta there was no safe place. If you had a group you were suspect. The biggest fear we have to overcome is the fear of joining.”
Although most Jews do not believe a military coup imminent, nervousness about whether the government was strong enough to weather the pressures from the military forces became especially acute in the past half-year. It was during this time that the military pressed for–and won–the passage of legislation that would basically halt the trials of most officers accused of perpetrating human rights atrocities, such as murder, torture and kidnapping, during the reign of terror.
THE ISSUE OF THE GENERALS
In late December, Parliament passed the “Punto Final” (last stop) law President Raul Alfonsin had called for, which set a deadline of February 22 for new indictments. The prospect of trials of mid-level officers on active duty set off a series of barracks rebellions during Easter Week in April. Despite the fact that over a half-million people from all sectors of society took part in a rally to support the government, Alfonsin called for a second law.
This “Obediencia” (due obedience) law, passed with modifications in June, granted virtual immunity of prosecution to all officers below the rank of Brigadier-General, under the presumption that they were “under subordination to superior authority and carried out orders, lacking the possibility of… opposition….”
Reuven Sadan, the Kibbutz Artzi/Mapam shaliach (emissary) to Latin America, said the government “wanted to get out from under the pressure of the generals and close the book” on human rights cases. Most Argentineans, he continued, “want to finish with the trials.” Herman Schiller, president of the Jewish Human Rights Movement (JHRM), described the population as “a little tired, pessimistic that nothing can be done.”
MIXED RESPONSE TO NEW LAW
The response among Jews to the introduction of the Obediencia law was mixed.
Schiller, who opposed the law, commented that what the generals really wanted was “vindication that they were the messiahs who saved Argentina from Satan.” Renee Epelbaum, a leader in the Founding Line group of the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo who have been marching since 1976 to demand to know what happened to their missing children, felt the law represented giving in to blackmail: “Next time they will demand monuments to their heroism,” she said.
Jorge Jaimovich, the attorney-general of Cordoba province whose cousin Alejandra was tortured, raped and murdered after being kidnapped in 1976, told JTA he was conflicted. The terrorists “were criminals, too” and it was legitimate for the military to conduct a war against them, he said. “But I cannot accept that torturers won’t be tried.”
Many Jews felt torn between their personal feelings as Jews that torturers and murderers should, like Nazi war criminals, be tried and punished, and their political evaluation that if this was done, democracy might not survive.
Dr. David Goldberg, president of the DAIA, the officially recognized political umbrella organization for Argentine Jewry, told a visiting North American delegation of Jewish journalists and communal leaders at the time of the Obediencia debate that “the main present risk to Argentine democracy is that the military people are not happy, because they feel they are being called up as a mass group to justice.” He continued:
“The military feel they are being accused. The democratic society doesn’t want to accuse the (entire) armed forces, only the people who participated in these horrible crimes. How can we place the whole armed forces on trial? Even though this was not the intention, this is how it appeared. This delicate situation cannot be accepted or last for a long time.”
Goldberg told the delegation that the Argentine Jewish community had “openly put its total bet on the democratization process. The Jewish community is seen as naturally democratic, therefore outside any possibility of a totalitarian regime. With a totalitarian regime, the greatest benefit the Jewish community can hope for is not to be bothered, but it can have no participation and is therefore half-dead. We need an alive Jewish community.”
But, added Goldberg, “if an anti-Semitic element should take power, they will know what the position of the community is. Because of its position, the community has a special risk.”
There are many in the community, however, who are critical of the DAIA for issuing what they regarded as a “weak declaration” during Easter Week, and for not taking a position on the Obediencia law because, in Goldberg’s words, “this is not a question of black and white.”
The Jewish Human Rights Movement, said Schiller, is “trying to give a Jewish tone to the human rights struggle.” But, he told JTA, “it’s not easy to go against the stream in the Jewish community.”
“It’s a harsh battle,” continued Schiller, whose newspaper Nueva Presencia was the target of two bombs and daily phone threats during the junta because of its strong stand on human rights. “But it’s a Jewish tradition to fight injustice.”
Members of Rabbi Baruj Plavnick’s Conservative Comunidad Bet El are also active on behalf of human rights. Congregants wearing kipot participated in the rally during Easter Week, giving out matzot to other demonstrators. The Seminario Rabinico, which trains Conservative rabbis, is preparing a document providing a political analysis of the Easter Week rebellion from a Biblical point of view. Teenagers from the Hebraica Community Center, which is very active in supporting democracy, marched with their flags in the anti-Obediencia rally May 20. The Hebraica holds regular open meetings on human rights and is setting up a chair to study all forms of discrimination.
While members of B’nai B’rith, which sees education toward democracy as one of its functions, marched in that rally, they did so as individuals. They did not carry their lodge banners, a young leader told JTA, because “we cannot permit the accusation of being Communists,” a charge often hurled at human rights activists–and Jews.
B’nai B’rith, he said, speaks up without prior authorization by the DAIA when necessary but only in its own name, as does the Hebraica. This attitude is not always favorably received by the DAIA–indeed, one DAIA leader called B’nai B’rith “undisciplined”–because, he said, “the DAIA believes there should be only one voice in the community: the DAIA’s.”
The Hebraica, its president, Mario Trumper, told the North American delegation, was one of the institutions that founded the DAIA in 1936, which, he said, was useful for many years. “But now things have changed. Many (ethnic) groups have many different (internal) movements which express themselves and their own needs. We think the Jewish community must do the same thing. The Jewish community must have different voices to express itself, for different readings of reality.”
(Tomorrow: Last Part In The Series)
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