President Raul Alfonsin has appointed Jacobo Fiterman, a member of the presidium of the Latin American branch of the World Jewish Congress, to the post of Secretary of Public Works for the Buenos Aires municipality.
Fiterman, an engineer who has long been active in Jewish affairs here, served until recently as president of the Argentine Zionist Organization. In November, he led a major public campaign in the country to mobilize support for efforts to persuade the United Nations General Assembly to repudiate its 1975 resolution equating Zionism and racism.
President Alfonsin’s appointment of Fiterman was widely praised in the Argentine press, which stressed Fiterman’s professional and intellectual qualifications for the post and detailed some of the public projects he has been instrumental in building. Alfonsin’s selection of an individual who is not only Jewish but is also publicly known as a prominent Zionist is being particularly well-received within Argentina’s Jewish community, which has recently been alarmed by an upsurge in anti-Semitic incidents and anti-Israel agitation.
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.
