BY MICHAEL SOLTYS.- Aharonovich showed himself sensitive to the theme of impunity which emerged in most speeches (perhaps less so than in previous anniversaries) by pointing to the global (and also opportunistic) nature of the terrorist threat and by stressing that the material author of the atrocity – a suicide car-bomber carrying 400 kilos of explosives – was already dead although the question of who sent him was even more important. Israel’s painfully vast experience of terrorism did not make the 1992 attack any less of a surprise at the time, said the visiting minister. Israel was a peace-loving country, Aharonovich insisted, ready to negotiate everything except ttie security of its people. The guest speaker concluded by saying that he looked to the children of the victims – the next generation – to ensure that terrorism did not win.
The official speakers were preceded by two representatives of the dead people’s families. A strident siren at 2.50pm (the exact hour of the car-bomb attack) marked the start of the ceremony with Mauricio Klein (the son of two people badly injured in the attack) stepping up to the microphone after the names of the 22 identified victims had been solemnly read out and six wreaths laid.
Klein’s testimony was basically personal rather than political apart from a reference to "fundamentalist hatred" and to the anniversary also marking "18 years of impunity." He used an "interrupted conversation" that day as a metaphor to describe eloquently the blood and confusion of the tragedy, giving a poignant picture of the disruption for a small embassy staff which was "like a family." The hard part was overcoming the past and surviving where others had died – the martyrs of the attack were reborn by being remembered, he told the ceremony.
After Uruguayan Maximiliano Lancieri had described his father’s death in the attack and the family’s grief, Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana also addressed the impunity reproach, stating that President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner had pointed a finger at Iran in the United Nations and he himself had visited Interpol only last week although "Iranian intransigence" made any advance impossible.
"It is never too late to clarify the truth and punish the guilty," Taiana said, describing the terrorist atrocity as "an attack against the entire Argentine people. Argentina defended human rights and repudiated anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in all their forms, he said.
Perhaps feeling that the essential had already been said and that there were appointments to keep, Israeli Ambassador Daniel Gazit gave the briefest speech, recalling "29 souls we miss" with each one a world, concluding: "We must continue struggling for a better world of peace without hatred."
Among those also present were Taiana’s ministerial colleagues Julio Alak (Justice) Carlos Tomada (Labour) and Alberto Sileoni (Education) together with Deputy Foreign MinisterVictorio Tacetti while City Hall was represented by mayoral chief-of-staff Marcos Peña and municipal Justice Minister Guillermo Montenegro. A strong Jewish presence was headed by community leaders Guillermo Borger (AMIA) and Aldo Donzis (DAIA).Buenos Aires Herald
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