Perspective: With the Jews of Argentina
Drinan, Robert F.
PERSPECTIVE A CONGRESSMAN'S' CALL TO ACTION BY ROBERT F. DRINAN WITH THE JEWS OF ARGENTINA My most vivid impressions of anti-Semitism in Argentina came from a lengthy talk with a prominent Jewish...
...For he allowed as how he was deeply concerned that the world not think that anti-Semitism in Argentina was on the rise...
...I did not question his sincerity, but I wondered then—and still wonder—why he refused to give credence to the feeling outside Argentina that anti-Semitism had grown in the months since the coup...
...Without praising the military junta, he told of the incredible mismanagement of the regime of Mrs...
...I walked two blocks to a main boulevard and Robert F. Drinan has been a member of Congress since 1970...
...He asserted—without any proof—that the Videla government had recendy released some 400 political prisoners and that very shortly they would release those still imprisoned...
...I visited the apartment of a Jewish industrialist who had just returned from the United States where he had been the guest of the State Department...
...But all too often, when people adopt such a position, their tolerance of injustice escalates, resulting in incapability or unwillingness to speak out against injustice at all...
...They followed me closely to my destination, Michael's office-home...
...Michael's denial of any unusual anti-Semitism in Argentina was presented as the judgment of a well-informed journalist, not of a Jew seeking to avert worse disasters by minimizing existing difficulties...
...I left Michael's office after almost an hour...
...Anti-Semitism in Argentina is not blatant...
...Consequently, I urged, the Jewish community in Argentina could help by revealing in the world press the ways in which the repressions of the Videla government became, inevitably, the vehicles of anti-Semitism...
...But their absence remains one of the minor mysteries of my 11 days in Argentina...
...It is like an infection which could grow into something horrendous almost overnight...
...I thought I had been very clever until I saw the two secret service cars pull in back of my cab three blocks from where I had entered it...
...Like Michael, my host was determined not to have even the word anti-Semitism appear in any report about Argentina that would circulate in the world community...
...Peron's disastrous regime...
...The secret service somehow did not feel the need to protect me that night...
...My host elaborated on many things that I already knew...
...Although Michael's home has never been invaded nor his life directly threatened, a significant number of his friends have been jailed or have disappeared...
...Were that to happen, he argued, the Argentine officials would begin to blame their economic problems on Jewish conduct, and then anti-Semitism, always very near the surface in Argentine society, would surely become a reality as never before...
...Further, without making Argentina appear to be totally subservient to the United States, he stressed the importance of increasing commercial and cultural contacts between the two nations...
...The Jews of Argentina are inevitably influenced by their desire for safety in the immediate future...
...I had a sense that David would be inclined to follow his mother's advice and leave Argentina for a time or even forever...
...I had die same difficulty with my host's attitude that I had with Michael's...
...That evening I caught another, and similar, glimpse of the Jewish community in Argentina...
...The rain had worsened and cabs were nowhere to be seen, so I shamefacedly accepted the invitation of my "bodyguard" and allowed him to drive me back to the hotel...
...They were trying to be strategists rather than moralists...
...grabbed a cab going west...
...He finally relented, on the condition that I not use his name...
...I walked up a one-way street where the two cars of my "protectors" could not go...
...Michael insisted to me that there was no greater anti-Semitism in Argentina now than before the junta government took over on March 24, 1976...
...My "escorts" were waiting patiently for me as I left the office...
...I had a very difficult time arranging the appointment...
...The U.S...
...They seek to underplay the extent of anti-Semitism both to reassure themselves and to avoid antagonizing the regime...
...State Department, the American Jewish Committee, and the British Embassy phoned him on my behalf...
...While it seemed to me that their strategy was ambiguous and dangerous, I had to recognize that it was presumptuous of me, a Christian and a stranger to Argentina, to be openly critical of approaches adopted by informed and courageous Jews toward a new government whose repressive tactics were familiar to them from bitter experiences over the past generation...
...I have given this dilemma much thought since my return...
...My difficulty in understanding Michael was compounded when he introduced me to his 19-year-old son, David (also a pseudonym...
...He asserted— with a good deal of credible evidence—that the number of synagogue bombings and the volume of anti-Semitic literature had not appreciably increased since the overthrow by General Videla of Mrs...
...For as against the danger which Michael fears, the danger of publicity, history teaches us that there is a far greater danger—the danger of silence...
...Michael would probably deny that this was the thrust or effect of his conversation, but for me no other conclusion was really possible...
...it is insidious...
...It serves no one—not even its present and prospective victims—to pretend that it is not there...
...The presence of two Ford Falcons belonging to the secret police didn't bother Michael a bit because, he noted, the government was in any case almost certainly wiretapping every conversation in his office...
...Michael insisted that it was not anti-Semitism that brought about such injustices, but a rigidity on the part of the government resulting from the paranoia which obsesses many highly placed public officials...
...Hence, reluctantiy, I speak...
...The third or fourth question apparently touched too close to David's views of the Argentine government, because his father gently suggested that David should not be "on record" with his opinions...
...I entered a subway and came out of it two blocks away...
...They were searching for the best long-range plan by which the Jewish community in Argentina could be protected...
...I asked David the usual questions about his college studies...
...He had arranged an invitation for me to visit with him through the U.S...
...Michael went on to relate that almost every day his wife tearfully begs him to leave Argentina...
...I was puzzled and perplexed because I had been told—by implication—that Amnesty International, in its zeal to promote human rights in Argentina, should stay away from the problems of the 400,000 member Jewish community...
...State Department, through business interests in Buenos Aires, and even through the local office of the American Jewish Committee...
...I admired a father's concern for his son, but I wondered whether Michael was being over-cautious or whether he thought that David would contradict his father's minimizing of the extent of anti-Semitism...
...It is a threat which the entire world should watch with the greatest apprehension, anxiety, and anger...
...So we will call him Michael...
...If one takes the view, as my host the Argentine industrialist did, that the present government will, in due course, respond honestly and positively on the question of human freedoms, one must be prepared to endure a long series of injustices...
...On the morning that I was scheduled to visit with him, I did my best to escape from the six-person bodyguard assigned by the Argentine government to "protect" me while I and two other members of Amnesty International were in Argentina investigating political prisoners...
...I understood his intentions and tried gently to suggest that the present military government in Argentina was more repressive than any of the previous 12 governments that had ruled that nation in the past 20 years...
...Peron...
...Perhaps they knew that I was going to visit the home of someone who was "safe...
...And I have come to the conclusion— hesitantly but firmly—that observers of Argentina, Christian or Jewish, should not be dissuaded from speaking the tragically obvious truth...
...But it was difficult to determine whether Michael was speaking a truth he believed, or one he wanted me to believe...
...My host understood my argument but kept insisting that political repression was necessary in order to curb the left-wing guerrillas and terrorists who were slaughtering police officers and others every day...
...PERSPECTIVE A CONGRESSMAN'S' CALL TO ACTION BY ROBERT F. DRINAN WITH THE JEWS OF ARGENTINA My most vivid impressions of anti-Semitism in Argentina came from a lengthy talk with a prominent Jewish journalist in Buenos Aires at an early morning interview on a horribly rainy day in November 1976...
Vol. 2 • April 1977 • No. 6
