Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Buenos Aires, as part of a regional tour, aimed at strengthening Israel’s ties with Latin America. Upon Netanyahu’s arrival, the Israeli Prime Minister paid homage to the victims of two bombing attacks in the 1990’s that targeted Israeli and Jewish communities in the Argentinian capital, claiming the lives of 111 people. During a special memorial ceremony at the Israeli embassy, Prime Minister Netanyahu declared that “next to the memory and the grief” of those heinous terror attacks, Israel has learned a valuable lesson: Israel must not be deterred but stand tall against terrorists and those who spread it. Netanyahu said, “Next to the memory and the grief there is a lesson, the terror attack in the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires exactly like the terror attack in the Amia building two years later, taught us that it is absolutely forbidden to be deterred in the ongoing battle against heinous murderers. We must face them standing tall, with strength, with diligence. Stand tall against terrorists and those who spread it,” he declared.
Prime Minister Netanyahu stressed that the two main sources of terror are routed in Islamic extremism. The first source terror emerges from the Shi’ite Muslim denomination, which is led by the Islamic Republic of Iran, while the second source is form the Sunni Muslim denomination, which is led by the Islamic State. The Israeli leader asserted, “Global terror has two primary addresses: the terrorism of extreme Shi’ite Islam under Iranian leadership and the terrorism of the extreme Sunni Islam that started with Al-Qaeda’s leadership and is currently under the leadership of the Islamic State. Iran was the one that stood in the 90′ behind the big terror attacks in Bueno Aires. The octopus of terror of Iran from the Middle East, together with its proxy Hezbollah, it continues to send its tentacles to the entire world and also to here, Latin America,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu further declared that Israel remains resolved to fight both sources of global terror, yet emphasized: when one is the defeated, the second takes its place – that is why the civilized world must combat the sources of terrorism in its entirety. The Prime Minister emphasized “We are resolved to fight Iran’s terror, we are resolved to thwart it (Iran) from establishing itself next to our (Israel’s) borders. We are also resolved and also combat the second source of global terrorism, Daesh (Islamic State),” while adding that “Daesh (Islamic State) exits, Iran enters, Daesh surrenders, Iran takes over. It is a duty of all civilized countries to combat terror in its entirety. And the terror attacks of Iran particularly. The same Iran that committed here those two heinous crimes.”
Both Israel and Argentina blame the Islamic Republic of Iran for the two terror attacks in the 1990’s, including a bombing attack at Israel’s embassy in 1992, in which 29 people were killed and 242 others were injured, and another terror attack on the headquarters of the Argentine-Israelite Mutual Association, where a powerful car bomb killed 85 people on July 18th of 1994. Argentina has Latin America’s largest Jewish community, at an estimated 250,000 people, many descended from immigrants who fled oppression in Europe in the early 20th century for what was then one of the world’s richest countries.