Anti-Semitism, Corruption, and the Death of Alberto Nisman https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/politics-current-affairs/2015/03/anti-semitism-corruption-and-the-death-of-alberto-nisman/

March 24, 2015 | Ben Cohen
About the author: Ben Cohen, a New York-based writer, has contributed essays on anti-Semitism and related issues to Mosaic and other publications.

The death—most likely murder—of Alberto Nisman, the Argentinian prosecutor investigating the 1994 bombing of Buenos Aires’s AMIA Jewish center, takes its place within a long history of anti-Semitism and political corruption in Argentina. Ben Cohen writes:

It’s important to bear three indisputable truths in mind: First, no one has ever been convicted for the [1992] Israeli embassy bombing. Second, no one has ever been convicted for the AMIA bombing. Third, the most tangible outcome of this entire process has been the suspicious death of the one man who dedicated himself to unraveling these grotesque mysteries: Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor; Alberto Nisman, the Jew. . . . .

From the moment Nisman’s body was discovered, the inquiry into his death faithfully reflected the judicial sham that had plagued the actual AMIA investigation. At first, the authorities insinuated that Nisman had shot himself in the temple. A few days later, it was noted that the fatal bullet had entered above and behind his ear—a strange method, indeed, to end one’s own life with a gun. . . .

These basic errors—whether caused by incompetence, design, or a mixture of the two—were compounded by [President Cristina] Kirchner’s own statements. Increasingly sounding like an angst-ridden protagonist in a telenovela, the president initially declared that Nisman had probably committed suicide. She also breathlessly accused Nisman of working at the behest of foreign powers, stating that during a trip he made to Europe a few weeks before he died, he’d received precise instructions on how to proceed with the accusations against her. Then, with a remarkable lack of self-awareness, Kirchner changed her mind; Nisman’s death, she now said, was probably a murder. . . .

“Which Nisman do I go with?” Kirchner herself asked in early March, implying that because the special prosecutor had once praised her remarks about AMIA before the United Nations, there was no basis for his later accusations against her. For good measure, Kirchner then offered up the outlines of a conspiracy theory: why, she asked, “does the state of Israel demand [justice] for AMIA, and not for the blowing up of their own embassy?” She offered no further explanation; in the Kirchnerite universe, it is enough to encourage speculation about Israel’s agenda and allow people to draw their own malign conclusions.

Read more on Commentary: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-nisman-case-and-the-whitewashing-of-iran/