Published: 1 November 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
ARGENTINA’S 200,000-STRONG JEWISH COMMUNITY — Latin America’s largest — is as profoundly divided as the country is following a left-wing victory in last Sunday’s national elections that saw Cristina Fernández de Kirchner return as vice president.
Alberto Fernández, the populist opposition leader who is no relation of Cristina, won 48.1 per cent of the vote against the incumbent President Mauricio Macri’s 40.4 per cent.
It might be assumed, on the surface, that the majority of Argentinian Jews oppose any government that includes Ms Fernández.
After all, it was during her presidency that her Jewish Foreign Minister Héctor Timmerman signed a controversial memorandum of understanding with Iran to investigate a car bombing at the Amia Jewish centre in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and wounded more than 300 in 1994.
She was indicted in 2018 on charges that she had accepted bribes from construction companies. Investigations into her case continue to this day.
“Cristina [Fernández] pursues an ideology of the left of the 1970s, which is not necessarily conducive to close relations with Israel,” said Gabriela Goldberg, who worked at the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires during Ms Fernández’s second term as President.
But as sociologist and journalist Jorge Elbaum pointed out, there is a strong Jewish presence in circles close to Ms Fernández.
They include Axel Kiciloff, her one-time finance minister, who was elected governor of the Province of Buenos Aires in last Sunday’s elections.
FULL STORY After the election, Argentina's Jewish community is as divided as the rest of the country (Jewish Chronicle)
Photo: de Kirchner and Fernandez after the election (Reuters)
