Anti-Semitism from the Standpoint of its Arab Victims in a South American Border Zone

Abstract

This article excavates three violent moments that culminate in the collective victimization of Arabs in the so-called ‘tri-border area’ between Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina: a 1970 shooting at the Israeli embassy in the Paraguayan capital of Asunción; a 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires; and, finally, the 1994 bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), a major Jewish community center complex in Buenos Aires. By exploring how Arabs in the two main cities of this tri-border zone, Foz do Iguaçu and Ciudad del Este, were constructed in relation to two earlier attacks against Israeli diplomatic offices in Asunción and Buenos Aires, this article aims to grasp how these episodes were recast after the 1994 AMIA bombing. It suggests that while the 1970 incident at the Israeli embassy in Asunción was all but forgotten, the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires was memorialized within a more powerful narrative about anti-Semitism, which framed as its foil Arabs in the Triple Border region. The wider goal of this article is to show how the tragic 1994 event rooted in Jewish suffering was also employed to collectively victimize Arabs in the Triple Border through the late 1990s.