32nd anniversary of the terror attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires

At 14.45 on March 17, 1992, a powerful bomb shattered the building of the Israel Embassy in Buenos Aires, taking the lives of 29 people, among them three Israeli embassy personnel, six local embassy employees, and scores of innocent Argentineans, including elderly residents of a nearby nursing home, and schoolchildren on a passing bus.

In one moment, the embassy and the nearby church were literally wiped off the map. Hezbollah, calling itself a “party of God”, claimed responsibility for the attack.

The Argentine Supreme Court ordered an expert investigation of the attack which was carried out by the head of the national police bomb disposal and explosives unit. The result was conclusive: “The explosion took place outside the building when a car bomb struck the embassy building.” Nonetheless, in 1996 the Argentine Supreme Court issued a statement saying it was impossible to determine who was responsible for this act of terror.

In May 1999, following a formal investigation, the Argentinian Supreme Court accused Hezbollah of the attack and issued an arrest warrant for Imad Mughnieh, commander of Hezbollah military-terrorist wing. An investigation carried out by Israel, whose findings were made public in 2003, showed that the highest levels of the Iranian regime were aware of Hezbollah’s intention to carry out the attack and had in fact authorized Hezbollah to carry it out.

The 2006 report of the findings of the special team that investigated the terrorist attack that destroyed the Jewish Community Center building (AMIA) in Buenos Aires (18 July 1994) states that according to expert testimony, “the modus operandi of the attack was identical to the method employed two years previously in the attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires (an attack that the Argentinean Supreme Court found was the work of Islamic Jihad in its capacity as the military wing of Hezbollah).”

To date, no one has been brought to justice for these attacks. Israel remains convinced of Iranian responsibility for the bombing of the embassy in 1992 and of the Jewish community center AMIA.

On 20 November 2007, a memorial was inaugurated on the site of the former embassy.

A marble monument, a replica of the column of the original embassy building, stands today in the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, in memory of those who died on that fateful day in 1992, bearing the verse of the prophet Amos:

“I will raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old.”