Exile of the World': Israeli Perceptions of Jacobo Timerman

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“Exile of the World”: Israeli Perceptions of Jacobo Timerman

Raanan Rein and Efraim Davidi

AbstrAct

Upon his arrival in Israel in September 1979, the Jewish-Argentine journalist Jacobo Timerman was welcomed as a Jewish hero. The founding editor of the daily La Opinión had been kidnapped in Argentina in April 1977, tortured, and had spent almost two and a half years in illegal detention, and later house arrest, until he was deported to Israel. But the initial enthusiasm quickly gave way to disappointment. The Jewish hero became a persona non grata, among other reasons because of his critical writings against the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. This article analyzes the changing image of Timerman in the Hebrew press. Israeli society found it difficult to accept such criticism from someone who had come to Israel only a short time earlier and, moreover, with the help of the Israeli government. The hostility toward Timerman also reflected a lack of understanding as to the meaning of Zionism among many Diaspora Jews.

Key words: Jacobo Timerman, Israeli-Argentine relations, diplomacy and human rights, Zionism

O n May 25, 1977, a day when Argentina was celebrating the anniversary of the formation of its first native government, the ruling military regime decided to appoint a general as

interventor (a government-appointed supervisor) at one of the most influential newspapers in the country, La Opinión. This daily, known as “the Le Monde of Latin America,” had been founded six years ear-lier by the Jewish-Argentine journalist Jacobo Timerman (1923–99). From its inception, La Opinión had a revolutionary impact on the Ar-gentine news scene. Like the French daily to which it was compared, it focused on cultural issues, political analysis, and international

Raanan Rein and Efraim Davidi, “ ‘Exile of the World’: Israeli Perceptions of Jacobo Timerman,” Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, Society n.s. 16, no. 3 (Spring/Summer 2010): 1–31

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news, besides chronicling events. When the military junta appointed General José Teófilo Goyret to manage it, the paper’s founder and editor was already a prisoner—or, rather, he had been kidnapped on April 15 of that year, and his whereabouts were unknown. One of the most famous journalists of the country was sharing the fate of thou-sands of young people who had been arrested and were now missing (desaparecidos). Almost all of them were tortured, and many of them were killed.

The coup d’état carried out by the Argentine military officers on March 24, 1976, was the sixth the country had undergone since 1930. However, this latest Argentine dictatorship was notable for a repression unprecedented in the nation’s history. In the name of the Doctrine of National Security and the battle against subversion, thousands of people were kidnapped, tortured, and killed. What was officially known as the “Process of National Reorganization” was thereafter known around the world as “the dirty war.”1

Timerman had been illegally imprisoned since mid-April 1977; his situation was “whitewashed” (regularized) in expectation of a military court trial, at which he was acquitted in October of that same year. De-spite this ruling, the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces thought it imperative to keep him in prison for offenses against the Statute for the Process of National Reorganization, such as “failure to observe basic moral principles in the exercise of public, political, or union offices.” Consequently, he remained under arrest for another two years—most of the time in his own home on Ayacucho Street in Buenos Aires—until September 25, 1979. The day he was released—without any prior notice—he was told that his Argentine citizenship had been revoked, and he was put on a commercial flight to Madrid en route to Israel. In total, counting prison stays and house arrest, Timerman had been de-prived of his freedom for some 30 months. He described his experi-ences in a book written while in exile in Israel, Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number, which became an international bestseller.2

Timerman had maintained extensive relations with the State of Is-rael and its representatives in Argentina in the years before his kid-napping, and in this article we examine the internal disputes that took place in the upper echelons of the Foreign Ministry in Jerusa-lem and the Israeli government over the Timerman case as well as the dilemmas that his imprisonment created for both the State of Israel and Jewish community institutions in Argentina. However, the main issue addressed here is the way the Israeli press treated this famous prisoner, who was also the journalist with the closest ties to Israel’s embassy in Buenos Aires. We analyze the drastic transformation in

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Israeli Perceptions of Timerman

•Raanan Rein & Efraim Davidi

the image of a man who was considered a Jewish hero at the time he was deported to Israel but who had become almost persona non grata by the time he left the country some four years later—among other reasons, for his fierce criticisms of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the early 1980s. This discussion should be understood in the wider context of the ways in which different elements within Israel and within the Jewish Diaspora interacted and came into conflict over the fate of Timerman and other political prisoners; in turn, all of this must be viewed against the backdrop of the Cold War/Dirty War pe-riod during the 1970s in Latin America.

The way the Israeli establishment and the Hebrew press treated Timerman is very important, since it is connected to several key issues in the Jewish state’s relations with the Diaspora communities in gen-eral and the Israel–Argentina–Argentine Jews triangle in particular. Although the State of Israel has, since its declaration of indepen-dence, defined itself as a “Jewish state,” underlining its commitment to defending the interests of Jews everywhere, the country’s foreign-policy interests have not always coincided with those of Jewish com-munities, groups, or individuals. In many cases, decision makers and journalists in Israel have taken an expedient approach toward the Jews of the Diaspora, turning away from those whose activities or views were not compatible with the Zionist discourse.3

In Timerman’s case, the Israeli assistance he received was attribut-able precisely to his status as a “prisoner with a name, in a cell with a number,” since the Israeli official establishment did not extend this as-sistance to hundreds of other “disappeared” Jews, who truly were with-out names and without cell numbers.4 Yet the support for Timerman and identification with him lasted only as long as his views and strug-gles could be integrated with the views and self-image of the State of Israel. When they deviated from the accepted patterns, whether be-cause Timerman’s Argentine identity was no less influential than his Zionist identity or because as a Diaspora Jew he dared to criticize the government’s policy, his public image in Israel underwent a reversal.

Merciless Interrogations and Antisemitic Stereotypes

In his testimony before the members of CONADEP (the Argentine National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, formed after the collapse of the dictatorship to investigate its crimes),5 Timerman described the events that began with his arrest at home in Buenos Aires early on the morning of April 15, 1977:

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After arresting me at my home in the federal capital, they took me to the police headquarters of Buenos Aires Province where I was interro-gated by Camps and Etchecolatz; from there they transferred me to Campo de Mayo, where they made me sign a statement. Then they left me at Puesto Vasco, where I was tortured, after which I was again turned over to the Central Department of the Federal Police, where after 25 days I was able to get in touch with my family. From there they took me to COT-I Martínez to be tortured again, then again to the Central Depart-ment of the Federal Police. Ultimately, I was legally interned at the Mag-dalena penitentiary.6

Once his arrest had become public knowledge, Timerman was the most famous Argentine political prisoner both inside and outside of the country. The journalist described his interrogators as antisemitic, anti-Marxist extremists who insisted that “Argentina has three main enemies: Karl Marx, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of society; Sigmund Freud, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of the family; and Albert Einstein, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of time and space.”7 Timerman stressed that the issue of his Judaism came up repeatedly during every interrogation, which included questions about Israeli schemes to send military forces to Argentina in order to implement the “Andinia Plan,” an apocryphal Zionist conspiracy to occupy a broad section of the Patagonian prov-inces in southern Argentina and establish a second Jewish state there.8 Another prisoner, Juan Ramón Nazar, confirmed that his captors held firm antisemitic views and that they continually demanded details about the Andinia Plan.9 Timerman’s account is further bolstered by a telegram sent by the Israeli ambassador in Argentina, Ram Nirgad, to his supervisors in Jerusalem in May 1978:

The struggle against clandestine subversive groups was waged and is waged furiously, and the measures taken are brutal and cruel. . . . Some of the Jews who were victims of the actions against clandestine groups suf-fered extra for being Jews. There are also antisemitic tendencies in the in-vestigations that were aimed at Jewish and Zionist organizations.10

Ramón Camps—then chief of police of Buenos Aires province and a colonel, though he later became a general—published a book in 1982 in response to that of the journalist whom he had held in detention:

Jacobo Timerman tried, from [the grandstand of] La Opinión, to raise revolutionary consciousness . . . to reformulate, or, if you will, to empty the national traditions for the benefit of Marxism, of which he claimed

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to be the champion. . . . [W]hile he was convincing successive govern-ments, civilian or military, of his adherence to the ruling party in those pages of La Opinión devoted to the analysis of national policy, he was destroying the bases of society in the [newspaper’s] cultural supple-ments and section on international politics. . . . [U]ltimately, since Marxism is the heresy of modern times, what we are seeing is the cur-rent chapter of that constant war between Good and Evil.11

Under interrogation, Timerman was repeatedly questioned about the nature of his relations with David Graiver, one of La Opinión’s principal shareholders, who had been killed a few months earlier in an airplane accident in Mexico. Graiver, a young businessman from La Plata, had built a small international economic empire that, it was discovered after his death, had been financed with ransom money collected by the banned guerrilla organization Montoneros.12 Ultra-nationalist factions inside and outside the armed forces considered the link between the ill-fated banker and the journalist as confirma-tion of their working hypothesis about a Jewish-Zionist-Marxist con-spiracy against the country.13

Timerman maintained close relations with high-ranking military of-ficers. He even considered some of them to be personal friends rather than merely work contacts. Accordingly, the question arises as to whether Timerman—who had supported the coup d’état that over-threw the Peronist government in March 1976 in the hope that it would restore confidence in the national institutions14—was a victim of inter-nal struggles between different groups in the armed forces competing for control of the regime, or whether he was arrested because of the in-trinsic antisemitism of the military command. In addition, some com-mentators have suggested that, in the year since the coup, the generals had come to consider their former friend to be their most dangerous enemy and to believe that it was imperative to neutralize the only news-paper publishing news about what went on in government circles. An-swers to these questions, however, are beyond the scope of this article.

Antisemitic, Pro-Israeli Generals

In 1978, on the eve of the World Cup soccer championship in Argen-tina, the monstrous dimensions of the state’s terrorism had already aroused international criticism against the Argentine government. The U.S. government, under the Democratic administration of Presi-dent Jimmy Carter, adopted a firm policy against the mass violation

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of human rights in Argentina. This was a reversal of the line taken by the previous Republican administration, which, as the declassifica-tion of additional government documents in the United States re-vealed, not only had given a green light to the repression but had gone so far as to urge the leaders of the military junta to complete the job as soon as possible, before U.S. public opinion got in the way.15

The State of Israel maintained close relations with the military dic-tatorship in Argentina. Despite the antisemitic attitudes of the junta, relations between the two countries flourished in those days, first during the government of Labour Party leader Yitzhak Rabin and subsequently under the administration of Menachem Begin and the Likud Party, following their electoral victory in May 1977.16 In Sep-tember 1976, only a few months after the coup, the foreign ministers of both countries had met in New York, in an atmosphere described as “cordial.” According to a report sent to the ministry in Jerusalem, Israeli foreign minister Yigal Allon

talked about the mutual interest of our countries in the face of Soviet imperialism and invited his colleague to visit Israel. He added that the Argentine minister of foreign relations [Admiral César Augusto Guz-zetti] would be able to see the whole country, from the Holy Places to the arms produced in Israel, including better and more affordable types of arms than [those] produced in other countries, and also others de-signed for the war against terrorism, such as the “Galil.”17

However, news about relations between Israel and Argentina, espe-cially military relations, was scrutinized by the censor’s watchful eye. The censor’s office, which answered to the Israel Defense Forces, pro-hibited virtually any publication in which arms transactions with an-other country were mentioned. Under these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the situation in the remote South American republic passed under the radar of Israeli public opinion.

As for the Israeli parliament’s approach to Argentine-Israeli rela-tions, former minister Shulamit Aloni published an article in Ha-’arets on what happened when she tried to initiate a parliamentary debate on Israeli arms sales to the Argentine military regime:

At the time not only did they shut me up, but the late Knesset member Yigal Horowitz threatened me personally and ordered me not to open my mouth. This was at a time when the Israeli government was deliver-ing arms to the brutal Argentine military regime that was exterminat-ing citizens right and left. On the fifth floor of the Knesset, the parents of children who had disappeared came asking us to do something. I sub-

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mitted a motion for the Knesset agenda to discuss the issue. It was re-fused. I was told that this subject could not be debated in the Knesset but that it would be discussed in the Defense and Foreign Affairs Com-mittee. As far as I know, the subject was never debated, since if it had been they would have invited me.18

According to a special report published by the Centro de Investiga-ciones Sociales of the DAIA (Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas de Argentina, the umbrella organization that represents the Jewish com-munity in Argentina), close to 1,300 Jews disappeared during the mili-tary regime—a number disproportionate to their representation in the general population of the country.19 Relatives in Israel of desaparecidos and political prisoners in Argentina appealed to anyone who might be able to intercede on behalf of their loved ones: government officials, diplomats, businessmen, journalists, politicians, army officers. The in-terministerial commission created in Israel two decades later to investi-gate the fate of the Jewish desaparecidos emphasized in its report:

The families felt that their interests were not being treated effectively enough, that time was passing, and that there was no help or informa-tion at all. . . . Seeking to pool their efforts and exert a more efficient influence, a group of families created the “Committee of Relatives of Desaparecidos in Argentina,” an organization that called for active in-tervention from the State of Israel. Among other things, the relatives’ committee appealed to various Knesset members, asking them to inter-vene. Some of them, from a range of political factions, indicated their willingness to collaborate, but efforts to put the topic on the Knesset agenda were in vain. The speaker of the Knesset, Menachem Savidor, would not allow it to be discussed by the plenum. After many unan-swered requests to the Knesset Secretariat, the Committee of Relatives decided to appeal to the Supreme Court. This impelled the Knesset ple-num to discuss the subject [in late June 1983] in anticipation of the Su-preme Court’s deliberations, and a parliamentary commission went to Argentina for the first time to study the issue. However, after two days in Argentina, the commission cut short its mission and returned home early to participate in a parliamentary vote of no confidence in the gov-ernment. The trip produced no results. This incident reinforced still further the relatives’ conviction that no clear policy existed. . . . [A]s far as the families knew, the government never discussed the problem of the desaparecidos in any organized, in-stitutionalized manner as an important item on the national agenda.20

Despite the censor’s best efforts, the close relations that Israel and the Argentine military regime had developed in the field of arms

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sales were an open secret. According to the interministerial commis-sion’s report, the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires was responsible for developing trade relations between the two countries and especially for promoting Israeli exports. The ambassador was not directly in-volved in contracting for the various military equipment sales and training courses in the use of that equipment. Such matters were handled by military attachés and representatives of the Israeli compa-nies involved. However, the ambassador did “actively participate in the general promotion [of trade with Argentina] and in strengthen-ing relations with the agents who made the purchase decisions.”21

The ambiguous wording of this report seems to confirm that Israel was indeed supplying military equipment and that Israeli military offi-cers were training their Argentine peers (both in Argentina and in Israel). Moreover, the embassy was aware of these exchanges—to the extent that, on some occasions, the ambassador himself undertook to promote business, taking advantage of his access to “the agents who made the purchase decisions,” who were none other than the senior of-ficers responsible for Argentina’s systematic human-rights violations. A letter entitled “Sale of Arms to Argentina and Chile,” sent by diplomat Dov Schmorack to the director-general of the Foreign Ministry in Jeru-salem on July 5, 1978, listed articles that Israel was selling to the two neighboring dictatorships as they squared off against each other.22

While successive Israeli governments were providing military and political support to the junta, the Jewish Agency was making efforts (together with the Israeli ministries of foreign affairs, the interior, and absorption) to rescue victims of political persecution from Argentina. These individuals, almost all of them of Jewish origin, did not arrive in Israel as refugees or petitioners for political asylum but by virtue of the Law of Return. As a result, it is difficult to determine their number, since on paper they are indistinguishable from all the other immi-grants from Argentina in those years. One estimate suggests that, from the end of 1975 (before the coup d’état but at a time when death squads were already at work under government protection) up to mid-1978 (when the World Cup soccer tournament took place), several hundred Argentine exiles arrived, fleeing the horror of persecution by the de facto government. Yet many of them had been estranged from Jewish community life and had no connection with Zionism, so within a few years most of these immigrants abandoned Israel (usually for Western Europe, especially Spain and France), and others returned to Argen-tina when the dictatorship ended in 1983.23 These exiles, together with young Argentines who had emigrated in the early 1970s through Zion-ist youth movements and a small number of left-wing Israelis, were the

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main participants in the actions organized in Israel against the Argen-tine military regime.24

The Most Famous Prisoner

Timerman, however, was a different case entirely. He was not simply one among thousands of detainees, prisoners, and desaparecidos but was the symbol of resistance to Argentina’s brutal dictatorship and a human-rights advocate. Agitation, public and otherwise, for his libera-tion never ceased throughout the 30 months of his captivity. After the fact, the State of Israel attempted on occasion to claim the starring role in the campaign for the journalist’s release, but in fact pressure was brought to bear by embassies of various countries, governments (pri-marily the Carter administration in the United States and its assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs, Patricia Derian), international organizations (such as Amnesty International), and Jewish organizations outside the Argentine orbit. In the difficult conditions imposed by the state repression, very few local bodies worked for the release of political prisoners. Of all Argentinian news-papers, only the English-language daily, the Buenos Aires Herald, pub-lished the news of Timerman’s arrest in April 1977 and described it as “a blow to freedom of the press.” Timerman and the editors of the Her-ald, Robert Cox and Andrew Graham-Yooll, were among the few jour-nalists who criticized the government for the systematic violation of human rights.25 Cox, too, was eventually arrested and went into exile in December 1979, shortly after Timerman arrived in Israel.26

From the day that the editor of La Opinión was arrested, Israel’s em-bassy in Buenos Aires and the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem sought ways to intervene, even though officially the Jewish state showed no in-terest in the Timerman case, at least publicly. But far from the media spotlight, the embassy staff—particularly Ram Nirgad, who main-tained close ties with the Argentine leadership—followed the case’s de-velopment closely and made efforts to obtain Timerman’s release. On the one hand, mostly government-owned Israeli companies were nego-tiating big arms sales to Argentina, information about which leaked out to the international press; on the other, the state and its representa-tives in Argentina had to confront the necessity of doing something about the fate of the disappeared Jews in general and of Timerman in particular.

Timerman’s connection with the Israeli establishment had begun back in the 1950s. A former member of the Ha-shomer Ha-tsa‘ir

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youth movement who always defined himself as a “socialist Zionist,” he strengthened his ties with Israeli representatives in the 1960s, once he began managing major weeklies such as Primera Plana and Confirmado and especially after he founded the daily La Opinión. This newspaper, which enjoyed great influence among intellectuals and enormous prestige in Latin America in general, devoted a significant amount of space to international affairs, unlike the “traditional” Ar-gentine press, which considered foreign events to be of rather mar-ginal interest. During its first six years of existence, La Opinión focused considerable attention on events in the Middle East. Its sources were primarily the press agencies and their correspondents; on occasion, its articles openly reflected “explanatory” material dis-tributed by the Israeli embassy.27 Accordingly, it should come as no surprise that, in the frequent messages sent by the diplomatic lega-tion back to the ministry in Jerusalem after Timerman’s arrest, the “most famous prisoner” was referred to by the nickname “the old friend.” Joel Barromi, a high-ranking diplomat, defined Timerman’s relations with Israel in this manner:

Timerman maintained close contact with the embassy. Thanks to his knowledge of the ins and outs of the Argentine political-military world, he was a valuable source of information and analysis, and an advisor whose counsel was reliable and correct. Timerman also imbued his daily [news-paper] with open support for Israel and Zionism. In 1975, when the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution equating Zionism with racism, Timerman published a signed editorial entitled “Why I Am a Zionist,” which made a considerable impact. Naturally, the news of his arrest pro-duced shock and amazement at the embassy and indignation in Israel.28

Nevertheless, Timerman was unaware of the network of relations between Israel’s representatives and the officers who had carried out the coup. In a telegram sent to the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem in early April 1976, on the eve of a meeting with the junta’s foreign min-ister, a navy officer, and less than two weeks after the coup, Nirgad said emphatically, “As you know, I have maintained close ties with the naval leadership for more than a year, and I don’t think we need to involve Timerman in this matter.”29

Timerman’s arrest also caused a stir in the Jewish-Argentine estab-lishment, particularly the DAIA. Although Timerman had many rivals among the community leaders, several considered themselves his friends. But the institutions as such said hardly a word in public on the subject. Finally, in April 1978, the president of the DAIA, Nehemías Reznitsky, asked the executive board of the organization to issue a com-

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muniqué expressing approval of the decision to move Timerman to house arrest.30 José Timerman, Jacobo’s brother, said years later:

The Jewish organizations took a passive approach, which amazed me, considering Jacobo’s systematic struggle against antisemitism and what happened during the Holocaust and so many other massacres suffered by the Jewish people throughout their history. I remember once I had a two-hour-long meeting with the executive board of the DAIA to ask it to undertake some kind of action in defense of my brother. But it was useless.31

The contradictory tangle of considerations with which the State of Israel approached the Timerman case included concerns for Timer-man’s personal safety, for the position of the Jewish-Argentine com-munity establishment, for the politics of the Jewish organizations around the world that were beginning to take an interest in the sub-ject, for the continuation of Israel’s arms sales, and for the excellent relations already established with the governing military leadership. The interest that Israel and its diplomatic representatives took in Timerman’s fate was reflected in hundreds of documents, messages, and telegrams exchanged during those months between the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem and the embassy in Buenos Aires about the legal status and health of the editor of La Opinión and the efforts being made to obtain his release.32 Israel’s official policy can be de-scribed as an effort to show the junta that it had committed a serious error in arresting the journalist but to avoid rousing international public opinion against the regime and, even more important, to avoid attributing antisemitic proclivities to the leaders of the dicta-torship. Secrecy and discretion were essential in the course of action adopted by the Israeli Foreign Ministry (contrasting notably with, of course, the vocal campaign Israel promoted on behalf of the Jews of the Soviet Union). The Israeli press scarcely mentioned the topic. Timerman’s arrest was hardly publicized, and little was said about the situation of Jews under the repressive Argentine government.

What Should Be Done about Timerman?

The exchange of telexes, telegrams, and letters between Nirgad and Yishayahu Anug, then director-general of the Foreign Ministry in Je-rusalem, testify to the great confusion reigning at the time. However, Timerman was not “a main axis of our diplomatic policy” with Argen-

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tina, as Anug wrote to the embassy in Buenos Aires in March 1978. The inner workings of the foreign service and national security bu-reaucracies are of utmost importance here. It should be noted that Anug played a central role in shaping Israel’s policy toward Argen-tina in those months, or, as he told us without much modesty, “the Ministry—and I say this without the slightest arrogance—the Ministry was Anug at that time.”33 Under pressure from the military industry and national security apparatus, Anug in Jerusalem and Nirgad in Buenos Aires seemed to be the key figures in determining Israeli poli-cies toward the Argentine junta. However, each of them enjoyed only a limited degree of autonomy. As Anug also explained:

The fact [that we are] continuing business as usual and even expanding it contradicts this statement [that Timerman was “a main axis of our diplomatic policy” with Argentina]. I would say not that Timerman is crucial for us but rather that we are crucial for his release. It is not an emotional issue but one of cool judgment. The formula consists in creat-ing the sense that his release is vital for Argentina’s image and also for Israel and the positive development of our relations with them. . . . [A]ll [you] need do is keep sending memos to [President Jorge Rafael] Videla and others in whatever way seems best to you. The list of dignitaries from Israel who have visited [Argentina] is impressive (by the way, I was informed about the [Israel] Bonds that you requested from [ex–chief of staff Mordechai] Gur) and we do not want to, nor can we, intervene or reduce it.34

The “cool judgment” to which Anug referred meant perceiving Israel’s national interests—as defined by the thinking of the Israeli establish-ment—in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Cold War, and the difficulties that the State of Israel faced in the international arena.

Herzl Inbar, the minister counselor who remained provisionally in charge of the Israeli embassy for a few months as Nirgad’s replace-ment, sought an explanation for the military leadership’s stubborn refusal to release Timerman. To that end, he invited Hugo Ezequiel Lezama, editor of the daily Convicción, to his home in Buenos Aires. Lezama had supported the military coup, and, according to Inbar,

He is considered the ghost writer of the ex-commander of the Navy [Emilio Eduardo] Massera, and his daily paper is the newsletter of the naval ex-head. Lezama said almost word for word that the current gov-ernment, without exception, is a bunch of thugs who care nothing for human life. He maintained that the highest ranking officers in the three armed services, as well as in the police and the gendarmerie, carry

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out assassination orders with incredible ease. . . . [E]ach commander is lord of his sector and uses his authority and the means at his disposal to accumulate positions of power. As an example, [Lezama] cited the name of a colonel who in due course seized a journalist who had disap-peared. The U.S. secretary of state, on a visit here, inquired into the fate of the journalist, and Videla promised assistance. The colonel, hearing about this, agreed to hand over the journalist only in return for a pro-motion to general, and that rank was conferred upon him. . . . [Lezama said] last night that, as the editor of a daily, he finds himself forced to lie a hundred times a day, and he is suffering a personal dilemma as to how far he can yield without being considered in the future a “collaborator” with a Nazi regime.35

Despite the meetings between Videla and Nirgad at which the sub-ject of Timerman, among others, came up, by the end of 1977 the Israeli Foreign Ministry could already see clearly that it would not be able to obtain the release of the former editor of La Opinión amicably—that is, by trying to soften the hearts of the military re-gime leaders. It would therefore have to adopt some other course of action. And this plan, which Anug communicated to the Israeli am-bassadors in Washington, London, Paris, Bonn, Rome, Bern, The Hague, and Brussels, was charted in detail. It was a confidential plan that required the ambassadors to urge conservative “friends of Is-rael,” especially Western editors and journalists, to pressure the junta in Buenos Aires. “Conservative” in this case meant anticommunist: people whose criticisms could not be dismissed by the Argentine dic-tatorship as Soviet propaganda.36 A letter sent by Anug on January 10, 1978, to the ambassadors emphasized that they should not accuse the junta of having adopted antisemitic positions, involve leftists in this activity, or join the international campaign against the Argentine dic-tatorship. They should act discreetly, at most publishing personal col-umns in major dailies. The plan did not achieve the desired results. Anug wrote once more to the Israeli ambassadors in Western Europe and the United States, in November 1978, giving them a list of promi-nent personalities with conservative tendencies who could sign a pub-lic petition calling for Timerman’s release and even create an international committee for that purpose. As it turned out, the idea of the committee did not get very far before Timerman was expelled from Argentina in 1979.

In August 1979, when Nirgad began making the usual formal goodbyes preparatory to leaving his post, he was interviewed by the Argentine press. He maintained that the Timerman case had nothing to do with relations between the two countries and that the journalist

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could settle in Israel like any other Jew. He also said that Timerman “should be set free.” This statement greatly displeased the military authorities, who formally protested what they considered interfer-ence in Argentine internal affairs.

On September 19, after the second habeas corpus petition had been brought on Timerman’s behalf, the Argentine Supreme Court of Justice ruled that he should be released without delay. The follow-ing night, the government leaders met in secret to discuss Timer-man’s future. Most of the generals opposed his release, but Videla himself, the justice minister, and the entire Supreme Court threat-ened to resign if the legal ruling was not obeyed.37 The minister’s threat decided the question in favor of Timerman’s release, and the next day Inbar was summoned to confirm that Israel was indeed will-ing to receive the journalist and to give him a safe-conduct and entry visa, since the Argentine government planned to strip him of his Ar-gentine citizenship. On September 25, an affirmative response was received from the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem. Three days later, Timerman landed at Tel Aviv’s international airport.

Two weeks thereafter, Nissim Elnecavé, editor of the Jewish weekly La Luz—identified with the conservative rightwing sectors of the Ar-gentine Jewish community—published an editorial in which he claimed that the reason Timerman had been imprisoned was neither because he was Jewish nor because he was a journalist. On the contrary, being Jewish had helped expedite his release, even though he was not obser-vant. According to Elnecavé, under Timerman’s direction La Opinión had employed a group of subversives, and he ended his article by assert-ing that Timerman had escaped precisely because he was Jewish. If his detention was an expression of antisemitism—which the editor insisted it was not—then his Judaism, ironically, secured his release. This edito-rial was reprinted on October 14 by the conservative, traditional daily La Prensa (which on the whole supported the military regime).38 On October 16, the Argentine ambassador in Washington distributed the article to every member of the U.S. Congress.39

Timerman’s deportation to Israel did not end the affair, which continued to be a bone of contention between Jerusalem and the mil-itary junta for years. For example, when Dov Schmorack presented his letters of accreditation as Israeli ambassador to Argentina on May 14, 1980, President Videla told him:

We make every effort to let wounds heal. For example, we released a journalist in whose release your predecessor was also interested. He was arrested not as a journalist, nor as a Jew, but because of his links with

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subversive elements that fostered terrorism. Now he’s orchestrating a campaign to defame Argentina around the world.

Nevertheless, claimed Schmorack, Videla’s criticism did not affect bi-lateral relations. As he told the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem,

[Videla] displayed his satisfaction over the rapprochement between the two countries and suggested that I look at what else could be done to continue developing the relations between the two countries and the armed forces of both. He was enthusiastic about my definition, that from Afghanistan to the Bahamas there is a single front . . . and he said that our two countries are in the same boat.40

Despite Argentina’s significant trade relations with the Soviet Union, Videla held anti-Soviet views in the spirit of the Cold War, and he saw Argentina and Israel as partners in the struggle against Bolshevism.41

The subject of Timerman also came up in a conversation between the new ambassador and the Argentine interior minister, General Albano Eduardo Harguindeguy. In his report from Buenos Aires, Schmorack wrote:

[Harguindeguy said:] [O]nce I requested that the prisoner Timerman be brought to my office. He sat where you are sitting now and I asked him why he lied to me [about his relations with David Graiver]. . . . Timerman admitted that he had lied. I said to him: We were friends and you lied to me, aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Timerman is an arrogant person who will never be ashamed of himself. He’s going to make trouble for you all.

Schmorack added:

By the way, you did well not to allow the main leaders of the Jewish com-munity in Argentina to intervene on his behalf. The leaders are of-fended because Timerman is accusing them of behaving like the Judenrat, and the publication of the announcement in the Knesset [about the bestowal of an award on Timerman] seems to lend credence to an accusation of this kind, so they do not like it at all.42

To avoid any more embarrassing situations on the official level, in June 1980 the Israeli Foreign Ministry instructed its delegations in the Southern Cone not to distribute a certain Hebrew press summary translated into Spanish, because page 7 featured the news that Timer-man had been awarded a prize in Israel for his struggle for freedom

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of the press in Argentina.43 About a year later, Harguindeguy’s suc-cessor in the interior ministry, General Horacio Tomás Liendo, would once again bring up the subject in his conversation with the Israeli diplomat, who informed his superiors: “A third of the meeting, which lasted an hour and a half, was devoted, at his initiative, to Ti-merman. I firmly rejected his efforts to involve me in any commit-ment to rein in Timerman or to exercise any influence on him.”44

In a memorandum prepared by the ministry in late August 1981, before the send-off for the Argentine ambassador who had served for nine years in Tel Aviv, the head of the Latin American division, Menachem Karmi, wrote:

The ambassador complains of a conspiracy of silence on the part of the government of Israel. He claims to know of many people who are pained by the fact that Timerman takes the name of the Holocaust in vain by comparing Argentina today with Nazi Germany. The official spokes-persons of the government of Israel also barely speak up when the U.S. mass media defame the Argentine government as though it were hold-ing the Jews hostage and using them to force Israel to sell it arms.45

An “Ungrateful” Immigrant?

Even during the time Timerman was imprisoned in Argentina, Israeli representatives were discouraging his relatives and friends from any public international campaign, on the grounds that it would compro-mise the chances for his release. Timerman’s son Héctor related that, when Timerman was transferred to house arrest, he was visited by Nirgad and Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer. Nirgad tried to convince him to sign a letter maintaining that he had been well treated and that he had no complaint against the government. “My father refused and, when Nirgad insisted, he told him that he would rather continue his impris-onment than sign. He remained a prisoner for another year.”46

When Consul Pinchas Avivi escorted Timerman to the plane on which he departed, he advised him not to denounce the military gov-ernment. Nevertheless, as soon as the airplane landed for a stopover in Madrid, Timerman made statements to the local press. A few minutes earlier he had called his son and said to him, “The Israelis are crazy if they think I’m going to shut up.”47

Timerman was reunited with his family in Tel Aviv and agreed to publish a series of six articles in Ma‘ariv in which he would describe in detail his trial and the months of his captivity, with particulars on the

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state of human rights in Argentina and an analysis of events in Latin America, especially in the countries of the Southern Cone, all of which were ruled by military regimes. Ma‘ariv even made arrange-ments with several major newspapers around the world for syndicated publication of the articles.

However, in October 1979, before the first article appeared, Timerman was called to Jerusalem for an interview with Yosef Checha-nover, director-general of the Foreign Ministry. At that meeting, Chechanover asked him not to publish the articles at the request of Argentines living in Israel whose children were desaparecidos and who worried that their children, as hostages of the military junta, would be endangered if Timerman went ahead with the project. He would also be endangering the lives of journalist Robert Cox, rabbis Marshall Meyer and Roberto Graetz, and his own brother, José.48 The day before, at a reception, Argentine ambassador Jorge Casal had told the editor of the Jerusalem Post that there was great concern about the dramatic consequences the planned publication could have for his country. Timerman, though not a fan of quiet diplomacy,49 de-cided not to publish the articles. He was enraged at having to give in to the blackmail of the rulers in Buenos Aires but feared for the lives of the young desaparecidos, as he would later explain.50

In the months since leaving Argentina, Timerman had been treated sympathetically by the Israeli press: “fighter for human rights” and “fer-vent Zionist” were the usual descriptions applied to the former editor of La Opinión. But his presence made the local government establishment increasingly uncomfortable. The relations between Israel and Argen-tina were closer than ever,51 and the journalist was casting a shadow that could become threatening. On May 25, 1980, Timerman was to re-ceive the Golden Pen of Freedom Award from the president of the World Association of Newspapers. The ceremony was slated to take place in the Knesset, in the presence of government representatives, and would even include a short speech by Prime Minister Menachem Begin. At the last moment, however, pressure by the government (which feared reprisals by the Argentine junta) forced the Knesset speaker’s office to move the celebration to a hall at the Hebrew University, where the highest-ranking dignitary present was the mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek.52 Meanwhile, Yitzhak Shamir, recently appointed minis-ter of foreign affairs, attended a reception held by the Argentine em-bassy to celebrate its national holiday. The Hebrew press published unofficial leaks from the Foreign Ministry indicating that the pressure to cancel the Timerman ceremony came from parents of desaparecidos, who feared for the lives of their loved ones.53 This was one more attempt

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by Israeli diplomacy to justify the absence of public criticism of Argen-tine human-rights violations.

Timerman spent more than a year in his new home in Ramat Aviv writing his book Preso sin nombre, celda sin número. It had appeared a few months earlier in English as Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number. The book’s debut in May 1981 provided an opportunity to revive the controversy over the author and relations between Israel and Argentina.

The headline of an item published by the Ha-’arets correspondent in New York was indicative: “Owing to the debate unleashed by journalist Timerman’s book, sources in Washington claim Israel is caving in to Argentina’s threats to hurt the Jews if Israel does not supply it with arms.”54 The Hebrew press was part of that debate. In a feature in Ma‘ariv’s weekend supplement, Gabriel Strassman wondered, after a long interview with Timerman, about something that had not been ad-dressed even in Prisoner without a Name: If everything is so bad, why does it seem to be so good? Why did a delegation of Jewish athletes from Ar-gentina march in the recently inaugurated Maccabi Games, waving their blue and white flag? And why did the half-million Jews in Argen-tina not just pack their things and leave that Nazi country? He con-cluded by asserting, “It seems to me that to this question, too, Timerman has no answer.”55

Strassman’s words reflected a standard Zionist stance, which ne-gated the legitimacy of the Jewish Diaspora and failed to understand why all the Jews in the world did not leave their homes and move to Israel. Timerman’s book, published and distributed in English by a large and prestigious American publishing house, Knopf, was pub-lished in Hebrew by a small press, Domino, a few months after the original. Ma‘ariv was originally going to publish it, but withdrew for reasons that were not made clear.

Although the debate over the book was reflected in the Hebrew press, the publication of the Hebrew version did not have much impact, and some considered this evidence of a conspiracy of silence. “The book came out last April in the United States and aroused heated pub-lic debate. It was published about two months ago here, too, in Hebrew translation, and up to now hardly a peep has been heard about it. It is a short book, only 160 pages total; scandalous and shocking,” wrote Amos Elon in Ha-’arets.56 In a long feature entitled “Who’s Afraid of Timerman?” Elon asked a few more trenchant questions:

Why did Ma‘ariv go back on its plan to publish Timerman’s book? What happened? Because the editors think “it’s not interesting” and “it won’t

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sell,” “it’s not marketable,” as Shmuel Shnitzer, Ma‘ariv’s editor, says? Or, perhaps because one of the main shareholders of Ma‘ariv has close busi-ness ties with Argentina, as Timerman supposes? We will never know the truth for certain, but we know that Timerman put many people in a bind in this country and at Ma‘ariv by criticizing the Begin government’s internal and external policy. The dignitaries and public figures who welcomed him at the airport have distanced themselves from him. We can guess why.57

In this vein, Yoav Karni had written several months earlier:

A transparent attempt is being made to deflect the discussion of Timer-man’s book to an irrelevant sphere by talking about the author’s person-ality instead of reviewing the content of what he writes. On July 17 of this year I interviewed Jacobo Timerman for a variety show on Kol Israel. This was the first time, in the course of the latest tempest, that an Israeli communication medium gave Timerman a concrete opportunity to say something.58

However, the most significant sign of the reversal in local press at-titudes toward Timerman came with the publication of his second book, which was about Israel’s first war in Lebanon. The journalist finished writing it in his Tel Aviv apartment in August 1982, at the height of the Israeli invasion.59 He did not mince words in his strong criticism of the Israeli action:

For the first time, Israel had attacked a neighboring country without being attacked; for the first time it had mounted a screen of provocation to jus-tify a war. For the first time Israel brought destruction to entire cities: Tyre, Sidon, Damur, Beirut. For the first time military spokesmen had lied. For the first time the Israeli press joined them in their successful mission of lying to the public. For the first time officers and men did not know the objectives or the goals of the campaign. For the first time the actual dam-age inflicted on the invaded country was hidden along with the number of deaths. For the first time reservists on leave from the front demonstrated on the streets of Jerusalem because they consider themselves betrayed.60

After the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps just outside Beirut, he added an epilogue containing serious ac-cusations against the Israel Defense Forces and the government’s for-eign policy. Although in Israel protests against the war were beginning to escalate, especially after the Sabra and Shatila murders, Timerman’s book met with a cool reception and even open hostility. He was among the first to raise his voice against this war and used harsh words to criti-cize the Israeli leadership. For many Israelis who justified the war, it was

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hard to digest such criticism from someone who was generally regarded as a Jewish fighter for human rights. Yehuda Ben Meir, deputy foreign minister at the time, declared in an interview in the United States with the highly rated CBS television program 60 Minutes: “We got him out of Argentina. Now he attacks and denigrates Israel. Any rational person can understand that his book is a collection of calumnies and lies aris-ing from his own self-hatred.”61

In response to the attacks against him—for example, the accusation that he had been in London during the war, as though that were relevant—Timerman granted a long interview to the weekly Ha-‘olam ha-zeh:

During the war I was here. At this table. Yoel Marcus, of Ha-’arets, says that I was in London, that I was not in Israel for the war. It’s been almost a year since I was in London. I began writing in June and finished in August. And afterward I wrote an epilogue about Sabra and Shatila.62

He then added: “Yoel Marcus is angry about things I said in the book; he did not even read it. He says that most of the population in Israel is very happy about what happened in Sabra and Shatila. And I say that too!”63 The references to Marcus were in response to an article by the veteran reporter that appeared in Ha-’arets in late 1982 and that began trenchantly:

If I feel repelled by people like Mr. Jacob Timerman, it is because his behavior and his statements automatically make me a fan of Menachem Begin. . . . After having settled his serious scores with Argentina, he found his new purpose in the war against the tyrannical regime in Is-rael. He has turned into a Latin-Polish, pocket-size edition of Bruno Kreisky.64

Timerman spared no one in talking about the Israeli leaders who con-ducted the war on Lebanese territory in the summer of 1982; he wrote of Prime Minister Begin that he was “a terrorist, and a disgrace to his people”; he described the then-minister of defense, Ariel Sharon, as the man who wanted to turn Israel into “the Prussia of the Middle East.”65

It should be noted that Timerman’s oldest son, Daniel, who was a kibbutz member and a reserve soldier, was sentenced to repeated terms in military prison for refusing, as a conscientious objector, to serve in Lebanon. Jacobo went to visit him for the first time in Octo-ber 1982, at Military Prison No. 6, near the city of Atlit, but he could not overcome his physical aversion when he tried to enter the prison.

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He told his companions that he could not put himself behind bars again. After this attempt, until Daniel completed his sentence, his mother Risha went alone to visit him twice a week.

Journalist Amos Elon described the Israeli period of Timerman’s life thus:

After his expulsion from Argentina in 1979, he settled in Israel. A vet-eran Zionist, he could have put down roots very comfortably in New York, but he preferred a modest apartment in Ramat Aviv. Israel was largely a disappointment to him, especially in the days of the war in Leb-anon. The Israelis were not well disposed to his criticism of that war, even when others were harsher still. Is it possible that his status as a new immigrant had something to do with it, perhaps unconsciously? . . . It is a fact that Yitzhak Shamir, as prime minister, described Timerman to a surprised American interviewer as “an ungrateful man.” Timerman was an unexpected deviation from the usual image of “prisoners of Zion,” and not in a good way. In Israel he was vilified and socially isolated; an anonymous taxi driver once spit in his face. In his words, in Israel he felt “like a Jew in the Diaspora” and not, as he had hoped upon arrival, “like a Jew coming home.”66

Israeli Citizen Timerman Returns to Argentina

On January 7, 1984, a month after Ricardo Raúl Alfonsín assumed the presidency in Argentina, Timerman landed at the Ezeiza Interna-tional Airport with his wife, Risha. Upon his arrival he was forced to give an impromptu press conference, at which he was asked, among other things, whether he had decided to leave Israel.

In responding, Timerman was evasive and avoided making blunt remarks. He was clearly unprepared for the series of questions fired at him and would have preferred to avoid the local press until he had readjusted to his new situation, only then sharing his thoughts and plans. Three years later, in Buenos Aires, he described the experi-ence of returning to Argentina, as reported by Elon:

Timerman told me about the difficulties he had in putting down roots again in Argentina. He feels a need to participate in the struggle for de-mocracy, and he was a witness in the trial of the generals and in the pre-trial hearings of several of the officers who tortured him. He is a fervent supporter of President Alfonsín, and following his return he received damages for [the loss of] his daily, La Opinión, which the generals con-fiscated and then neglected to the point of letting it expire. But Timer-man has not yet found his place in Argentina, and in our chat he

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wondered if he ever would. “My connection with this country was dam-aged,” he said. “I am not managing to rehabilitate my personality here. They tell me that repression will not return. Intellectually, that is prob-ably right. Emotionally, I am not at all certain. I can’t stay here more than a few months. Every so often I have to leave, get out, breathe.” Many people recognize Timerman on the street, approach him, and cordially shake his hand. Others do not feel comfortable in his company. He is a controversial man. In less than 10 years Timerman challenged five es-tablished orthodoxies: the Argentine left and the right (he called them both fascists); the official Jewish community (he accused its leaders of having cooperated with the generals); the neoconservatives in the United States; and the nationalists in Israel. When James Nielson, editor of the Buenos Aires Herald, was asked why Timerman still makes people uncomfortable, he answered, “Being Jewish doesn’t help . . . he will al-ways feel injured. He is the eternal outsider, someone who [just] pre-tends to belong everywhere he goes.”67

In an interview granted a short time previously to Ha-’arets, Timer-man had explained:

I returned [to Argentina] to demand my birthright and to judge my tor-turers. I testified and insisted that the government return my newspaper to me. Since it no longer exists, they gave me damages. I did not ask for my Argentine citizenship back because I am Israeli and I will remain so for-ever. What can you do? Although the Israelis do not love me, I love them.68

When the interviewer reminded him that he had left the country in anger, he answered:

An immense anger against Shamir, Sharon, Raful [General Rafael Eitan]; not against Israel. It is true that people were not nice to me, but there is a difference between being subject to hysteria and national neu-rosis, and dragging a people into a war that is not vital. I have no nega-tive feelings toward the people of Israel.69

Timerman would never return to Israel. After obtaining substantial material compensation from the Argentine government for the confis-cation of La Opinión, he tried unsuccessfully to return to the world of journalism. But he had lost his “magic touch.” He kept trying neverthe-less, authoring several books that enjoyed only limited success, and died at home in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods of Buenos Aires on November 11, 1999. He was 76. Many newspapers in the West published obituaries the following day. The New York Times, for example, said that Timerman had spent his whole life defending democratic in-

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stitutions and human rights. El País in Madrid and the Parisian Le Monde both marked the journalist’s passing with warm tributes. The Is-raeli dailies, in contrast, provided only terse reports of his death. His funeral, in a private cemetery in Buenos Aires, was an intimate gather-ing of 30 people, most of them relatives and friends. Many of those present were surprised by the small scale of the procession that accom-panied the final journey of the man who had been one of the most im-portant Argentine journalists of the twentieth century.70

Conclusion

Bilateral relations with Argentina always held pride of place in Israel’s ties with Latin America, partly because of Argentina’s large, vital Jew-ish community and the successful integration into Israeli society of tens of thousands of immigrants from that country.71 Nevertheless, historiography on the triangular relationship between the two coun-tries and the local Jewish community is limited. The difficulty of lo-cating relevant archival documentation is an obstacle for researchers interested in uncovering the diverse facets of this complex relation-ship from the independence of the Jewish state in 1948 up to the present day. This difficulty is even greater when it comes to docu-menting the so-called “Process of National Reorganization,” begin-ning in the mid-1970s. These ties have not been researched in any systematic, orderly fashion, among other reasons because at least part of the relevant diplomatic material has not yet been declassified in its entirety, especially documentation on exports of war matériel. De-spite this, various aspects of relations in those black years have at-tracted the attention of a few historians, as witnessed by the research on the departure for Israel by several hundred Jews who feared their lives were in danger from the military regime.72

In this article, we have sought to examine various aspects of a central event that affected the relations between the two countries and that can illuminate how Israeli policy toward the Argentine military dicta-torship was formed. We have explored the degree to which human rights and/or concern for the interests of the local Jews, both individu-ally and as a community, set the standard for the decision makers and determined the steps taken to free the Jewish-Argentine journalist who had enjoyed such close and longstanding ties with Israeli institutions and the embassy in Buenos Aires. We have revealed considerable ten-sions within official Israeli attitudes and actions regarding Timer-man. These had to do, on the one hand, with the realpolitik of the

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diplomatic service, the national security apparatus, and the military industry, and, on the other, with the desire to help Argentine Jews in general and Timerman in particular as they ran afoul of an antisemitic military regime bent on exterminating or extirpating “deviant” ideolo-gies from the Argentine body politic.

In Israel, the enthusiasm with which the most famous political prisoner in Argentina was initially received following his release soon vanished. When Timerman refused to be pigeonholed as the Dias-pora Jew who finds redemption in the national Jewish home, many withdrew their support for him. It is also true that he was ahead of many in his criticisms of the invasion of Lebanon, at a time when such criticisms triggered contempt and hostility—all the more so when they were being made by a recent arrival whose life had been saved in part because of the intervention of the Israeli government.

The alienation of the establishment and the Israeli press from Timerman also reflected their continued failure to understand how Zionist identity is perceived by many Jews in the Diaspora, including in Argentina. Many Zionists there consider themselves first and fore-most Argentines, and their Jewish and Zionist identities do not de-pend on a willingness to leave the country where they live to immigrate to Israel, nor on giving priority to their commitments to the State of Israel or Zionism. Yet they do not renounce the various components of their strong ethnic identity as Argentine Jews, either.73 Their self-perception continues to run into mistrust and lack of em-pathy. In Timerman’s case, it even caused the two countries that were the pillars of his identity, Argentina and Israel, to forsake him. No wonder that he once characterized himself as an “exile of the world.”74

Notes

The authors are grateful to the Sourasky Chair of Iberian and Latin Ameri-can Studies and the S. Daniel Abraham Center of International and Re-gional Studies, both at Tel Aviv University, for their support of this research, as well as to the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry at Emory University in Atlanta, where we were able to finish our work. An earlier version of this article was published in Hebrew under the title “Mi-gibor yehudi le-‘okher Yisra’el: Parashat Timerman, ha-mimsad ha-yisra’eli veha-‘ittonut ha-ivrit,” Israel 15 (2009): 167–91. Copies of the documents quoted in this article were given to us by a vet-eran Israeli diplomat. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from foreign-language sources are ours.

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1 On the so-called Process of National Reorganization, see, e.g., Paul H. Lewis, Guerrillas and Generals: The “Dirty War” in Argentina (Westport, Conn., 2002); Donald C. Hodges, Argentina’s “Dirty War”: An Intellectual Biography (Austin, Tex., 1991); and Martin Edwin Andersen, Dossier Se-creto: Argentina’s Desaparecidos and the Myth of the “Dirty War” (Boulder, Colo., 1993). On the development of the Doctrine of National Security, see Samuel Amaral, “Guerra Revolucionaria: De Argelia a la Argen-tina, 1957–1962,” Investigaciones y Ensayos 48 (1998): 173–95.

2 Jacobo Timerman, Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number (New York, 1981). The Spanish version, Preso sin nombre, celda sin número, was published in 1982. A Hebrew version, ’Asir le-lo’ shem, ta’ le-lo’ mispar, came out in 1981.

3 In this respect, see Gabriel (Gabby) Sheffer and Hadas Roth-Toledano, Mi manhig? ‘Al yachasei Yisra’el veha-tefutsah ha-yehudit (Tel Aviv, 2006). On the specific case of the largest Latin American community, see Raanan Rein, Argentina, Israel and the Jews, trans. Martha Grenzeback (Bethesda, Md., 2003), and Raanan Rein, “Israel and Argentine Jews: Complementary or Conflicting Interests?,” in Contemporary Jewries: Con-vergence and Divergence, ed. Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Yosef Gorni, and Yaacov Ro’i (Boston, 2003), 306–34.

4 For a critical view of the position that Israeli authorities took on Jewish detainees, see Marcel Zohar, Shelach ’et ‘ami la-Aza’zel: Begidah be-khachol lavan (Tel Aviv, 1990). His criticisms were echoed in Nurit Keidar’s doc-umentary film, Asesino (Israel, 2002). Similar views were expressed by Itzhak Pundak, who between 1977 and 1979 was director of the Jewish Agency in Buenos Aires (personal interview, Tel Aviv, Nov. 26, 2003). For a justification of the actions of the Israeli diplomatic establishment, see Joel Barromi, “Ha-’im hufkeru Yehudei Argentinah?,” Gesher 133 (Summer 1996): 53–71, and Efraim Zadoff, “Mechuyyavutah shel Yisra’el kelappei Yehudei ha-tefutsot be-‘ittot mashber: Ha-mikreh shel Argentinah, 1976–1983,” Bitachon Leumi 2–3 (2003): 45–59.

5 The commission’s conclusions were published later in CONADEP, Nunca Más: Informe de la Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas (Bue-nos Aires, 1993).

6 For Timerman’s full testimony, see http://www.desaparecidos.org/nun-camas/web/testimon/timerman.htm. Regarding the places mentioned in his account: Campo de Mayo, in Buenos Aires, is Argentina’s largest military base and the headquarters of the First Army Corps; Magdalena is a city some 93 miles from Buenos Aires and is the site of several mili-tary installations; Puesto Vasco and COT-I Martínez are detention and torture camps that were illegally operated by the security forces and where many of the prisoners were murdered. At the 2007 trial in La Plata of the priest Christian Von Wernich for crimes against humanity com-mitted during the dictatorship, several witnesses testified about the tor-ture to which Timerman had been subjected and the clearly antisemitic character of the interrogations he underwent. See “Timerman acusó al

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sacerdote Von Wenrich,” La Nación, July 17, 2007, and “Timerman y Perrota en el juicio de Von Wenrich,” Página12, July 16, 2007.

7 Timerman, Prisoner without a Name, 130. 8 The Andinia Plan was first featured in an antisemitic campaign that

began in 1971–72 when Walter Beveraggi Allende, an economics pro-fessor at the University of Buenos Aires with connections to the mili-tary, published an “exposé” detailing the alleged secret plan. For the Jewish community’s reaction, see Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas de Argentina, Versión argentina de la mayor superchería del siglo: Radio-grafía del “Plan Andinia” y otros infundios (Buenos Aires, 1972). Despite the antisemitic character and general improbability of the Andinia Plan, every so often rumors of its existence resurface in different insti-tutions in Argentina. For example, the chief of general staff, Lieuten-ant General Roberto Bendini, mentioned it as one of the army’s working hypotheses during a conference for the upper ranks of the army’s School of National Defense. When he was quoted by the press, he claimed his remarks had been taken out of context. See http://www .lanacion.com.ar/Archivo/nota.asp?nota_id=529017. Two years later, the Organi zación Islámica Argentina, headquartered in the great mosque of Buenos Aires, mentioned on its Internet site that Israel planned to set up another Jewish state in southern Argentina. See http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-54283-2005-07-28.html.

9 See http://www.desaparecidos.org/nuncamas/web/testimon/timerman .htm.

10 Telegram entitled “Antishemiyyut,” Ram Nirgad to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, May 19, 1978, in authors’ archive.

11 Ramón J. A. Camps, Caso Timerman, punto final (Buenos Aires, 1982), 17–21.

12 Juan Gasparini, David Graiver: El banquero de los Montoneros (Buenos Aires, 2007).

13 Jorge Saborido, “El antisemitismo en la historia argentina reciente: La revista Cabildo y la conspiración judía,” Revista Complutense de Historia de América 30 (2004): 209–23.

14 This was a common attitude among Jewish community leaders, who were worried about the growing political violence and instability under the Peronist regime, then under the leadership of Perón’s third wife. Statistics published by the Buenos Aires Herald indicate a total of 1,100 dead by political violence during 1975. There was also concern about growing antisemitism, in part encouraged by José López Rega, who since May 1973 had held the social welfare portfolio. See Leonardo Senkman, “Judíos argentinos en riesgo y esfera pública internacional: Intercesiones por el antisemitismo populista (1974–75) y los reclamos al neopopulismo (1989–1999),” Judaica Latinoamericana 6 (2009): 269–304.

15 On bilateral relations between the United States and Argentina during the military dictatorship, see David M. K. Sheinin, Argentina and the

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United States: An Alliance Contained (Athens, Ga., 2006), chap. 6; Ariel C. Armony, Argentina, the United States, and the Anti-Communist Crusade in Central America, 1977–1984 (Athens, Ga., 1997); and Joseph S. Tulchin, Argentina and the United States: A Conflicted Relationship (Boston, 1990), chap. 8.

16 No thorough research has yet been published on the relations between Israel and Argentina during this period. See Mario Sznajder and Luis Roniger, “From Argentina to Israel: Escape, Evacuation and Exile,” Journal of Latin American Studies 37, no. 2 (2005): 351–77; Zadoff, “ Mechuyyavutah shel Yisra’el kelappei Yehudei ha-tefutsot”; Barromi, “Ha-’im hufkeru Yehudei Argentinah?”; Zohar, Shelach ’et ‘aami la-‘Aza’zel; Leonardo Senkman, “Millut Yehudim be-Argentinah be-‘et ha-mishtar ha-tseva’i, 1976–1983,” in ’Or la-goyim? Mediniyyut ha-chuts shel Yisra’el u-zechuyyot ha-’adam, ed. Dafna Sharfman (Tel Aviv, 1999), 91–118; and Yitzhak Mualem, “Between a Jewish and an Israeli Foreign Policy: Israel–Argentina Relations and the Issue of Jewish Disappeared Persons and Detainees under the Military Junta, 1976–1983,” Jewish Political Studies Review 16, nos. 1–2 (2004), http://www.jcpa.org/jpsr/jpsr-mualem-s04.htm.

17 Dov Schmorack to Foreign Ministry, telegram, Sept. 5, 1976, authors’ archive. From 1977 to 1981, Israel supplied 14 percent of all armaments purchased by Argentina. Argentina’s primary supplier was the Federal Republic of Germany (33 percent), followed by the United States (17 percent), France (14 percent), Israel, and other countries. Israel’s vol-ume of sales rose following 1982, when the Western boycott of arms sales to Argentina intensified as a result of alliances between the other suppliers and the United Kingdom. See Bishara Bahbah, “Israel’s Mili-tary Relationships with Ecuador and Argentina,” Journal of Palestine Studies 15, no. 2 (1986): 76–101, and Hernán Dobry, Operación Israel: La dictadura argentina y la compra de armas (unpublished manuscript, Buenos Aires, 2009).

18 Shulamit Aloni, “Akhen, musar be-bitachon,” Ha-’arets, May 26, 2006. On Speaker of the Knesset Menachem Savidor’s rejection of Aloni’s motion to add to the agenda an urgent debate on the disappearance of thousands of Argentine citizens, including many Jews, see Shlomo Ginossar, “Argentinah, Argentinah,” Davar, May 16, 1983.

19 DAIA, Informe sobre la situación de los detenidos-desaparecidos judíos durante el genocidio perpetrado en Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1999); Edy Kaufman, “Jewish Victims of Repression in Argentina under Military Rule (1976–1983),” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 4, no. 4 (1989): 479–99.

20 Comisión Israelí por los desaparecidos judíos en la Argentina, Informe, http://www.mfa.gov.il/desaparecidos/dincomitispen.html. The Knes-set members who expressed a willingness to collaborate included Geula Cohen and Dror Zeigerman from the Likud Party and Men-achem Hacohen from the Labour Party; see their accounts at Institute of Contemporary Judaism, Oral History Department, Hebrew Univer-

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sity of Jerusalem, file numbers 216/23, 216/40, and 216/42. The parlia-mentary commission, which consisted of Cohen, Zeigerman, Hacohen, and Yair Tzaban, arrived in Buenos Aires early in 1984, after Raúl Al-fonsín had already assumed the presidency of the republic.

21 Ibid. 22 Authors’ archive. In June 1981, no fewer than 118 Argentine officers were

visiting in Israel. A letter from the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires on June 2, 1981, after a meeting between the ambassador and the heads of the Argentine Foreign Ministry, said: “There is no other country in the world where so many Argentine officers are found at the same time per-forming tasks of acquisition, training, etc.” (authors’ archive).

23 On Israeli policy toward leftist militant Jews in Argentina, see Senk-man, “Millut Yehudim be-Argentinah be-‘et ha-mishtar ha-tseva’i, 1976–1983”; Sznajder and Roniger, “From Argentina to Israel”; and idem, “De Argentina a Israel: Escape y exilio,” in Represión y destierro: Itinerarios del exilio argentino, ed. Pablo Yankelevich (La Plata, 2005), 157–85.

24 Raanan Rein and Efraim Davidi, “Sports, Politics, and Exile: Protests in Israel during the World Cup (Argentina, 1978),” International Journal of the History of Sport 26, no. 5 (Apr. 2009): 673–92.

25 This was stated by the U.S. ambassador in Buenos Aires, Robert Hill, in a letter sent to the State Department. See Graciela Mochkofsky, Timer-man, el periodista que quiso ser parte del poder (1923–1999) (Buenos Aires, 2003), 253. In December 1977, Amnesty International declared Timer-man a “prisoner of conscience” and mobilized its sections all over the world in a campaign to liberate him. See Amnesty International, Back-ground to the Case of Jacobo Timerman (London, 1977).

26 David Cox, Dirty Secrets, Dirty War: The Exile of Robert J. Cox (Buenos Aires, Argentina: 1976–1983) (Charleston, S.C., 2008). See also Andrew Gra-ham-Yooll, Committed Observer: Memoirs of a Journalist (London, 1995).

27 Abrasha Rotenberg, Historia confidencial: La Opinión y otros olvidos ( Buenos Aires, 1999).

28 Joel Barromi, “Israel frente a la dictadura militar argentina: El episodio de Córdoba y el caso Timerman,” in El legado del autoritarismo: Derechos humanos y antisemitismo en la Argentina contemporánea, ed. Leonardo Senkman and Mario Sznajder (Buenos Aires, 1995), 331.

29 Nirgad to Foreign Ministry, Apr. 5, 1976, authors’ archive. A month later, General Roberto Viola (later chief of staff and president of Ar-gentina) visited Nirgad in his home, and, in a secret telegram sent on May 11, 1976, the latter informed the Israeli Foreign Ministry that “his [Viola’s] attitude toward Israel is favorable, he considers us an impor-tant pillar in the war against the spread of communism, the Middle East being an important focus of that war. . . . To him, any movement that is not rightwing is leftwing; the center does not exist, and the en-tire left is suspect” (authors’ archive). On July 3, 1976, Defense Minister José María Klix was at Nirgad’s residence. The ambassador’s report

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stated that “his [Klix’s] ideas put us strongly in mind of the style we remembered from the 1930s in Europe. The war against communism opens the door to forces of the extreme right. The minister’s words made this very clear. Our worry is that within the right wing there is a great concentration of antisemitic forces” (authors’ archive).

30 On the community establishment’s attitudes toward the suppression of human rights under the dictatorship, see Ignacio Klich, “Políticas co-munitarias durante las Juntas Militares argentinas: La DAIA durante el Proceso de Reorganización Nacional,” in El antisemitismo en la Argen-tina, ed. Leonardo Senkman (Buenos Aires, 1989), 274–309.

31 Gabriela Lotersztain, Los judíos bajo el terror: Argentina 1976–1983 (Buenos Aires, 2008), 264.

32 Mochkofsky, Timerman. 33 Yishayahu Anug, interview by authors, Jerusalem, Jan. 20, 2003. 34 Anug to Nirgad, Mar. 26, 1978, authors’ archive. Mordechai (“Mota”)

Gur had recently retired from the army with the rank of lieutenant-gen-eral, after having been the tenth chief of general staff of the Israel De-fense Forces from 1974 to 1978, the same period when the armed forces of the two countries were developing stronger ties. In 1981 he was elected to the Knesset as a Labour Party representative, and he was deputy minis-ter of defense from 1992 until his death in 1995. Having returned to life as a civilian in 1978, he had promoted Israeli military industry exports all over the world, including Latin America. When he visited Argentina in 1978, he was received by General Viola, one of the strongmen of the re-gime, who would succeed Videla first as commander in chief and sub-sequently as president. Gur gave a few lectures at the Academia de Seguridad Nacional. Six months later, Deputy Minister of Defense Brigadier-General (res.) Mordechai Tzipori arrived. The eighth chief of staff, Yitzhak Rabin, also gave a series of lectures at the Academia, in Aug. 1980, and was received warmly by the military leadership. So many Israeli leaders visited Argentina that, in Feb. 1979, Nirgad sent the Israeli For-eign Ministry a “secret and urgent” message saying that “it is usual to con-sult with the ambassador before making decisions or [arranging] visits of VIPs. Aren’t you a follower of this practice? Since Israel’s independence day [May 1978] we have had visits from Mordechai Gur, Haim Laskov [lieutenant general in the reserves, and fifth chief of staff of the IDF be-tween 1958 and 1961], Mordechai Hod [general in the reserves, and com-mander of the Israeli Air Force between 1966 and 1973; at the time of his visit he was general manager of El Al, the Israeli national airline], Deputy Minister Tzipori, and the most exalted members of the military hierarchy, as well as ministers and deputy ministers” (authors’ archive).

35 Inbar to Israeli Foreign Ministry, Nov. 24, 1978 (authors’ archive). Be-cause of Nirgad’s poor health, Inbar remained in charge of the em-bassy for a long time and took care of the practical measures and final arrangements for Timerman’s release. This is how Inbar himself de-fined his diplomatic position in a letter sent to Knesset member Dror

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Zeigerman on Mar. 29, 1984, from New York, where Inbar was then consul-general of Israel (authors’ archive). On Massera’s influence on the newspaper Convicción, see Marcelo Borrelli, El diario de Massera: Historia y política editorial de Convicción (Buenos Aires, 2008).

36 Joel Barromi, interview by authors, Jerusalem, Dec. 12, 2003. The at-tempt to pressure the Argentine regime through the mass media was nothing new. In Nirgad to Foreign Ministry, June 15, 1976, before Ar-gentine finance minister Martínez de Hoz’s visit to the United States, the ambassador wrote: “We suggest that, whenever he [de Hoz] holds press conferences in Washington D.C. and in Ottawa, our representa-tives should ‘plant’ the following question about the situation in Argen-tina: ‘A law was enacted prohibiting partisan activities, and 48 party organizations, the vast majority of them linked to the extreme left, have been dissolved. There is the impression that organizations of the extreme right, including some recognized as Nazi and antisemitic or-ganizations that have committed acts of incitement and have published material of that sort, continue to operate and the law is not enforced against them.’ The goal is that the minister will tell his government that public opinion in the capital cities is concerned—although, at this stage, without arousing any suspicion that they are being accused and that they are suspected of being antisemites” (authors’ archive).

37 Ana Baron, “Caso Timerman: El día en que Videla amagó con renun-ciar,” Clarín, Dec. 4, 2009.

38 Nissim Elnecavé, “Timerman: El abuso del argumento del antisemi-tismo,” La Prensa, Oct. 14, 1979, p. 10.

39 Lotersztain, Los judíos bajo el terror, 283. 40 Dov Schmorack to Foreign Ministry, May 14, 1980, authors’ archive. 41 Isidoro Gilbert, El oro de Moscú: Historia secreta de la diplomacia, el comercio y

la inteligencia soviética en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 2007). 42 Schmorack to Foreign Ministry, June 2, 1980, authors’ archive. 43 Mario Sagui, Division of Latin America 2, to Shmuel Hadas, director of

Public Relations in the Foreign Ministry, June 9, 1980, authors’ archive. 44 Schmorack to Foreign Ministry, June 24, 1981, authors’ archive. 45 Menachem Karmi, director of Division of Latin America 2, to the for-

eign minister’s chief of staff, “Likra’t pegishat sar ha-chuts ‘im shagrir Argentinah,” Aug. 23, 1981, authors’ archive.

46 Héctor Timerman, “Israel, la dictadura y los consejos de Avivi,” Página12, July 30, 2001.

47 Ibid. 48 Jacobo Timerman, “The Silence of the Jews,” Harper’s Magazine (Nov.

1981): 20–23. 49 During a visit to the United States, Timerman declared that “a silent

diplomacy is silence; a quiet diplomacy is surrender.” See John M. Goshko, “Argentinian Visits Lefever Hearing, Criticizes ‘Quiet Diplomacy’ Pol-icy,” Washington Post, May 20, 1981, p. A3.

50 Mochkofsky, Timerman, 394.

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51 This was declared by Nirgad at the end of 1977. See Marcel Zohar, “Me-’az she-‘altah ha-kat ha-tseva’it la-shilton chal shippur be-yachasei Yisra’el-Argentinah,” Yedi‘ot acharonot, Nov. 16, 1977. See also “Shagrir Yisra’el: Argentinah u-memshaltah ’einan ’antishemiyyot,” Ma‘ariv, May 24, 1978.

52 Authors’ email correspondence with Timerman’s son Javier, Jan. 2010. 53 Tova Tzimuki, “Be-lachats Argentinah butlah ha-’anakat pras ha-

‘ittonut ha-chofshit le-Ya‘acov Timerman be-mishkan ha-knesset,” Davar, May 26, 1980.

54 “Be-‘ikvot ha-pulmos seviv sifro shel ha-‘ittona’y Timerman, to‘anim mekorot be-Vashington: Yisra’el nikhnea‘ le-iyyumei Argentinah lifgoa’ bi-yehudim ’im lo’ tesappek la-neshek,” Ha-’arets, June 5, 1981.

55 Gabriel Strassman, “Zehu ha-shalav ha-ri’shon shel ha-innuyim,” Ma‘ariv, July 17, 1981.

56 Amos Elon, “Mi mefached mi-Timerman?” Ha-’arets, Jan. 15, 1982. 57 Ibid. 58 Yoav Karni, “Parashat Timerman: Kesher ha-shetikah,” Basha‘ar 3, no.

155 (Sept. 1981): 7. 59 Jacobo Timerman, The Longest War: Israel in Lebanon, trans. Miguel

Acoca (New York, 1982). Curiously enough, according to Timerman’s close associate Abrasha Rotemberg, earlier that year Timerman had been considering writing a book entitled “Why I Love Israel” (inter-view by authors, Buenos Aires, Nov. 27, 2009).

60 Timerman, The Longest War, 21. 61 Mochkofsky, Timerman, 424. 62 Marcel Zohar, “Lechitsat yad le-rotschei yehudim,” Ha-‘olam ha-zeh,

Dec. 22, 1982. 63 Ibid. 64 “Fear Not, My Servant Jacobo,” Ha-’arets, Dec. 1, 1982. 65 Angus Deming, “Timerman’s Angry Dissent,” Newsweek, Dec. 20, 1982,

p. 14. 66 Amos Elon, “Argentinah,” Koteret ra’shit, Oct. 8, 1986, p. 29. 67 Ibid., 29, 31. 68 Lili Galili, “Ani ha-matspun shel ha-medinot,” Ha-’arets, Feb. 15, 1984. 69 Ibid. 70 Mochkofsky, Timerman, 472. 71 Luis Roniger and Deby Babis, “Latin American Israelis: The Collective

Identity of an Invisible Community,” in Identities in an Era of Globaliza-tion and Multiculturalism: Latin America in the Jewish World, ed. Judit Bok-ser Liwerant et al. (Boston, 2008), 297–320.

72 See, e.g., Sznajder and Roniger, “From Argentina to Israel,” and Rein and Davidi, “Sports, Politics, and Exile.”

73 Raanan Rein, Argentine Jews or Jewish Argentines? Essays on Ethnicity, Iden-tity, and Diaspora (Boston, 2010).

74 Shirley Christian, “Timerman, Stranger in Two More Strange Lands,” New York Times, Nov. 14, 1987.

Exile of the World': Israeli Perceptions of Jacobo Timerman

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