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OPINION | OCTOBER 7 WASN’T THE FIRST TIME ISRAEL’S GOVERNMENT
ABANDONED JEWS FOR POLITICAL GAIN  
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Sebastian Ben-Daniel (John Brown)
August 31, 2025
Haaretz
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_ Argentine junta benefited from cooperation with right-wing Israeli
governments. Unlike Hamas, it continued to benefit from those
governments in the form of weapons/training, even after it was known
that these weapons were being used to murder Jews. _

People take part in a protest demanding the end of the war and the
immediate release of hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and
against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government in Tel Aviv, in
August., Ohad Zwigenberg/AP

 

Many Israelis stress that Hamas' attack on October 7, 2023, was the
biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. But that's not exactly
true. The junta that controlled Argentina from 1976 to 1983 murdered
many more Jews than Hamas did.

Just like Hamas, the junta benefited from cooperation with right-wing
Israeli governments. But unlike Hamas, it continued to benefit from
cooperation with those governments and the Israel Defense Forces in
the form of weapons and training, even after it was known that these
weapons were being used to murder Jews, and that thousands had been
"disappeared" or thrown to their deaths from airplanes.

Almost two years have passed since October 7, yet Israeli hostages are
still imprisoned in the tunnels of the Gaza Strip, and the bodies of
those who have died are decomposing in foreign soil. The government
that promised to bring them back at any price continues to prioritize
ethnically cleansing Gaza over their lives.

But for anyone familiar with Israeli history, this abandonment
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unsurprising. It's part of a well-documented pattern of prioritizing
ostensible economic and strategic interests over Jewish lives.

I have read tens of thousands of Israeli documents from the period of
the junta. Most will remain classified for the next 90 years, even
though next March will mark the 50th anniversary of the junta's
takeover of Argentina's government in a military coup. But one
conclusion applicable to the Israeli hostages in Gaza should already
be clear – the hostages' families must not believe a single word
that cabinet ministers or IDF officers say.

Pictures of those 'disappeared' by the military junta between
1976-1983 hanging in Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires, Argentina.Credit: \
Azavedo / ullstein bild / Gett

Back then, they lied to the families of the Jews who were disappeared
in Argentina.
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told those families they were doing everything they could to find the
missing Jews, but in truth, they did almost nothing. Israel's interest
in selling arms and obtaining support for the Israeli occupation
always took precedence, and this led successive governments and the
IDF to indirectly collaborate in the murder of 30,000 people in
Argentina.

Their families were told to be quiet because making noise would harm
the efforts to free them. But in reality, the heads of the junta were
the ones who demanded this in exchange for buying Israeli arms and
supporting Israel in international forums.

Debates in the Knesset were shut down. Efforts were made to cleanse
junta members of the charge of antisemitism. The Israeli media
published propaganda that even the Argentine media would have been
ashamed to publish, along with lies about the people who were
disappeared. And Israeli officials cast doubt on what little
information emerged from Argentina, even though they knew the truth.

Almost 12 percent of all the people murdered by the junta were Jews,
even though Jews constituted only 1 percent of Argentina's population.
And during this time, Israel sold the murderous junta arms worth
almost $1 billion. Argentine generals, who drew swastikas in their
torture chambers, interrogated Jewish prisoners and raped them,
received fighter jets, missiles, rifles, surveillance equipment,
antitank missiles and military training from Israel.

Roughly 30 percent of Israel's arms exports during that period went to
the Argentine army. Israeli pilots were sent to train the Argentinian
pilots who flew the planes from which people were hurled to their
deaths. IDF representatives Haim Laskov and Motta Gur visited
Argentina and were received with great honor by junta head General
Roberto Viola.

Did Israel not know about the fate of Argentina's Jews? American
documents shed light on this question. One dated June 24, 1976, shows
that Israeli sources knew the Argentine regime was systematically
kidnapping and murdering left-wing activists. According to one Israeli
source quoted in the document, Israel knew as early as 1976 that the
proportion of Jews among the murder victims was high.

Yet that same source defended Israel's continued cooperation with the
junta with the astonishing claim that this wasn't antisemitism on the
regime's part, but merely stemmed from the fact that Jews were
disproportionately represented among the academics and intellectuals
who had become subversive left-wing activists. It's true that Jews
were heavily represented in those groups. But the use of this argument
shows the extent to which Jewish lives were subordinated to other
interests.

Renee Epelbaum, whose three children were kidnapped and murdered and
who was one of the founders of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, once
said, "We didn't want to know that our children were murdered with
Israeli arms. We remember the slap in the face we got from the leaders
of the Jewish community, who told us that what had happened to us was
our fault, because you didn't raise your children to be Zionists.'"

The American documents contain evidence that, on orders from the
Israeli government, the Argentine Jewish community leaders also
justified the junta's actions, arguing that they were aimed only at
left-wing activists. Israeli officials stressed the extent to which
the junta's leaders were proud of the cooperation of Jewish communal
leaders, quoting them as saying that "if you tell community leaders to
jump from a 20-story building, they'll jump."

The Israeli government's real interests in continuing the war in Gaza
are clear, just as they were in Argentina. The government needs the
war to stay in power, the defense industry needs it to continue
turning a profit and the generals need it to cover their failure on
October 7.

And the hostages
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Like the Jews who were disappeared in Argentina, they have become the
victims of a state that claims to represent the Jewish people but has
repeatedly prioritized other interests over both the Jewish people and
Jewish lives.

People hold signs of the hostages held in Gaza as the images of the
six hostages murdered by their Hamas captors a year ago in Rafah are
shown on the screen at Hostage Square in Tel Aviv on Saturday
evening.Credit: Moti Milrod

What are the lives of a few Marxist Jews compared to the security of
an entire nation? After all, we have to sell arms to survive, and we
have to obtain support for the country, which even back then had
become a pariah due to the occupation. And today, we have to carry out
ethnic cleansing in Gaza; otherwise, the October 7 attack 
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happen again.

With regard to Argentina, Israeli officials argued at the time that
selling arms would help the Jews there. But concerning Gaza, the
government doesn't even bother to explain how the bombings are
supposed to bring the hostages home. It just keeps bombing, and the
Israeli public, blinded by propaganda and racism, refuses to see the
simple truth: The government that sold arms to the murderers of Jews
yesterday will also abandon Jews today.

The hostages' families, like the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo in
Argentina, continue to demonstrate and demand answers. But history is
repeating itself in the form of a calculated choice by a government
that never intended to protect all Jews, but only those who serve its
interests.

The hostages in Gaza, like the Jews who were disappeared in Argentina,
are proof of the fact that the Jewish state is willing to sacrifice
Jews on the altar of its economic and political interests. But this
time, we can't claim that we didn't know.

Don't believe a word the government says. Like all Israeli
governments, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu understands nothing but
force. And if you let them, they will prioritize their narrow
interests over Jewish lives. That was true in the death camps in
Buenos Aires back then, and it's true in the tunnels of Gaza today.

_[xxxxxx MODERATOR -- ALSO OF INTEREST: ANALYSIS -- DESPITE
ISRAELIS' INDIFFERENCE, DEADLY STRIKE ON GAZA HOSPITAL COULD CHANGE
THE COURSE OF THE WAR
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_SEBASTIAN BEN-DANIEL is an Israeli academic and writer often working
under the pseudonym John Brown. He is a lecturer in computer science
at Israel’s Ben Gurion University of the Negev and contributes to
+972 magazine and Haaretz, among others._

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* October 7
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* Hamas
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* Argentine Junta
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* right-wing Israeli governments
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* weapon sales
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* Jews
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