Rubén Kotler, 30/10/2025
Rubén Kotler (b.
1974) is an Argentine historian, Jewish anti-Zionist, and specialist in the
recent history of Tucumán. He is cofounder of the Argentine Oral History
Association and coadministrator of the Latin American Oral History Network. He
also co-wrote and conducted the historical research for the documentary El
Tucumanazo, which explores the workers’ and students’ uprisings in Tucumán. https://www.deigualaigual.net/
Israeli historian Ilan Pappé defines a lobby as “the
influence exerted to change a government’s policy or to alter public opinion.”
In his recent book, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides
of the Atlantic , he analyzes the history of the Zionist lobby between
the United States and the United Kingdom. Zionist penetration in Latin America
dates back to the first half of the twentieth century and has been essential to
the survival of the State of Israel and its policies of genocide, ethnic
cleansing, apartheid, colonialism, expansionism, racism, and Islamophobia—the
backbone upon which the self-proclaimed Jewish state is built, to the detriment
of the Palestinian people.
This colonial framework is sustained by Jewish-Zionist communities worldwide.
Such dynamics can be observed, under closer inspection, in local communities
such as that of Tucumán, Argentina.
Argentina’s
smallest province hosts a small but influential Jewish-Zionist community, where
both Ashkenazi and Sephardic heritages coexist. Its institutions range from
several synagogues and schools to a club called Unidad Sionista
(“Zionist Unity”) and a cemetery. The main community school—where I myself
studied during my school years—maintains a dual curriculum, and its
Jewish-Zionist education is a key element in maintaining and reinforcing
communal support for Israel.
The Jewish educational programs, far removed from religious orthodoxy, are
designed to foster a deeply Zionist identity.Argentine national holidays are celebrated with equal emphasis to Jewish holidays, imbuing them with a nationalist narrative that rivals that taught in schools in the colonial enclave of Israel itself. Zionist influence in the religious Jewish world has been so profound that even Reform congregations have included a prayer asking God to protect the Israeli army in their religious services.
Images
from a “Patriotic Israeli” School Ceremony in Tucumán
(Author’s Archive)
At the same time, a scholarship system funds
initiation trips to the self-proclaimed Jewish state—as if to a kind of Disney
World. Combined with a tightly woven network of local institutions, this
reinforces a sense of Israel as a “second homeland,” and for some, as an
imagined nation that serves as refuge from a potential apocalyptic repetition
of a “second Holocaust.”
The bombings of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires (1992) and the AMIA (1994)
strengthened the narrative of a possible “Holocaust” in Argentina. Since 1994,
Jewish-Zionist institutions have maintained external walls around their
buildings “to prevent car bomb explosions.” For thirty years, Argentina’s
Jewish-Zionist community has awaited a “third attack” as though waiting for the
Messiah.
The oath sworn by soldiers of the world’s most criminal army at Masada, in
occupied Palestine—pledging that Zion will never fall again—is replicated with
equal fervor in Jewish-Zionist schools.
In Argentina, there exists a notorious pro-Zionist
lobbying institution known as the Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas
Argentinas (DAIA)—the Delegation of Argentine Jewish Associations—whose
initial purpose was to protect Jewish interests in Argentina. Nothing could be
further from reality: DAIA defends Zionist interests in the country. It is also
one of the key promoters of the idea that anti-Zionism is equivalent to
anti-Semitism, as we will see later.
Kirchnerist José Jorge Alperovich (b. 1955) served as governor of
Tucumán three times between 2003 and 2015. In November 2019, he was criminally
charged with sexual abuse, and in 2024 he was sentenced to sixteen years in
prison and permanently disqualified from holding public office.
To understand Zionist penetration in Tucumán over
recent years—functioning as a kind of fifth column that justifies and
accompanies genocide—we must consider the political landscape. Provincial
governments since 2003 have maintained firm economic, cultural, political, and
social ties with Israel.
Alperovich, the son of a Jewish-Zionist family from
Tucumán belonging to the commercial elite, became a paradigmatic case in a
country whose official religion is Roman Catholicism. His election was as novel
as his alliances with Zionism at a global level. These ties predated his
governorship but were reinforced by the inclusion of local Jewish community
members in the provincial cabinet. Prominent community figures embraced
Peronism as a political vehicle through which they anchored their influence and
linked the provincial state to the State of Israel via a series of economic
agreements.
Juan Luis Manzur (b. 1969), later governor and today the wealthiest
official in the national administration, continued this line of submission to
Zionism. With close, even affectionate ties to sectors such as Chabad
Lubavitch, Manzur quickly made business deals with Israel in one of the
colonial enclave’s most specialized areas: security.
By the end of 2018, the provincial government
purchased 4,000 semi-automatic Jericho 9mm pistols with polymer frames,
developed by Israel Military Industries (IMI)—a company privatized that
same year and absorbed by Elbit Systems. The nine-million-dollar deal
brought to Tucumán weapons identical to those used against Palestinians in the
West Bank. One of these guns, in the hands of the provincial police, killed Luis
Espinoza during the pandemic lockdown, when police raided a social
gathering on May 15, 2020. Espinoza was kidnapped and disappeared for seven
days before his body was found in another province.
But the agreements didn’t stop there. Two years before
Espinoza’s death, on August 13, 2018, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra
performed in one of Tucumán’s main theaters under the sponsorship of the
provincial government. I titled my commentary at the time “A Concert of
Gunfire” to highlight how cultural events were being used to normalize the
embrace of the Zionist state and the oppression of the Palestinian people.
The normalization of colonial structures through culture and sports is a
distinctive feature of this global pattern of Zionist influence.
Peronism as an ally of Zionism
Today, Argentina’s far-right president Javier Milei
is openly allied with Zionism, supporting the ongoing genocide in Palestine.
Yet part of the Peronist movement hypocritically remains silent or looks away
when it comes to the state’s agreements with Zionist institutions. Visits to
Israel by Argentine officials have continued from one administration to
another.
From Tucumán, local governments and university authorities have repeatedly
signed agreements with Israel, regardless of political turnover.
Let us recall that the first international trip of
Peronist president Alberto Fernández, just before the pandemic, was to
Israel—to shake hands with war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu. His minister
Eduardo “Wado” de Pedro, himself the son of victims of Argentina’s last
civil-military dictatorship, brought the Israeli company Mekorot to
Argentina to manage a strategic resource: water. De Pedro could not have been
unaware of international accusations against Mekorot for its role in Israel’s
apartheid system and its control of water resources in occupied Palestine.
Today, these agreements are being expanded as Milei’s ultra-liberal government
seeks to privatize Agua y Saneamiento Argentino (AYSA), the national
water and sanitation company. Will Mekorot take over AYSA? It is highly
probable.
Health and the Hadassah Network
On October 13, 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the
Ministry of Health of Tucumán signed a cooperation agreement with Israel’s Hadassah
Medical Network. The agreement was signed by then-Minister of Health Rossana
Chahla, now the mayor of the provincial capital.
According to the ministry’s website, “this agreement
aims to share medical knowledge developed at Israel’s Hadassah Medical Center,
to provide access to training sessions, symposiums, and lectures by
professionals, as well as to integrate hospitals and health centers in Tucumán
into the Hadassah Health Network.”
The objective is explicit: sharing provincial health data with an Israeli
institution—an unprecedented step in such a sensitive public sector. The
ministry’s note also confirmed that this relationship between the provincial
government and Hadassah has existed for over fifteen years, dating back to
Alperovich’s administration.
The local academy strengthens the Zionist narrative
The Zionist narrative requires its scribes. The Hasbara—Israel’s
state-sponsored propaganda apparatus—deploys a wide range of tools, from
funding mass media outlets to flooding social networks with influencers who
mold public perception. As war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu recently
declared, “Israel should buy TikTok.”
Within this strategy, academia plays a crucial role.
Agreements between Argentine public universities and Zionist or pro-Zionist
institutions are particularly notable.
Returning to Tucumán: on July 23, 2025, the Faculty
of Law at the National University of Tucumán hosted a Hasbara-style event
clearly intended to reinforce Zionist narratives—the presentation of the book Antisemitismo:
Definir para combatir (“Antisemitism: Define to Combat”) by Ariel
Gelblung, director of the controversial Simon Wiesenthal Center, a
defender of the Zionist narrative.
The event was supported by the local DAIA and attended
by university authorities, provincial government officials, and members of the
judiciary—including Supreme Court justices Claudia Sbdar and Daniel
Posse, journalist Álvaro José Aurane of La Gaceta, and
officials Raúl Albarracín and Hugo Navas.
Notably, Gelblung’s presentation was part of a postgraduate
diploma program on Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity offered by the
Faculty of Law—one that makes no mention whatsoever of the ongoing genocide
against the Palestinian people.
On July 25, a follow-up talk was given to local
students, again promoting the conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. In
an interview with the local newspaper, Gelblung declared:
“We are living through the worst moment of
anti-Semitism since the end of World War II. The conflict in the Middle East
has placed Jewish communities around the world in real danger. Allowing certain
masks to fall and aligning with terrorism is truly dangerous.”
For this propagandist, “Zionism is not a bad word; it
is the movement for the national self-determination of the Jewish people in
their ancestral land. Someone cannot claim to support self-determination for
all peoples except one. That is discrimination. One cannot say, ‘I’m not
anti-Semitic, I’m just anti-Zionist.’ That’s a fallacy.”
For Gelblung—and indeed for the entire Jewish-Zionist
establishment—no genocide is being committed in Gaza, despite reports to the
contrary from Israeli human-rights organizations such as B’Tselem.
Neither Gelblung nor Tucumán’s academic or judicial authorities seem to have
read the report titled “Our Genocide”. By echoing the IHRA definition of
anti-Semitism, they equate it with anti-Zionism—nothing could be more false.
Since October 7, 2023, these circles have loudly
insisted that the world is witnessing a surge in anti-Semitism—a claim
unsupported by evidence. In Argentina, even members of parliament have been
prosecuted for mentioning genocide in Palestine, accused of anti-Semitism, as
happened to Vanina Biassi, deputy of the Frente de Izquierda y de los
Trabajadores (Left and Workers’ Front).
Rossana Chahla (1966), intendenta (alcaldesa) de Tucumán, justicialista
(peronista/kirchnerista)
Rossana Chahla (b. 1966), physician of Syrian-Lebanese origin and
now mayor of San Miguel de Tucumán, has written yet another chapter in the
province’s alliance with Zionism. She signed a security-training cooperation
agreement with the Israeli agency Mashav for the municipal staff.
Despite protests from the group Tucumán por
Palestina, the municipality proceeded with the agreement. At the height of
an ongoing genocide, the mayor deepens ties with Zionist institutions.
According to the municipal website,
“The course, conducted in Spanish at the Beit Berl
Institute campus near Tel Aviv, covers key topics such as coordination between
municipalities and police forces, the creation of community police units,
emergency management, youth work with at-risk populations, and cooperation with
educational institutions, community organizations, and the private sector.”
Such agreements, mirrored throughout Latin America,
exemplify what journalist Antony Loewenstein has called ‘The
Palestine Laboratory’—Israel’s use of its repressive systems against the
Palestinian people as showcases for its “technological advances” in security
and warfare. Israel remains one of the world’s major arms exporters [8th largest exporter and 15th largest importer in the
world] , selling to regimes of all kinds, including
dictatorships.
A Phantom Haunting Tucumán: The Phantom of Genocide
The collective Tucumán por Palestina, made up of Palestinians, anti-Zionist Jews, artists,
political and trade-union activists, and academics, has for years denounced
Zionism and exposed Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people. Yet not a
single line about their work has appeared in Tucumán’s main newspaper. On the
contrary, whenever the Jewish-Zionist community holds public events, the same
paper devotes lavish coverage to them.
In general, local media—barring rare exceptions—ignore
the persistent activism that fills the capital’s streets. It is evident that
Zionist influence in Tucumán extends across all three branches of government,
the hegemonic press, and parts of academia.
As a son of that same Jewish community, I once again
raise my voice in opposition to Zionism and genocide. Like the comrades of
Tucumán por Palestina, I speak out wherever possible.
The penetration of that ghost called genocide
in the province has names and faces—many of them descendants of Syrian-Lebanese
families, such as the current mayor of the provincial capital. Breaking the
dominant narrative, making as much noise as possible, and convincing Jewish
communities around the world that Israel does not represent Judaism—in
any of its religious or cultural forms—may help weaken the colonial enclave.
Withdrawing communal support, as several anti-Zionist
and pro-Palestinian Jewish organizations are already doing, could contribute to
the fall of a regime that for over a century has waged war, committed crimes
against humanity, and perpetuated genocide and ethnic cleansing in historic
Palestine and other strategic parts of the Middle East.
