This Monday, August 12, marked the beginning of the trial initiated by the DAIA (Association of Argentine Israeli Organizations) against our comrade Alejandro Bodart, former legislator of the City of Buenos Aires, leader of the MST in the Left Front Unity and coordinator of the International Socialist League, for defending the Palestinian cause.
Prior to the beginning of the hearing, a rally and open microphone were held in front of the Criminal Court Nº 8 of the City of Buenos Aires, on 150 Suipacha St., presided over by Judge Natalia Molina. Several public figures and representatives of numerous human rights, social and political organizations spoke there, expressing their solidarity with Alejandro and that defending the Palestinian people, who are suffering genocide at the hands of the State of Israel, is not a crime.
On the first day, the witnesses for the prosecution and the plaintiffs spoke: a judge, a Zionist leader, an employee of the prosecutor’s office, two employees of INADI (state anti-discrimination agency) and an employee of the DAIA. As we can see, not much thought independence.
Among his statements, Judge Franco Fiumara argued that Israel is democratic, that 98% of Jews are Zionists, that the Argentine state adopted the IHRA’s definition of anti-Semitism and that Alejandro’s tweets are anti-Semitic. This is all false:
- Israel is a colonialist theocratic state (“the homeland of the Jews”), which enforces anti-Palestinian apartheid, as recognized by the UN Commission on Human Rights and even genocide. It only recognizes the right to self-determination for Jews, prohibits the return of exiled Palestinians, grants fewer rights to Israeli Arabs, illegally occupies Palestinian territories, as recognized by the International Criminal Court, and legalizes torture. There is nothing “democratic” about it.
- As to whether 98% of Jews are Zionists, the judge could not cite a single source. He also omitted that religious orthodox Jewish sectors are anti-Zionist, as are thousands and thousands of Jews outside Israel, including many who protest in the United States, Argentina and many other countries, saying “not in our name” to the crimes of the Israeli State.
- The IHRA’s misleading definition that equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism was not adopted by “the Argentine state”, but only by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as a legally non-binding regulation only applicable in the administrative sphere, some legislative bodies, and the presidencies of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, not both chambers. In other words, it is not law.
The second witness, a “social network specialist” with a degree in Literature and employee of the prosecution, said, for example, that the potential reach of Bodart’s tweets is “more than 74 million people”, seeking to demonstrate an enormous influence that generates anti-Semitic violence. Faced with questions from defense lawyers María del Carmen Verdú and Ismael Jalil, he had to admit that this number refers to a whole year’s worth of tweets, not to the three tweets that are the subject of the DAIA’s accusation.
The third witness, Ariel Gelblung, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which he defined as a “human rights defense organization”, stated that “modern anti-Semitism hides behind the mask of anti-Zionism”, shamelessly equating both concepts. That was not all:
- He defined Zionism as “the national liberation movement of the Jewish people in their ancestral land”, omitting that, before agreeing with Great Britain to occupy Palestine, the Zionist leadership itself considered establishing the State of Israel in the Argentine Patagonia, in the southern end of Latin America, or in Uganda-Kenya, in sub-Saharan Africa.
- He also condemned those who “want to live where others are living”, cynically omitting that the State of Israel was founded in 1948 by razing 350 Palestinian villages, murdering 15,000 people, usurping their lands and expelling more than 750,000 Arab inhabitants, who are also Semites.
- He affirmed that the murder of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, which motivated one of Alejandro’s tweets in condemnation, “was an unwanted death, in a context of confrontation”. This is false: it has been proven that Israeli troops shot her in the head, while she was wearing her press vest, with no combat taking place anywhere near.
The fourth and fifth witnesses, Emiliano Marilungo and Andrea González, are former employees of the INADI: the one who determined Bodart’s tweets as discriminatory and his boss. Marilungo failed to explain why Bodart questioning Zionism, which is a political movement, discriminates against the Jewish population. He also recognized that his decision expresses the “pseudo-jurisprudence” and the “orders from above” of the since dissolved INADI.
When asked by Verdu if saying “end the South African apartheid state means exterminate the South African population” he had to agree that it does not. Prosecutor Andrea Scanga then nervously repeated the question because the answer contradicted his decision against Bodart, based on affirming that speaking of “destroying the State of Israel would have dire consequences for its entire population”.
Furthermore, both Marilungo and Gonzalez denied that there was anything in the INADI file prior to the court order that originated the decision, when, in fact, the procedure was initiated by a complaint filed by Bodart against the DAIA, and it is even recorded that it was given “joint processing” and renumbered. This decision was not signed by then head of INADI Greta Pena, nor was it notified to both parties, as required by the internal regulations. A complete disaster.
The sixth witness, Marisa Braylan, an employee of the DAIA, merely repeated the usual fallacies of Zionism.
We will not be silenced! We will continue the battle for the acquittal of comrade Alejandro Bodart, for the defense of the Palestinian people and for the condemnation of the Zionist, terrorist and genocidal State of Israel!