JERUSALEM – The annual ceremony in memory of victims of anti-Semitic incidents and terror attacks around the world that takes place on Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s Remembrance Day, will mark twenty years since the murderous terror attack at the AMIA (Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, in which 85 people were killed. Representatives of the Jewish community of Argentina will attend the ceremony and relatives of two of the victims – Andrés Gustavo Malamud, 37, and Silvana Alguea de Rodríguez, 28, will kindle a memorial flame.
On July 18, 1994, a Hezbollah terrorist detonated a massive car bomb in front of the AMIA Jewish community center in central Buenos Aires, killing 85 people and injuring more than 300, most of them Jews. It was one of two major terror attacks targeting Jewish and Israeli targets in Argentina in the 1990’s. Two years earlier, in March 1992, an attack at the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires caused the deaths of 29 people and injured 242.
The ceremony will take place under the auspices of The Jewish Agency for Israel, the World Zionist Organization, the Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF), Keren Hayesod-UIA, the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), and the Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA (UIAC).
Ambassador of Argentina to Israel Carlos Faustino Garcia, Jewish Agency Chairman of the Executive Natan Sharansky, AMIA Secretary-General Mario Sobol and other world Jewry leadrs will attend the ceremony.
According to Jewish Agency figures, some 200 Jews have been killed in terror attacks since Israel’s establishment. The ceremony will feature a Star of David-shaped memorial column bearing the names of Jews murdered in anti-Semitic attacks around the world.