Hoax Confirmed: Mad about Marriage in Argentina (2019)
Back in 2019 the ‘Times of Israel’ claimed that there has been another ‘anti-Semitic hate crime’ in Buenos Aires in Argentina.
To wit:
‘Investigators are examining whether the attack on Argentina’s chief rabbi may have been ordered in revenge for a ruling, the Argentine daily La Nacion reported Wednesday.
Rabbi Gabriel Davidovich was beaten and seriously injured on Monday by assailants who broke into his home while he and his wife were there, taking money and personal effects.
According to La Nacion, investigators are working to determine whether the targeting of Davidovich was motivated by anti-Semitism, or was an act of revenge for a marriage annulled by the rabbi a few years prior.
Investigators were said to have concluded that the rabbi was deliberately targeted by his attackers.
The head of Argentina’s main Jewish group said the assault was an anti-Semitic attack. Jorge Knoblovits, the president of the Argentine-Israelite Mutual Aid Association (AMIA), said seven men were involved in the assault Monday in Buenos Aires on Davidovich, who is 62.AMIA’s head quoted Davidovich’s assailants as saying, “We know you are the rabbi of AMIA.”
Knoblovits said the robbery was merely a pretext for “an anti-Semitic act.”
“In the world, there is a lot of room for ignorance, and where there is ignorance, there is space for anti-Semites,” he said.
Argentina has one of the largest Jewish communities in the world, with 190,000 people.
Argentine authorities have opened an investigation into the attack, which followed the desecration of nine tombs at a Jewish cemetery in the province of San Luis over the weekend.
Police have not said if they are investigating the attack as a hate crime, and some, including the rabbi’s son, have questioned if the assailants had anti-Semitic motives.
“They didn’t say it was anti-Semitic, they just said he was the Jewish community’s rabbi so he must have a lot of money and they beat him up badly,” Aryeh Davidovich told the Walla news website.
During the attack, the rabbi and his wife put up no resistance, but the assailants threw Davidovich to the ground.
“They broke nine of his ribs, affecting a lung, and left him disfigured,” Knoblovits said.
Argentine President Mauricio Macri sent a tweet repudiating the attack and vowing aid to find the attackers.
His human rights secretary, Claudio Avruj, said that Argentina needs to build a society “where there are no signs of anti-Semitism, and we cannot be indifferent.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Davidovich and his wife were “viciously assaulted” and condemned the incident aspart of an anti-Semitic wave.
“We must not let anti-Semitism rear its head. I strongly condemn the recent acts of anti-Semitism and call on the international community to take action against it,” Netanyahu said.
He spoke to Davidovich and called for the perpetrators to be swiftly caught, according to a statement from his office late Tuesday.
Isaac Herzog, chairman of the Jewish Agency, a quasi-governmental body that deals with Jewish immigration to Israel, said after speaking to the rabbi that “he suffers from severe pain and fractures, but his spirit is strong.”
“I had the sense from his remarks that the incident had obvious anti-Semitic characteristics. I wished him a full recovery from all of us. The Jewish Agency will help him and his community as much as necessary,” he said.’ (1)
They key sentence in this long narrative – along with many others – (2) is that:
‘Investigators are working to determine whether the targeting of Davidovich was motivated by anti-Semitism, or was an act of revenge for a marriage annulled by the rabbi a few years prior.’ (3)
In other words this is not likely to be an ‘anti-Semitic hate crime’ at all despite all the hype, but rather a case of jews – angry at Rabbi Davidovich for granting a jewish divorce several years prior (a hot button issue in some part of Judaism (4) and has been since at least the 1980s (5) – physically attacking him in his own house then the Chief Rabbi and the rest of jewry begin constructing a fake narrative about it being an ‘anti-Semitic attack’ and implicitly blame Argentinian nationalists for it.
Scratch another ‘anti-Semitic hate crime’ hoax.
References
(1) https://www.timesofisrael.com/investigators-probe-if-argentine-rabbi-attacked-for-annulling-marriage-report/
(2) For example: https://www.foxnews.com/world/attack-on-argentine-chief-rabbi-raises-fear-of-anti-semitism
(3) https://www.timesofisrael.com/investigators-probe-if-argentine-rabbi-attacked-for-annulling-marriage-report/
(4) For example see: https://www.timesofisrael.com/australian-groups-give-government-committee-info-on-jewish-divorce-refusal/; https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-in-unprecedented-move-israel-indicts-husband-for-refusing-to-grant-wife-jewish-divorce-1.6469441; http://www.getyourget.com/get-refusal-basics/; https://www.jta.org/2017/06/28/culture/can-a-woman-refuse-to-give-her-husband-a-jewish-religious-divorce-it-just-happened-in-australia
(5) Cf. David Cobin, 1986, ‘Jewish Divorce and the Recalcitrant Husband: Refusal to Give a "Get" as Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress’, Journal of Law and Religion, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 405-430