The Argentine government on Friday declared the Islamist group Hamas an international terrorist organization, according to a statement from the office of the country’s president, Javier Milei. The new definition for Hamas in Argentina was registered in the Public Registry of Persons and Entities Linked to Acts of Terrorism and its Financing (REPET).
“Hamas has claimed responsibility for the atrocities committed during the attack on Israel on October 7 last year,” the statement said, citing “an extensive history of terrorist attacks” by the group. The organization operates in the Gaza Strip and declares itself to be jihadist, nationalist and Islamic, and aims to establish an Islamic state in the historic region of Palestine. It also considers Israel an occupying power to be eliminated from the Palestinian territories.
The October 7, 2023, attack on civilians in Israel by Hamas infiltrators left an estimated 1,200 people dead on Israeli soil, and more than 250 were kidnapped. The attack – in which the largest number of Jews killed since the Holocaust – triggered a war in the Gaza Strip that has left tens of thousands dead in the Palestinian enclave. More than 100 people are still being held hostage in the Gaza Strip as of October 7, including two children under the age of 5 and about 20 women; another 43 kidnapped people have been confirmed dead.
The statement says that Milei – who since taking office on December 10 last year has shifted the focus of Argentine foreign policy toward the United States, Israel and what he calls the “free world” – has an “unwavering commitment to recognizing terrorists for what they are.” The statement claims that Milei’s government reiterated its “conviction that Argentina must once again align itself with Western civilization, respecting individual rights and its institutions,” which is why it considers it “unacceptable that those who carry out attacks against Argentina are not declared what they are: terrorists.”
Buenos Aires terrorist attack to mark 30 years next week
Argentina’s change of Hamas’s designation comes just days before the 30th anniversary of the terrorist attack on the building of the Asociación Mutual Israelita-Argentina de Judeos (AMIA) in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people and injured 300 on July 18, 1994. On January 18, 2015, the prosecutor who investigated the AMIA attack, Alberto Nisman, was found dead, just days before he was due to indict then-President Cristina Kirchner for allegedly covering up for Iranian suspects who carried out the attack.
“In recent years, a link with the Islamic Republic of Iran has been revealed, whose leadership was held responsible for the attacks against the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and against the AMIA by the Criminal Cassation Chamber on April 11,” the presidency statement added, recalling that, before the attack on the AMIA, Argentina had already been the scene of an attack on the Israeli embassy in 1992.
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