Vanina Biasi, an Argentine national deputy from the Workers’ Party, was prosecuted for antisemitism and violating Anti-Discrimination Law 23.592, according to a ruling by Argentine Federal Judge Daniel Rafecas, the Jerusalem Post reported.
By Rachel Avraham
Vanina Biasi, an Argentine national deputy from the Workers’ Party, was prosecuted for antisemitism and violating Anti-Discrimination Law 23.592, according to a ruling by Argentine Federal Judge Daniel Rafecas, the Jerusalem Post reported. According to the report, this follows her making a series of antisemitic social media posts. Haaretz reported that after the October 7th massacre, she referred to Israel as a “fascist” and “Nazi” state and described Israel’s war in Gaza as a “Holocaust.”
Haaretz reported that the judge decided to freeze her assets, valued at 10 million pesos (roughly $10,000), to cover the costs of future legal proceedings and any fines that might be incurred. The Jerusalem Post claimed that if Biasi is found guilty of inciting hatred or promoting discriminatory propaganda under Law 23.592, she could face a prison sentence ranging from one month to three years. Haaretz claimed that the case against her is focused on eight social media posts published between November 27, 2023 and January 29, 2024.
Among them was a post shared on X in November 2023, when news broke that Emily Hand, a young girl from Kibbutz Be’eri who was believed to be dead, was actually alive and had been kidnapped by Hamas. In that post, Biasi wrote: “Thousands of people suffering because Emily had been murdered and, in the end, it was just a construction of the Zionist narrative that doesn´t care about people and its pain.”
Following the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas, Biasi dismissed the distress of a father searching for his missing daughter, calling it part of a “Zionist narrative,” the Jerusalem Post reported. On January 27, 2024, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Biasi drew comparisons between the “supremacy and racism” behind the Holocaust and what she described as the “justification of the Palestinian genocide” by Israel, the Jerusalem Post reported. According to the report, she accused Netanyahu’s supporters of manipulating the memory of the Holocaust for political purposes.
According to the Jerusalem Post, Biasi further sparked controversy on January 28, 2024, by accusing “Zionist Nazis” of working to destroy UN Relief and Works Agency humanitarian aid efforts, comparing their actions to those of Nazi concentration camps and saying they were using famine as a method of extermination.
In his decision to indict Biasi, Haaretz reported that Rafecas wrote that, based on his examination, her social media posts constitute a criminal offense and are not protected by free speech. “Her expressions cannot be seen as mere critiques … of the Israeli government for specific policies or actions,” the judge wrote in the 59-page decision, Haaretz noted. “On the contrary, the accused labels the State of Israel (not just its government or temporary authorities) and Zionism as genocidal and Nazi, as occupiers of a land (not acknowledging its right to it), and as perpetuators of apartheid. And she does so in a series of messages with clear antisemitic content.”
According to Haaretz, the judge concluded that Biasi’s fierce condemnations of Israel and Israelis fit the definition of antisemitism drafted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Association, which Argentina has adopted. His main concerns, he wrote, were the comparisons drawn between the war in Gaza and the Holocaust, but he was also concerned that her expressions of anti-Zionism could be interpreted as calls for Israel’s eradication and, therefore, constituted a hate crime.
Haaretz reported that Rafecas, who is not Jewish, was a visiting fellow at Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial center, nearly 20 years ago and has written a book on the Holocaust titled “A History of the Final Solution.” Despite that, Haaretz claimed that he is not very popular in certain quarters of the Jewish community because, as a lower court judge, he dismissed complaints that former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner covered up Iran’s involvement in the 1994 attack against the AMIA Jewish community center that left 85 people dead. According to the report, the complaints, backed by the DAIA, were made by prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who was later found shot in the head.
Photo from Argentine Chamber of Deputies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanina_Biasi#/media/File:Vanina_Natalia_Biasi.png
