Jacobo Timerman

Jacobo Timerman was a Soviet-born Argentine publisher, journalist, and author, who is most noted for his confronting and reporting the atrocities of the Argentine military regime's Dirty War during a period of widespread repression in which an estimated 8,000 political prisoners were disappeared. He was persecuted, tortured and imprisoned by the Argentine junta in the late 1970s and was exiled in 1979 with his wife to Israel. He was widely honored for his work as a journalist and publisher.
In Israel, Timerman wrote and published his most well-known book, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, a memoir of his prison experience that added to his international reputation. A longtime Zionist, he also published The Longest War, a strongly critical book about Israel's 1982 Lebanon War.
Timerman returned to Argentina in 1984, and testified to the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons. He continued to write, publishing books in 1987 about Chile under the Augusto Pinochet regime and in 1990 about Cuba under Fidel Castro.

Early life

Timerman was born in Bar, Ukraine, to Jewish parents Eve Berman and Nathan Timerman. To escape the persecution of Jews and pogroms there, the family emigrated to Argentina in 1928, when he was five years old and his brother Joseph was seven. The family lived in the Jewish area of Buenos Aires, restricted by their poverty to occupying a single room. Timerman took a job at age 12 after the death of his father. While young, Timerman lost an eye due to infection.
Timerman became a Zionist as a young man. He met his future wife, Risha Mindlin, at a Zionist conference in Mendoza. They married on 20 May 1950 in a simple ceremony at the Mindlin house.

Career

Journalist and publisher

Timerman gained work as a journalist and rose in his profession, reporting for various publications including the Agence France-Presse, ''Mail, What, News Charts, New Zion, and Commentary. He became fluent in English as well as Spanish. He gained experience and reported on Argentine and South American politics.
In 1962, Timerman founded Primera Plana, an Argentine news-weekly often compared to the American publication, Time magazine. In 1964 Timerman resigned as editor of Primera Plana, amid rumors of official threats due to his "line of opposition to the government". The magazine announced Timerman's resignation the week after it had reported on government threats to sanction uncooperative publications.
In 1965, he founded another news weekly titled Confirmado.
The Armed Forces seized power in 1966, overthrowing president Arturo Illia. General Juan Carlos Onganía was installed as president, initiating a repressive and unpopular regime. His administration was characterized by its violent repression of Argentina's universities and intellectuals, and for its policy of establishing strict and conservative Catholic morals. Onganía suspended publication of Primera Plana in 1969. The next year it resumed publication but never regained its previous status. From his exile in Spain, former president Juan Perón bought Timerman's newspaper in 1970, planning to control it and part of the political discussion in the country.
Timerman founded La Opinión in 1971, which many considered "the greatest of his career. With it, Timerman began to cover topics in more depth and journalists signed their articles, so their work could be identified. His model was the French newspaper, Le Monde.''
On 27 July 1972, the 20th anniversary of Eva Perón's death, terrorists set off 20 bombs in Argentina, most located in banks. But Timerman was one of numerous people targeted in the 20 attempted bombings.
Perón returned to Argentina from Spain in 1973 after his candidate Héctor Cámpora of the Justicialist Party was elected as president. Perón was widely understood to be the real power in the country, and the next year was elected as president after Campora stepped aside for him. His third wife, Isabel Perón, was elected as his vice-president. His death in 1974 raised uncertainty and political tensions. Isabel Perón succeeded him, becoming the first woman president in the Western Hemisphere. During the political unrest that year, Timerman received bomb threats by the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance.

''La Opinión''

From 1971 to 1977, Timerman edited and published the left-leaning daily La Opinión. Under his leadership, this paper reported news and criticisms of the human rights violations of the Argentine government, into the early years of the Dirty War. One wealthy backer of the paper was David Graiver, a Jewish businessman said to have ties to the leftist guerrilla group known as Montoneros, which was banned. Graiver had lent money to the paper in 1974. Because of Graiver's alleged ties to the Montoneros, Timerman was later criticized for his connections to the businessman.
The publisher reported against both left-wing and right-wing terrorism. Some commentators have suggested that he supported a military coup to quell the violence. Timerman believed that his paper was the only one that dared to report accurately on current affairs without hiding the events behind euphemisms. Both Isabel Perón and the military regime that overthrew her government suspended the paper for short periods prior to Timerman's arrest. Timerman later wrote in Prisoner Without a Name, "During my journalistic career, particularly as publisher and editor of La Opinión, I received countless threats". For example:

One morning two letters arrived in the same mail: one was from the rightist terrorist organization condemning me to death because of its belief that my militancy on behalf of the right to trial for anyone arrested and my battle for human rights were hindrances in overthrowing communism; the other letter was from the terrorist Trotskyite group, Ejercito Revolucionario Popular —the Popular Revolutionary Army—and indicated that if I continued accusing leftist revolutionaries of being Fascists and referring to them as the lunatic Left, I would be tried and most likely sentenced to death.

Timerman maintained his outspoken support for Israel. In 1975, in response to the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, which condemned Zionism as racism, he wrote "Why I Am A Zionist".

1976 military coup

A coup in 1976 installed General Jorge Rafael Videla and began "el Proceso"— military rule, including widespread persecution that came to be known as Argentina's "Dirty War". Timerman like many others had initially supported a military takeover, on the grounds that it might curb the country's pervasive violence.
Timerman continued to publish La Opinión for a year after the coup. He later speculated that moderates within the military had kept the paper alive because "the continued existence of La Opinión was a credit abroad; it backed the philosophy of future national reconstruction, it upheld the thesis of national unity, and was committed on a daily basis to curbing extremist excesses." The precise position of the new government regarding Timerman and his paper, remains unknown.
Anti-semitism increased during the 1970s as right-wing factions became more powerful. Jews were targeted in the media, including television stations operated by the government. A book called Plan Andinia, published anonymously in 1977, warned of an international Zionist conspiracy to control part of Argentina.
Anti-semitic bombings also increased, to a frequency of ten per month in 1976. Police defused bombs placed outside of La Opinión headquarters during a wave of antisemitic violence in August of that year. An enormous bomb detonated in early 1977, at a screening of Victory at Entebbe in Córdoba, which damaged almost 80 businesses.
At the beginning of April, the military began to arrest people connected to the Argentine banker David Graiver, who had left the country in 1975 and was reported killed in a plane accident in Mexico in 1976. He had been under suspicion of financing the left-wing Montoneros guerrillas through money laundering of millions of dollars derived from their kidnapping ransoms. Reports suggest that between 100 and 300 people were arrested under this charge.

Arrest

Before dawn on 15 April 1977, military police in civilian clothes appeared at Timerman's house and took him into custody. Enrique Jara, assistant editor of La Opinion, was also arrested. The Army announced that Timerman and Jara were being held, with 13 others, "in relation to the investigation of the Graiver case". The same day, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation announced that it had become involved in the case, and was hunting for Graiver under suspicion that his death had been faked. The military promoted the story of a Graiver conspiracy in the national and international press. For instance, a 17 April column in La Nación promised sweeping prosecution and punishment for all those involved.
On 25 May 1977, the government appointed General José Teófilo Goyret as the interventor of La Opinión. Goyret later allowed the paper, worth $5,000,000, to quietly fold.

Prison and torture

Timerman later testified:

After arresting me at my home in the federal capital, they took me to the police headquarters of Buenos Aires Province where I was interrogated by Camps and Etchecolatz; from there they transferred me to Campo de Mayo, where they made me sign a statement. Then they left me at Puesto Vasco, where I was tortured, after which I was again turned over to the Central Department of the Federal Police, where after 25 days I was able to get in touch with my family. From there they took me to COT-I Martínez to be tortured again, then again to the Central Department of the Federal Police. Ultimately, I was legally interned at the Magdalena penitentiary.

Both Ramón Camps and Miguel Etchecolatz were later indicted and convicted for their involvement in widespread torture and "disappearances" during the Dirty War. The kidnapping and detention of Timerman were found to have been ordered by General Guillermo Suárez Mason and his Batallón de Inteligencia 601. The three leaders were pardoned in 1991 by President Carlos Menem.
Timerman wrote later that he was arrested by "the extremist sector of the army", which "was also the heart of Nazi operations in Argentina". He said his captors accused him of involvement in the "Andinia Plan". Timerman believed that these jailers spared his life because they saw him as a potentially crucial source of information about the plan. The guards also interrogated Timerman about his relationship to the late banker David Graiver. Timerman was subjected to electric shock torture, beatings, and solitary confinement.