[MakkabI]

For nearly an entire day last week, Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski became an Argentine media star. It began Wednesday morning, when radio stations in Buenos Aires repeatedly mentioned his name and reported in detail on a conversation he held with a visitor. This continued throughout the afternoon and evening, when his smiling face was seen on TV, and the following morning, as his faced gazed out from the newspapers. And then he vanished from the headlines, to be replaced by Vice Premier Shimon Peres.

The truth is that neither the Jerusalem mayor nor the vice premier was attracting the media attention, but rather their visitor: Buenos Aires Mayor Jorge Telerman. Telerman, who was in Israel last week, is considered in Argentina to be one of the politicians most skilled at using the media. Judging by his conduct in Israel, and also by how he timed his visit here, this image appears to be well-founded.

Last Saturday, a day before he departed for Israel, he called a dramatic press conference and announced his intention to move the mayoral elections up to the beginning of June. His political rivals accused him of trying to take advantage of their unpreparedness; Telerman replied that he had only made use of the authority invested in him by law, and that the law also obligates the mayoral elections to be separated from the presidential elections, which have been set for October.


In any case, his announcement kicked up a political storm that transformed a marginal, unimportant visit to Israel into a media event. His visit's connection to the campaign was obvious. Telerman arrived in Israel accompanied by only one aide - his spokeswoman. Here he hired a film crew that documented his every step and transmitted the material to the media in Argentina. Telerman was also often late for his meetings with his Israeli hosts. In most cases this was because of his innumerable phone calls with innumerable Argentine reporters about the decision to hold early elections.

A number of newspapers in Buenos Aires believed his visit was designed to enlist more support among the city's Jews, who tend to support his rival, Daniel Filmus, a Jew identified with the central wing of the ruling Peronist party and the candidate of President Nestor Kirchner. Telerman, who is also Jewish, is identified with the left wing of the same party. And there is also a third, rightist candidate, who could defeat them both: Mauricio Macri, president of the Boca Juniors soccer team.

Telerman's aides refuted the claim that the visit was planned to attract Jewish votes, and noted that considering the Argentine left's harsh, vocal criticism of Israel during the last Lebanon war, the visit is liable to harm him at the ballot boxes.

Telerman himself was dismissive. "Although this is my first official visit to Israel, I have been here many times in the past. I have family here and I love visiting, and there is no connection between this visit and the elections," he told Haaretz. Nevertheless, he did not miss a single opportunity to advance his interests, and not only among Jewish voters. On Wednesday afternoon, for example, he asked his hosts to change the schedule so that the visit to the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher would take place before the meeting with Lupolianski; he wanted to ensure that pictures of him at sacred sites would arrive in time for the news broadcasts in Buenos Aires.

Leftist leanings

Telerman was born in 1951. His grandparents immigrated to Argentina from Eastern Europe during the early 20th century. He leaned toward the radical left in high school, but he was not a major activist. When the military dictatorship came into power in the mid-1970s, he decided to leave the country, and lived in Paris for several years. He returned to Buenos Aires before the fall of that regime, and became a journalist. At first he worked at a radio station, and later he moderated the most popular political program on local television.

He exploited his status as a senior journalist to form the connections that enabled him to enter politics. On his way from the media to politics, he made an interim stop in Washington, where he served as the spokesman of the Organization of American States for three years. From there he moved to his country's foreign service, and served as Argentina's ambassador in Havana. Carlos Menem, who was then the Argentine president, conducted a clearly pro-American policy but made a point of preserving, with Telerman's help, close ties with Fidel Castro.

At the end of 2001, when Menem's extreme neo-liberal policy brought Argentina to the brink of collapse, Telerman held Buenos Aires' culture portfolio and was already considering running for mayor.

Opportunity came at the end of 2005, under tragic circumstances. A fire broke out at one of the largest nightclubs in the city, and about 200 revelers were killed. People blamed the municipality, which had not imposed adequate safety measures on the nightclubs. The mayor was deposed, and Telerman was appointed in his stead. The official aim of his visit to Israel, incidentally, was to learn how large municipalities here deal with disasters involving many victims, but in the end, Telerman made do with a short visit to the trauma department at Ichilov Hospital.

Ever since the terrible economic and social crisis that beset Argentina at the start of the decade, Buenos Aires, a huge metropolis of more than 10 million, has become one of the world's most popular tourist destinations. In 2006 it had no fewer than 3.7 million visitors, including tens of thousands of wealthy who frequented the city's shopping centers. Telerman believes there are objective reasons for the tourism boom, which has been a major element in the Argentine economy's recovery process. The devaluation of the local currency by two-thirds after the crisis made it attractive to tourists. "When we ask the tourists what brought them to Buenos Aires for the first time and what led them to return, the majority say they came initially because of the low prices and returned because of the cultural and gastronomic variety."

The Jews are back

There is also an "Israeli angle" to Argentina's dramatic improvement. Of the approximately 5,000 Argentine Jews who moved to Israel during the crisis, about 50 percent have since returned to Argentina. Telerman believes this is a "natural phenomenon." "During the crisis," he said, "Argentine society was crumbling. It was very hard at that time to find an Argentine who wasn't considering emigration. It was perfectly natural that many Jews would answer Israel's call and go there.

"Now that the situation has improved, it is equally natural that many are returning to Argentina. It is necessary to understand that this was emigration and not aliyah," he said, using the Hebrew word for immigrating for religious or national reasons. "When I was a child," he added, "we would collect coins in the blue cash boxes of the Keren Kayemeth," using the Hebrew term for the Jewish National Fund.

Telerman is concerned about the development of "extreme anti-Zionism, which could easily become anti-Semitism." He is worried, for example, by the fact that during the Lebanon war, left-wing groups joined Muslim groups and pro-Iranian elements in anti-Israel demonstrations in Buenos Aires.

"I don't think anti-Semitism in Argentina is getting stronger, but I do think there are groups on the Argentine left that, perhaps because of the very strong anti-American sentiments that have been engendered by the Bush administration, are adopting extreme, placard-like positions against anyone who is perceived as an ally of the United States, and especially against Israel," he said.

"It is, of course, permissible to criticize the policy of Israel, but it is forbidden to deny its right to exist or to compare its policy to Nazi policy. These are intolerable things that are arousing concern, and rightly so."

In this context, one must see the importance in the Argentine court system's decision to demand Iran extradite senior intelligence officials suspected of planning the 1994 terror attack that destroyed the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.

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Soon Argentine will have Jewish President/Prime Minister!!!