Argentina vs. Israel

There will no exhibition game soccer game Saturday in Jerusalem between Israel and Argentina — which has the world’s best player, Lionel Messi, and one of its top teams. The red card is on the visiting team. And it’s not the only black mark on Argentina’s relationship with Jews.

The match, Argentina’s last before the World Cup tourney starts in Russia next week, was scrubbed because of a drumbeat of intimidation against Messi by the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, an economic pressure campaign to delegitimize and undermine the Jewish state.

Thugs targeted Messi, threatening to burn his merchandise the world over if he played. Think of that: If the man stepped dared put his cleats on Israeli grass, he was told, there’d be hell to pay.

It worked. The Argentines folded.

The game that didn’t happened wasn’t going to be in contested East Jerusalem, but in Teddy Stadium in West Jerusalem. That’s Israeli West Jerusalem. But reason didn’t matter to the anti-Israel mob, and it didn’t matter to the cowardly millionaire. For shame.

But shame is an Argentine specialty, as a court there has just ruled with certainty that the prosecutor who was probing Iran’s guilt in the 1994 terrorist bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center that killed 85 people was himself assassinated in 2015.

Alberto Nisman was murdered right before he was going to implicate the Argentine government in trying to cover up for Iran. The matter has the national legislature considering lifting former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s immunity from prosecution.

Argentina has a reckoning coming that’s a lot bigger than a soccer match.