The Anti-Defemation League of B’nai B’rith has condemned the publication of a series of “vicious anti-Semitic cartoons” in the Jordanian government newspaper Al Dustur. In a letter to the Jordanian embassy in Washington, Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s associate national director, asked the Jordanian Ambassador to communicate to his government the concern of the American Jewish community.
The cartoons, Foxman said, use repugnant caricatures to portray Jews in the same manner as the Nazis once did. “The fact that such poison has appeared and has been tolerated by your government is very distressing,” the letter declared.
The reply, Foxman said, was far from satisfactory. Jordanian Ambassador Mohamed Kamal said he agreed that “defamation and abuse should not be condoned or accepted by decent people.” The Ambassador, however, denied that the newspaper cartoons were anti-Semitic, claiming that they “were not directed against Jews but against Israel and Zionism.” He then charged that a section of the American media is “under direct control and influence of certain groups in the American Jewish community.”
Foxman pointed out that “the false stereotype that Jews control the media and the attempt to excuse anti-Semitism by calling it anti-Zionism are both longtime plays of anti-Jewish propagandists.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
