The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith has called on Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird to take immediate and appropriate action” on an interview with Gerald L.K. Smith broadcast over the Armed Forces Radio Network.
Describing Smith as “this country’s most notorious anti-Jewish hate peddler,” Seymour Graubard, ADL’s national chairman, said the program, a Mutual Network offering entitled “Suggested Solutions,” promoted Smith’s “religious projects,” including “his anti-Semitic Passion Play in Eureka Springs, Arkansas,” and offered packets of propaganda to listeners. Graubard also pointed out that at one point “Smith made disparaging remarks about the State of Israel that had clear anti-Semitic implication,”
The League official stated that Smith’s “record as a propagandist of religious and racial hatred goes back some 40 years and has been extensively exposed and condemned in print and by all responsible public officials.” Graubard said ADL is “deeply concerned with the use of the Armed Forces Network, a government facility, as a vehicle for presenting and promoting a notorious bigot in the guise of a responsible religious leader.”
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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.
