Two recent manifestations of anti-Semitism in Peru have disturbed the Jewish community there, according to Rabbi Morton Rosenthal, director of the Latin American Affairs Department of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.
One, an anti-Semitic article entitled “The Wandering Jew,” appeared in the government-owned daily La Cronica on Good Friday. Included in its “blatantly anti-Jewish verbiage,” Rosenthal said, “was the depiction of Jews as a corrupt people doomed to be eternal wanderers and strangers as long as they do not accept the deity of Christ.” The article was protested by Jose Behar, president of the Jewish Association of Peru.
The second event, Rosenthal said, was the ban on Jews and women from participation in a Peruvian mission to the Middle East at the insistence of Senator Miguel Angel Mufarech, “a leading advocate of the PLO,” Rosenthal said.
Mufarech, appointed by President Alan Garcia to organize the mission, has served as special emissary to Arab states. The 80 businessmen and 10 public officials invited to participate were given a manual instructing them to refrain from discussing or referring to Judaism during the course of their trip.
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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.
