The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith charged last night that Yusif Albandak, an Arab propagandist, is “the major force behind a new virulent anti-Semitic and anti-Israel campaign in Argentina.” Rabbi Morton M. Rosenthal, director of the ADL’s Latin American Affairs Department, told the ADL’s Society of Fellows that Albandak, a longtime propagandist linked by the ADL to professional anti-Semite Merwin K. Hart, is “masterminding a concerted campaign by the Arab League, pro-Arab front groups in Argentina, and anti-Semitic right-wing elements there to isolate Jews and create disunity.”
Asserting that Albandak, formerly known as el Bandak, has made “blatantly anti-Semitic speeches,” Rabbi Rosenthal cited a full-page advertisement in a Buenos Aires newspaper titled “Appeal for Support of the Rights of the Palestinian People.” Prominent Argentinians, he said, disavowed the use of their names in the ad “together with those of known Nazi-Fascists.”
Albandak has contended that Communism is “rampant in Israel” and that “all Zionists are Communists,” Rabbi Rosenthal said, and he has urged American Christians to oppose Zionists “lest they turn your country into another Palestine.” Albandak’s past activities in England and the United States, the ADL official said, are being repeated now in Argentina.
Rabbi Rosenthal charged that Albandak’s denial of ties with the Argentine Committee for the Liberation of Palestine and the Justicialist Committee of Solidarity With Free Palestine were untrue, citing a story in the Buenos Aires Arab-language newspaper that the heads of those groups conferred with Albandak on their anti-Zionist efforts. According to the ADL, the Justicialist Committee–“considered the single most powerful political force in Argentina today”–is led by former Peronist official Andres Framini.
The Committee, the ADL said, is “a pro-Arab front group having no official connection with or authorization from the Justicialist (Peronist) movement.” Rabbi Rosenthal noted that former President Juan D. Peron has repudiated the committee’s ads with the observation that “there is nothing more extraneous than anti-Semitism to the ideology of a movement like Peronism.” In those recent comments, Peron also pointed to his early recognition of Israel and said that “any problem promoted between Arabs and Jews in our country is artificial.”
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