Argentine Parliament Member Links Zionism with Communism

Charges that Argentine Jews sponsored camps where military training was given to “Zionist groups of Communism,” and were seeking to convey the impression abroad that there were monthly pogroms in Argentina, marked two days of heated debate over the weekend in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies.

The topic of the debate was activities of extremist left and right-wing groups. Leon Patlis, a member of the Federal Legislature, offered a proposal that questions to be submitted about such activities to the Justice and Interior Ministers be restricted to anti-Jewish activities. The Radical del Pueblo majority faction in Parliament sidetracked the proposal, and then fired the charges against Argentine Jewry. The Chamber then voted to formulate a series of questions to the two Ministries on all activities of the extremist groups.

Pueblo deputy Horacio Garcia charged that the alleged campaign abroad was carried on “particularly in the United States and Europe.” He declared that no group was being persecuted in Argentina but conceded that there were “undated” individuals who “preach racial violence.” He insisted that there were only a “few” such individuals, and that the police knew who they were. He declared that the police had initiated action against the extremist Tacuara group, and that they had expelled Hussein Triki, an agent of the Arab League, from Argentina recently.

The deputy also charged that the Democratic Socialist party had used Yiddish in some of its electoral campaigning, bringing a sharp reply from Patlis that the Pueblo party had campaigned also in German and Polish.