The Washington Post and Times-Herald charged editorially today that Arab propagandists in the United States are now trying to link Israel with Communism in “an attempt to discredit Israel’s efforts to absorb the Jews now virtually expelled from Communist Rumania.”
The newspaper said “the effort to stigmatize Israel as sympathetic toward Communism on this account is a cheap maneuver which reflects upon the motives of the perpetrators. If the Arab countries had been as alert to Communist designs as Israel has been, there would be less to worry about.”
(The press and radio of the United Arab Republic continued today to blare a massive propaganda barrage that ranged from attempts to link Israel with Communism to obsequious appeals to the Soviet Union to halt the emigration of Jews from Eastern Europe to Israel.
(The Egyptian radio’s home service sought to link Israel directly to pro-Communist elements in Iraq, Egyptian newspapers assailed the emigration as a build-up for “new aggression” by Israel. A Damascus Arab daily appealed to the Soviet Union “not to bolster the capacity for Zionist aggression.”
(The Cairo daily Ash-Shab blamed the immigration into Israel on forces “consolidated to oppose Arabism, ” identifying them as including world Jewry, Britain and the United States.)
The Washington Post said that “admittedly this immigration will cause some problems in Israel and will aggravate suspicions among Israel’s neighbors. But, in the circumstances, Israel’s willingness to absorb these expellees performs a great humanitarian service, particularly in the absence of more liberal immigration regulations in the United States and other countries.”
According to the Post, “the new-found alarums about Communism in some Arab countries, notably the United Arab Republic, have been quickly transformed by the propagandists into a weapon against — you guessed it — Israel. A press release from the Arab Information Center in New York, entitled ‘For the Record, ‘attempts to paint Israel as a country where Communism is entrenched in the political life, ‘ and it cites the communal farm as examples. This is of course a gross libel on a country where a strong anti-Communism pervades the politics, and on the kibbutzim which, though collective, have no connection whatever with a subversive international conspiracy.”
(United Nations circles expressed belief tonight that Hassouna would seek to initiate some action at the UN by the Arab States in a move to bring pressure to halt the flow of immigrants into Israel.)
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.
