The Department of State has been called upon to explain the invitation to the United States of Said Freiha, one of the most notorious anti-Jewish and pro-Nazi propagandists in the Arab world.
Said Freiha, publisher of the Beirut daily newspaper. “Al-Anwar,” was reportedly invited by the United States Government to observe the Presidential elections. His newspaper carried a cartoon suggesting that Nazi Gestapo leader Adolf Eichmann’s “sin” was in his “failure” to kill the rest of the Jews in the world.
The national commander of the Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.A., J. L. Feuer, addressed yesterday a letter to Secretary of State Christian A. Herter, ashing for a full explanation of the reported invitation. He referred the Secretary to a report in the October 18 edition of “El-Amal,” another Lebanese newspaper, describing the invitation as an honor to the publisher.
Mr. Feuer said he was enclosing a cartoon typical of those published in “Al-Amar.” It depicts Israel’s Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, confronting Eichmann. In the drawing the Prime Minister says: “You deserve the death penalty because you killed 6,000,000 Jews” and Eichmann replies: “There are many who believe I deserve the death penalty because I didn’t manage to kill the rest.”
Mr. Feuer said that it was fair to assume that the United States Embassy in Beirut should have knowledge of the type of material published by a man who was being extended an invitation by the United States. He added that the offense was further aggravated, since the invitation was extended at a time when the Arab League gave new evidence of contempt for the American flag by barring American ships from Arab seaports solely because these ships exercised freedom of navigation and included Israeli ports in their routes. He identified the ships as “Ike,” “Exanthia,” and “Marine Voyager.”
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.
