Aj Committee Official Charges Arab Campaign Threatens U.S. Interfaith Harmony

The head of the American Jewish Committee’s inter-religious affairs department charged today that a well financed Arab propaganda campaign in this country “threatens to undermine interfaith harmony and imperils the already heavily strained civic peace of the United States.” Rabbi Marc H. Tannenbaum said, at a luncheon meeting of the AJ Committee’s New York Chapter, that the Arab propagandists had made inroads in Catholic and Protestant church circles in a campaign that was not only anti-Israel but resorted to the crudest and most virulent forms of anti-Semitism.

According to Rabbi Tannenbaum, the Arabs recently distributed a four page leaflet containing a Moslem version of the medieval ritual blood libel charge against Jews and a rendition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious 19th Century anti-Semitic forgery. He said the current Arab bid to influence Christian opinion in this country was much better organized than previous propaganda campaigns. “There is clear evidence that Arab information specialists operating out of Arab countries, and especially from Beirut, Lebanon, have moved massively to gain Christian support from the Arab league nations in their anti-Israel policies,” Rabbi Tannenbaum said. The propaganda pamphlet, entitled “The Secret of the Blood Practices Israel is Enjoined to Observe,” attributed to Ibrahim Saada, asserts that Jews in Arab states kidnap “children in Syria and Lebanon for the purpose of sucking their blood on the Jewish Passover.”