Anti-semites. Arab League, Unite to Stir Up Hostility Against Israel. Jews

Latin American anti-Semites have found a new ally in the Arab League, an authority on Latin American Jewry has reported to the American Jewish Committee. Haim Avni, lecturer at the Institute of Contemporary Jewry of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, in a report submitted to the AJCommittee’s 66th annual meeting this weekend, stated that the League was stirring up hostility against Israel and Latin American Jewry. As a result, Avni reported, “traditional anti-Semites now use anti-Zionist slogans, even when the content of their propaganda is ‘classically’ anti-Semitic. Many non-Jews are increasingly identifying with Israelis.”

Anti-Semitic propaganda, Avni asserted, “has been particularly successful recently in left-wing political circles. Israel’s ties with the United States and her dependence on American support and Americans have intensified this hostility, he added, “and it is now quite usual in leftist circles to regard Israel as one of the enemies of the ‘Third World.'” Moreover, Avni stated, “the sympathy toward Israel displayed during and after the Six-Day War by military and right-wing circles in several Latin American countries did not improve Israel’s image with left-wing groups. This unhappy and deteriorating situation also poses a threat to Latin American Jewry, which has close ties with the State of Israel.”

Confirming Avni’s report, Jacobo Kovadloff, director of the American Jewish Committee’s South American Office, stated that the Jewish community in Argentina was deeply disturbed by recent charges made by Walter Beveraggi Allende, a radical right-wing lawyer and former member of the Argentine Parliament, that international Zionism had taken over control of Argentina’s resources. It was widely believed in Argentina that the Beveraggi campaign against the Jews was a joint venture of native leftists and Arab League propagandists, Kovadloff said.