Arab Propaganda Takes New Path

Transcribed from the clipping

NEW YORK — (Special) — Propaganda designed to win sympathy for the Arab cause and to spread hostility to Israel has been stepped up in tempo and volume and is becoming increasingly professionalized, a new report by the American Jewish Committee has disclosed.

The 24-page report, “Arab Appeals to American Public Opinion Today,” indicates that since the Six Day War in June, 1967, the Arab propaganda effort has replaced its “clumsy unselective approaches of yesteryear ... by more sophisticated techniques aimed at particular audiences — such as church groups, the student left, or the disaffected blacks.”

A major focus of the Arab effort, the report continues, has been in churches, where Arabs and their supporters have employed both anti-Zionism and religious anti-Semitism to sway attitudes of American churches toward Israel. In this effort, the survey declares, “substantial headway has been made, especially among Protestant leaders.”

Many welfare groups to alleviate the plight of Arab refugees have been established or reactivated, the survey points out. In some of them, “humanitarian aims ... seem to be accompanied by ill will or propagandistic intent toward Israel,” the report states.

Another major Arab effort, the survey states, is being made in establishing ties with the Black Muslim movement and with other black extremists.

Context added by this archive

Here the word arrives at its widest reach.

Church congregations, student groups, Black organizations and refugee relief charities are all described as fronts or targets, and humanitarian aid for Palestinian refugees is set down as something that seems to be accompanied by ill will or propagandistic intent. Once relief itself is a delivery system, there is no form the speech can take that clears the bar.

Cite this item

"Arab Propaganda Takes New Path," St. Louis Jewish Light, 13 August 1969. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1969-012. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1969-012