Anti-Nazi League To Champion Human Rights

Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the ... Congress, Volume 92, Part 11. United States. Congress. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946 pp.2634-5
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Arab office Linked with Fascist Jew Baters -- President Truman Is Asked to Investigate Arab Propaganda in the United States

EXTENTION OF REMARKS 

OF

HON. EMANUEL CELLER

OF NEW YORK 

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Thursday, May 7, 1946

Mr. CELLER.  Mr. Speaker I herewith insert a copy of the communication addressed to president Truman by the Nonsectarian Anti-Nazi League To Champion Human Rights, wherein very grave charges are made against the Arab League for its contemptible propaganda activities in the United States.

The Nonsectarian Anti-Nazi League, under the guidance of its administrative chairman, Prof. James H. Sheldon, and chairman, Herman Hoffman, has done a splendid job in championing human rights. It has rendered yoeman service in protecting all minorities against the slurs and barbs of hate mongers and disciples of Hitler's doctrine of racism.

What the Anti-Nazi League has uncovered with reference to Arab propaganda in this country merits close inquiry and I intend to offer a resolution to investigate these propaganda activities.

The Anti-Nazi League submits documentary evidence that the Arab office in Washington is closely allied with native Fascist individuals and groups seeking to stir up hatred against the Jews. This is the Arab League method whereby it seeks to gain American sympathy for Arab demands in Palestine. The letter to the President, together with the memorandum follow:

NONSECTARIAN ANTI-NAZI LEAGUE TO CHAMPION HUMAN RIGHTS,

New York, N. Y., May 7, 1946. Hon. HARRY S. TRUMAN, President of the United Stares, Washington, D. C. 

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: 

We believe that the attached memorandum indicates the existence of a well-planned effort, of Nazi or Fascist background, to use the evil weapons of organized propagandistic appeal to religious and racial bias and bigotry, for the advancement of political purposes on an international scale, through activities of the so-called Arab League, its Washington agency the Arab office, and a network of more-or-less affiliated agencies.

There are definite indications of the cooperation of these agencies with domestic propagandist forces of the most dangerous character, in such manner as to use the creation of tensions between Americans of differing religious and racial backgrounds, for the advancement of foreign political purposes in the Near East and elsewhere.

We therefore recommend to you the immediate institution of investigations to determine whether any of these propagandistic activities may have been in any part financed by funds made available to countries of the Arab League through credits extended in connection with operations of the United States Government, either directly through the treasury of a third power, and whether the activities of these agencies in any way violate the requirements of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or of other statutes of the United States.

We further respectfully suggest the special propriety of such lines of inquiry before final disposition of pending issues having to do with American policy in the Near East, including questions affecting the recognition of the Transjordan state (one of the constituent parts of the Arab League), or affecting the continued use of American credits for public enterprises in the Near East.

Very respectfully yours,

NONSECTARIAN ANTI-NAZI LEAGUE, 

JAMES H. SHELDON, 

Administrative Chairman. 

HERMAN HOFFMAN, 

Chairman, Board of Directors.

MEMORANDUM CONCERNING PROPAGANDA ACTIVI

TIES OF THE ARAB OFFICE IN THE UNITED

STATES (Submitted by the Nonsectarian Anti-Nazi League, New York, N. Y.)

I

It is the purpose of this memorandum 

to present in summary form 

evidence indicating that the Arab office, quasi-diplomatic Washington agency representing the seven near eastern countries which together constitute the Arab League, is engaged in conducting, along with more-or-less affiliated pan-Arabic agencies in the United States, a widespread subversive propaganda campaign, involving the incitement of religious and racial strife and the dissemination of propaganda of totalitarian bias, as part of an effort to achieve in the near eastern area certain foreign political objectives bearing no relationship to the best interests of the American people.

It is the recommendation of the Nonsectarian Anti-Nazi League that appropriate official investigations be instituted to discover whether these activities do not constitute flagrant violations of the laws of the United States, in that they involve the conduct of extensive foreign propaganda activities under circumstances not within the terms of the Foreign Agents Registration Act; and further, to determine whether these activities have been financed through credits originally secured for wartime purposes under lend-lease or similar arrangements, either directly from the American Government or indirectly through the treasury of a third country.

An extended brief on this subject, with full documentation attached, is being prepared for submission within a few days. It is the purpose of the present memorandum only to outline our findings or allegations, and to call attention to a few typical items, selected from a much larger volume of available evidence.

II

Specifically, the anti-Nazi league charges that a high Arab official, Anwar Bekir Nashashibi, has on cccasion joined forces with groups associated with Gerald L. K. Smith and with so-called National Blue Star Mothers of Pennsylvania, in the promotion of antiSemitic, antidemocratic and other inflammatory propaganda, at Philadelphia, New York City, and elsewhere. Also involved in these activities were Khloussy Khairy, officially registered Secretary-Director of the Arab Office, and other members of the executive staff of the Arab Office. Nashashibi, who came here from London at the beginning of March, bears one of the oldest and most influential titles of the Arabian nobility.

The Anti-Nazi League also charges that leaders of the old Nazi-supported Arab National League, including a former associate of the German Bund leader Fritz Kuhn, are currently active in the promotion of unAmerican propaganda being disseminated through various Arabian or pan-Arabian agencies situated in this country.

III

The Arab office, located in the Wardman Park Hotel at Washington, D. C., is registered with the Justice Department as the American agency for the seven Arabian countries viz, the Syrian Republic, Trans-Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the Lebanese Republic, Egypt, and Yemen, which, together with representatives of Arab organizations in Palestine, make up the Arab League.

Closely associated with the Arab office is a New York agency known as the Institute for Arab American Affairs, Inc. Both the Arab office and the institute have recently purchased large quantities of newspaper advertising space, mostly devoted to anti-Zionist propaganda.

In characterizing these propaganda activities, the Anti-Nazi League has analyzed a quantity of documentary exhibits, including an invitation issued to the Arab office by H. L. Smith, wealthy Philadelphia agitator and financial supporter of Gerald L. K. Smith, The Philadelphia invitation said:

"Democracy is nothing but Jewocracy and it is about time the American public got wise to this fact and got over being a lot of suckers for both Bloody Jce and Churchill."

In another paragraph, Jews were referred to as "Kikes." The proposed meeting was to be arranged as a semisecret gathering of persons who "know who are the troublemakers."

After this invitation had passed through Khairy's hands, Nashashibi replied, "It would give me very great pleasure to come and address (your) group

and to have dinner with you before joining the meeting."

In view of the lurid language of this particular invitation, it is impossible for the Arab office officials to have been under any misapprehension as to the kind of organizations with whom they were working. (See photostatic copies of this entire series of correspondence, attached hereto.)

IV

Outstanding publicist for the various Arab groups involved is H. I. Katibah, editor of the monthly Bulletin, and of other publications of the Institute for Arab-American Affairs, Inc. Katibah, the Anti-Nazi League charges, was one of the original incorporators and most active workers in the notorious Arab National League, founded shortly after Hitler seized the German chancellorship and incorporated at New York in 1938, and used to disseminate totalitarian propaganda among Americans of Near Eastern antecedents. 

The Arab National League operated in close association with the German-American Bund, then under the leadership of Fritz Kuhn, and its activities were regularly reported in the Nazi newspaper, Deutscher Weckruf und Beobachter, until that publication was sealed up by the FBI after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In addition to Katibah, whose name appears near the top of the institute's letterhead, it is significant that both the original bund-associated body and the present institute were formed under New York corporate charters containing much identical language and written by the same lawyers. Furthermore, the names of several of the other top officers of the institute, including the present chairman of its executive committee, are to be found among the names of the eight original incorporators of the old bund-associated Arab National League.

This same H. I. Katibah, on May 2, 1946, and again on May 9, 1946, was the signer of full-page paid advertisement appearing in a number of principal newspapers, advancing the propaganda cause of the Arab League, and attributed to a high nebulous source called the League for peace with justice in Palestine. The original announcement address of the latter organization is merely the address of an advertising agency located at 345 Madison Avenue, New York City.

The president of the Arab National League, the late Dr. F. I. Shatara, according to Deutscher Weckruf und Beobachter articles and other published reports, addressed many pro-Nazi groups, including meetings of Fritz Kuhn's German-American Bund and of the German Citizens Protective League. (The head of the latter organization, Kurt Mertig, was recently sentenced to jail for inciting to riot at a Queens County, N. Y., Christian Front meeting). George Kheiralla, another Arab National League incorporator, is the editor of the Arab World, slick-paper publication of the pan-Arabic agencies in America.

V

The Anti-Nazi League charges that these various Arab organizations, under the general dominance of the Arab cffice and Institute for Arab-American Affairs, are presently conducting a Nation-wide campaign of propaganda, with centers of activity in New York, Washington, and various Middle Western points (including specifically Chicago, Detroit, Toledo, and Flint, Mich.). The league also has evidence of specific instances of such propaganda activitics in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and California. This whole wide-spread campaign has received the vigorous support of the so-called subversive press in America, including such publications as the Broom, California weekly whose editor is still awaiting trial on a sedition charge, and Women's Voice, official publication of the violently isolationist group, we, the mothers at whose "peace conference" last June, Salem Bader, west-coast pan-Arabic propagandist, spoke on "The Jewish threat." Bader, in association with the president of the Institute for ArabAmerican Affairs, Inc., had earlier arranged a coast-to-coast radio network for a panArabic program, during the San Francisco Conference.

Expenditures involved in this propaganda campaign have already run well above a million dollars, and include substantial payments made by the governments of Arab countries now or until very recently under British jurisdiction and financial tutelage.

In addition to these indications of subterranean cooperation with indigenous Fascist-like groups of exceedingly questionable Americanism, it may be very conservatively added that the official propaganda line openly pursued by the Arab office, the Institute for Arab-American Affairs, and related agencies, bears many of the most obvious ideological criteria of fascism or nazism-for example, in its insistance on an ultra-nationalism based on religious and racial lines, and in its demand for a total Arab hegemony even in areas such as the Lebanese Republic where the Christian population constitutes a definite numerical majority. This Nazi-Fascist line is further borne out in a constant reference to pseudo-scientific anthropological or historical arguments-for example, the argument that Palestine belongs exclusively to Arabs because the ancestors of the Arabs were there (which is historically doubtful) before Moses led the Israelites thence out of Egypt! Throughout all of this propaganda is to be found a basic support for a totalitarian type of state, and a recurrent and virulent anti-semitism (extending, in some instances, to the reprinting in various languages of excerpts from much well-worn Hitlerian propaganda pieces as the fictitious Protocols of the Elders of Zion).

This pattern of secret cooperation by official or quasi-official Arab agencies with native groups of Nazi-Fascist leanings is by no means confined to the United States, but extends also to many other countries in North and South America, and on both sides of the Atlantic.

The recent official vote of the Arab league's governing body, appropriating funds to promote an international boycott against the products of Jewish industry, is further evidence of the political use of anti-semitism, in a manner almost identical with that of the Nazi Deutscher Konsum-Verband and similar anti-Semitic boycott agencies.

If there should remain any doubt as to the essentially antidemocratic and totalitarian outlook of the Arab League, such doubt would appear to have been entirely resolved by the vote of the Governors of the Arab League to support the return to Palestine of the exiled Mufti, Amin-El-Husseini, a political and pseudoreligious leader of the most evil repute denounced as a war criminal by various of the Allied Powers, widely known as Hitler's Arab Quisling, and as the man whom Himmler and Goebbels retained to consult in their anti-Semitic policy and to broadcast radio appeals to American soldiers of neareastern extraction, urging them to desert the flag of their country.

On the basis of this vote of the Arab League, to reestablish the personal power of the Mufti, it would seem almost axiomatic that the purposes of the highly paid propagandists at the Arab office in Washington could not be regarded as in accord with the best interests of democratic America.

The Anti-Nazi League's investigation of the subject of, Arab propaganda in America and in other parts of the world has been coducted in an intensive and thus far strictly secret manner since the end of last November, when the Council of the Arab League, following a meeting in Cairo, Egypt, announced plans for promoting a Hitlerlike anti-Jewish boycott in the Middle East, and inadvertently indicated that this anti-Jewish boycott might be accompanied by a subterranean propaganda campaign in other parts of the world. 

Since that time, observers for the Anti-Nazi League have been engaged in a careful watch on the activities of Arab agents in America, accumulating evidence of such activities stretching all the way from Argentina to Canada, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific.