Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, Pro-Arab Propaganda in America: Vehicles and Voices (New York, 1983).

The purpose of Pro-Arab Propaganda in America is to “identify the leading individuals and organizations” that make up the “pro-Arab propaganda network” that “erupted in full force” after “Israel’s military action in Lebanon.” The Anti-Defamation League lumps together pro-Saudi groups funded by US oil corporations with left political organizations on the grounds that all have committed at least one of the following “anti-Israel” actions: 1) criticized massive US military aid to Israel; 2) opposed Israel’s invasion of Lebanon; 3) criticized Israel’s policies in the occupied West Bank and Gaza; 4) opposed the political philosophy of Zionism, or 5) stated that the PLO represents the Palestinian people.

Many of the facts provided are rather innocuous. We learn that the Organization of Arab Students sponsored a “display on Arab Palestinian culture” at Rutgers University and that a speaker’s bureau of the American Educational Trust offers a speech entitled “Do’s and Don’ts for American Businessmen” in the Arab world. But the text is also laced with innuendo and, in some cases, statements that border on libel. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, for example, is said to provide “political support to suspected PLO terrorists residing in the US.” MERIP “in reality” functions as a “pro-Arab research and propaganda outlet in the United States for the Palestinian movement and as a possible source of recruitment for that cause.” By labeling all critics of Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians as part of a “pro-Arab propaganda network,” the ADL exhibits precisely the sort of defamatory strategy that it was allegedly created to combat.