ADL charges HispanTV with spreading antisemitism, Islamic Republic of Iran propaganda

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) published a report on Monday accusing the Iran state-controlled HispanTV, a Spanish-language media outlet, of spreading antisemitic viewpoints to its audience of 600 million people.

The channel, the ADL charged, shares Holocaust revisionist content and content which is prejudiced against the Jewish state. The ADL also accused the outlet of incitement.

The network, established in 2011, publishes content through satellite, cable, live-stream and social media.

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, who is currently visiting Argentina, said "On the 30th anniversary of Argentina's deadliest terrorist attack, the AMIA bombing perpetrated by the Iranian regime and its proxy Hezbollah, it's evident that the Iranian regime continues to perpetuate antisemitism through multiple channels. 

“Alongside physical violence, the Islamic Republic of Iran, as the world’s leading state-sponsor of antisemitism and terrorism, uses cultural centers and media across Latin America to incite hostility against Jewish communities. The cynical use of media outlets like HispanTV to amplify antisemitic conspiracies and disinformation is reprehensible and unethical. In our report, we outline concrete steps to urge policymakers and corporations to take swift action to prevent HispanTV and other Iranian regime media from spreading hate through these platforms.”

 The Iranian regime primarily utilized IRIB's PressTV, which was established in 2007, and its Spanish-language counterpart, HispanTV, to promote global antisemitism, the ADL claimed.

The report exampled the network’s antisemitism across the categories:

1. Antisemitic Tropes about Jews and Jewish Power to perpetuate the myth that Zionists, which the ADL said is used as a codework for Jews, control Hollywood and were also behind the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2013, the site published an article titled  ‘Why Jews Dominate Hollywood’ which reportedly argued that supposed Jewish influence over Hollywood allows for the industry to push for the interests of Israel and the West.

2. Post October-7 Disinformation and denialism, where the site pushed an alternative narrative blaming Israel. Xavier Millar reportedly published an article titled “What lies behind the new Zionist discursive appropriation?” only two weeks after Hamas’s attacks on southern Israel.

Millar, according to a translation provided by the ADL, wrote  “Zionist authorities, with the complicity of Western media, are doing everything possible to prevent a new ‘colonial rebellion’ in Gaza. To achieve this, they have spread the traditional discourse on terrorism, this time with the intention of equating Hamas with ISIS.”

The ADL claimed the network regularly sought to frame the attacks as part of a wider, justified, component of Palestinian resistance - ignoring the sexual violence, attacks on civilians and other crimes committed by terrorists during the attacks.

“The October 8th report ‘How Western Media Victimize Israel?”’ published just one day after the massacre, absolves Hamas of any responsibility for the attack on Israeli civilians, describing the news of the massacre as an attempt by ‘The Western press, through provocative publications on social media, [to seek] tears to empathize with the massacres it commits,” the ADL noted.

El Frasco: Uncensored Media, a program on the network, reportedly claimed that Israel employed fake news to justify its attacks on centers where Hamas used civilian infrastructure to shield its terrorist activities.

“In the principles of Hitler’s propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, one of his premises resulted in the infamous phrase: ‘If a lie is repeated enough, it becomes the truth.’ Today, the Zionist regime seems to be one of the best students of that methodology,” the report cites the program as stating.

3. Denialism and Conspiracies related to Latin America, such as the denial of the Iranian regime’s role in the AMIA terrorist attack and the promotion of the obscure Plan Andinia conspiracy.

“The AMIA attack in Argentina, coupled with the narrative absolving the Islamic Republic of Iran of responsibility, forms part of the backdrop for the outlandish Andinia Plan conspiracy theory,” the report noted. “The conspiracy claims that Jews want to establish a second Jewish state, a Zionist one, in the Patagonia region, located in Argentina and Chile. This hoax is portrayed as a “secret plan,” and like many antisemitic conspiracy theories, is anchored in the tropes of Jewish people hoarding power, money, and influence.”

Felix Cossio reportedly claimed in a 2018 opinion piece on the site “that in the case of the AMIA attack, where nearly 90 people died, the Islamic Republic of Iran and Hezbollah were directly blamed [for manipulating] the media and [demonstrating] that they continue to be the most persecuted people of all time,” the report noted.

• Glorifying terrorism by presenting the indiscriminate violence the Houthis and other Iranian proxies committed as a legitimate form of armed resistance.
• Justifying the eradication of Israel 
• Glorifying the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies
• Historical revisionism by distorting the Holocaust and drawing comparisons from Nazi Germany and Israel
• Propagating anti-Israel prejudice by making accusations that Israel is ethnically cleansing Palestinians.