Mick Hartley

An interesting article in the Jewish Chronicle:

A UK-based TV channel for British muslims has been fined £40,000 after airing an "antisemitic" documentary that claimed Israel was trying to take over part of Argentina and Chile.

In February 2021, the Islam Channel broadcast an hour-long film titled The Andinia Plan, which alleged there are plans to create a new Jewish state in Patagonia – a sparsely populated region at the bottom of South America.

The conspiracy theory first appeared in a magazine published by a group of Argentinian neo-Nazis led by the sons of Holocaust architect Adolf Eichman.

Sparked by a suggestion by political activist Theodore Herzl that a future Jewish state could lie in Argentina, it typically involves the belief that there is an international plot to promote Jewish migration to the country, take control of its economy, and eventually seize its land.

While seemingly absurd, the theory has affected Jews who travel to and live in the region.

In 2012, after an Israeli tourist was questioned by Chilean authorities after a forest fire began in an environmental reserve, antisemitic comments were posted online referencing the Andenia Plan.

Writing on X/Twitter, one Chilean congressman questioned whether the man in question was really on holiday, suggesting that he had been sent by the Israeli government after "killing Palestinian children".

The Islam Channel's documentary featured claims that "an old proposal from the end of the 19th century could be resurfacing in order to change the political map of South America."

The narrator later added: "According to scholars on the subject, there are indications that might signal that the proposal may be re-emerging with force in a modern-day plan that allegedly could seek to create a new Jewish state in Patagonia in the not too distant future."

Eugenio Tuma Sedan, described in a caption as Senator of the Republic of Chile, further claimed: “There are allegations regarding the aspirations of the Zionists, that not only did they wish to occupy Palestinian territories, but they also wanted a back-up option in the south of Chile and the south of Argentina."

The broadcasting regulator Ofcom has now ruled the documentary programme amounted to hate speech against Jewish people.

The irony is that South America – southern South America – has historically been welcoming not to Jews, but on the contrary to antisemites. The reference to Adolf Eichmann reminds us of the Nazis who fled there after the Second World War.

There's also the sorry tale of Nueva Germania, the colony founded in Paraguay by Elisabeth Nietzsche, sister of philosopher Friedrich, and her husband Bernhard Förster in the 1870s. They were aiming to create a Jew-free Aryan paradise, but it didn't work out – "Any notion of an Aryan utopia was extinguished as soon as they set foot on land. The hot, humid climate, malaria, parasites, and snakes wreaked havoc among these urban families laden with young children." Elizabeth Nietzche returned to Germany after Forster's suicide, where she spent her energies in later years arguing that her brother's work was a precursor to Nazism. Her funeral in 1935 was attended by Hitler.