The Eternal Return of the Andinia Plan

September 26, 2023

Buenos Aires - The UK Broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, imposed a fine of £40,000 on Islam Channel for airing in February 2021 a documentary with explicit Antisemitic content alleging that Israel was trying to take over part of Argentina and Chile.

The hour-long film “El Plan Andinia” reported on the ongoing plans to create a new Jewish state in Patagonia.

(Screenshot from the film)

This conspiracy theory created more than 50 years ago in Argentina by Walter Beveraggi Allende, who was a professor at the University of Buenos Aires until the mid-1980s, was nothing more than an adaptation of the anti-Semitic libel of the tsarist era, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and was considered a true basis for the interrogations that illegal missing detainees of Jewish origin suffered during the dictatorship.
The same so-called theory is cited again from time to time. The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Digital Terrorism and Hate Project has over the years, captured this lurid anti-Semitic “theory” on the internet and on Social Media posts.

The young Israeli tourists who usually travel on a sabbatical year after being discharged from military service were accused more than once of being spies sent by the army that kill Palestinian children to inspect the terrain, as the then Chilean Senator Eugenio Tuma was quoted in the film.

After being notified of the sanction, Islam Channel issued an apology, which is added to all those it gives after being sanctioned for broadcasting expressly Antisemitic content.

“The Andinia Plan is one of those conspiracy theories that are ridiculous and at the same time periodically reiterated as an undisputed truth. It speaks more about those who wield it, but at the same time forces it to be condemned with the full force of the law,” said Dr. Ariel Gelblung, Wiesenthal Center's Director for Latin America.

For further information, please contact Dr. Ariel Gelblung at +54 9 11 49695365, join the Center on Facebook, or follow @simonwiesenthal for news updates sent directly to your Twitter feed.