ADL Report: Iranian Regime Deploys HispanTV as Platform for Antisemitic Incitement in Latin America

By: Fern Sidman

As Tehran intensifies its global campaign of ideological warfare against Israel and the Jewish people, a new front has come into increasingly sharp relief: the Spanish-speaking world. According to a sweeping new report by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Iranian regime has dramatically escalated the dissemination of antisemitic propaganda and pro-terrorist messaging across Latin America through its state-run Spanish-language broadcaster HispanTV. The findings, reported and contextualized on Tuesday by The Algemeiner, depict a coordinated, well-resourced disinformation architecture designed to reshape public perceptions in a region home to nearly 600 million Spanish speakers.

The ADL’s study charts a steep rise over the past two years in content broadcast by HispanTV that demonizes Israel, traffics in classical antisemitic conspiracy theories, and openly glorifies terrorist organizations aligned with Iran, including Hamas and Hezbollah. The Algemeiner report noted that the report characterizes HispanTV, launched in 2012 as part of Iran’s global media strategy, as “the world’s leading platform for peddling antisemitic hate and disseminating anti-Israel prejudice and incitement across Latin America and the wider Spanish-speaking world.” That description, stark in its indictment, reflects the scale and ambition of the network’s reach, which spans satellite television, cable distribution, livestreaming platforms, and an extensive social media ecosystem.

What distinguishes this media campaign is not merely its breadth but its narrative coherence. The Algemeiner’s coverage of the ADL report emphasized that HispanTV’s content is not a haphazard collection of inflammatory segments but a sustained ideological project. The network systematically frames Israel as a uniquely malevolent actor in global affairs, portraying the Jewish state as “colonial,” “genocidal,” and intrinsically “terrorist,” while recasting Iranian-backed militant groups as heroic agents of liberation. This narrative inversion is central to Tehran’s broader geopolitical messaging, which seeks to present the Islamic Republic as a principled alternative to Western democracies and as the vanguard of what it styles the “Axis of Resistance.”

The escalation of this rhetoric has been particularly pronounced since the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, an event that precipitated a devastating regional war and reverberated across international media ecosystems. According to the ADL’s findings, as reported by The Algemeiner, HispanTV consistently reframed the Oct. 7 attacks not as atrocities but as laudable acts of “resistance.” The report observes that the channel converts mass violence into a “foundational myth of liberation,” a rhetorical move that normalizes the killing of civilians and embeds terror within a moralized narrative of struggle.

This reframing is not an incidental editorial choice; it is the linchpin of a broader discursive strategy. By sanctifying violence against Israelis and Jews, HispanTV legitimizes militant action while delegitimizing any defense of Israel’s right to exist. The ADL report identifies a pattern of glorification in which terrorist groups are depicted as embodiments of “heroism and bravery,” with attacks celebrated and future violence promised until the “complete annihilation of the occupants,” an unmistakable allusion to Israel’s destruction.

The antisemitic dimension of this media offensive is equally pronounced. Across its programming, HispanTV perpetuates age-old tropes about Jewish power and influence, depicting Jews and Zionism as an omnipresent, malign force manipulating governments and global institutions through a coordinated conspiracy. These narratives echo some of the most pernicious myths of European antisemitism, repackaged for contemporary audiences in Latin America. In this telling, Jews are cast not as a diverse people but as a monolithic cabal orchestrating global events, a trope that has historically served as a prelude to persecution.

The network’s messaging further compounds harm by minimizing or outright denying the reality of antisemitism. According to the ADL report, HispanTV portrays Jews and Israelis as operators of a vast disinformation apparatus designed to “deceive the world and justify genocide,” thereby recasting victims of hatred as its architects. This inversion of victimhood is a hallmark of modern antisemitic discourse, one that erodes empathy for Jewish communities while legitimizing hostility against them.

Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s chief executive officer, articulated the stakes of this campaign in stark terms. In remarks cited in The Algemeiner report, Greenblatt warned that the Iranian regime’s media operation has transformed Tehran into a destabilizing force not only in the Middle East but across the Spanish-speaking world. With antisemitism already at historic levels globally, he cautioned, Iran is “funding a massive media propaganda operation that is priming the pump for spreading antisemitism and hate against Israel and Jews the world over.” His language reflects a growing consensus among watchdog organizations that state-sponsored disinformation is no longer confined to domestic audiences but is weaponized transnationally to shape attitudes far beyond the Middle East.

The choice of Latin America as a focal arena is strategic. The region’s media ecosystems, linguistic unity, and complex political histories provide fertile ground for narratives that cast Israel and Western democracies as imperial aggressors. The Algemeiner report called attention to the fact that HispanTV’s reach across nearly 600 million Spanish speakers grants Tehran a megaphone of extraordinary scale. In countries where historical grievances against colonialism and U.S. interventionism persist, the network’s framing of Israel as a “colonial” project resonates with preexisting critiques of global power structures, even as it imports antisemitic content into local discourses.

The ADL report also raises concerns about the permissive environment that has allowed this propaganda operation to flourish. The lack of decisive action by governments, international organizations, and corporate platforms has enabled Iran to leverage HispanTV with relatively little resistance. In an era when social media companies and broadcasters face mounting scrutiny over content moderation, the persistence of state-sponsored hate speech points to regulatory gaps and geopolitical hesitations that impede effective response.

If left unchecked, the consequences could extend beyond the realm of rhetoric. The ADL warned that the sustained exposure of Spanish-speaking audiences to antisemitic conspiracies and glorification of terrorism risks radicalizing populations far removed from the Middle East’s battlefields. This form of ideological seepage can normalize hostility toward Jews in societies with their own histories of antisemitism, potentially fueling local incidents of harassment, vandalism, and violence.

The broader implications for international discourse are profound. Tehran’s media strategy, as dissected by The Algemeiner through the lens of the ADL report, exemplifies how authoritarian regimes harness modern communication infrastructures to wage information warfare. By cloaking antisemitism and anti-Israel incitement in the language of anti-imperialism and resistance, Iran seeks to launder hatred through narratives that resonate with global audiences disillusioned by Western power. The result is a toxic amalgam of political critique and racialized conspiracy that corrodes the ethical boundaries of legitimate debate.

This dynamic places renewed responsibility on democratic societies and media platforms to confront the diffusion of hate across linguistic and cultural borders. The Algemeiner report observed that countering such propaganda requires more than episodic condemnation; it demands coordinated policy responses, robust media literacy initiatives, and the willingness of technology companies to enforce standards against state-sponsored incitement.

In the absence of such measures, HispanTV’s broadcasts risk becoming an enduring fixture of the Latin American media landscape, shaping perceptions of Israel and Jews for generations of viewers. The ADL’s report thus serves as both diagnosis and warning. It reveals a deliberate campaign to normalize antisemitism and sanctify terror, and it cautions that the costs of inaction will be borne not only by Jewish communities but by the integrity of public discourse across the Spanish-speaking world.

As geopolitical rivalries increasingly migrate into the realm of narratives and symbols, the poisoned airwaves described in the ADL’s findings remind observers that information itself has become a battlefield. In this contested space, the struggle against antisemitism and disinformation is inseparable from the defense of pluralism, truth, and the moral boundaries that distinguish political critique from the incitement of hatred.