The Jewish kehilla in Chile was outraged last week by the publication of an ad for discount alcohol featuring anti-Semite memes, Ynet reported.

Chilean alcohol distributor Arbol Verde advertised its discount alcohol with the image of a hook-nosed and hunchbacked Jew wearing a yarmulke rubbing his hands in glee over the dollar bills he’s saving by purchasing the “cheap” alcohol.

The Jewish community in Chile numbers about 18,000 people.

“It is not the written press of Nazi Germany in 1940, it is today’s Chile publishing in [Las Últimas Noticias] antisemitic caricatures that in other countries would have generated wall-to-wall repudiation! What a shame,” Chilean MP Gabriel Silber tweeted.

Leaders of the local Jewish community published a statement denouncing the ad as an “unacceptable expression of antisemitism.”

Israeli Ambassador to Chile Marina Rosenberg said that the caricature is like “the ones used by the Nazis in very dark times of humanity” and added that the media has an “obligatory responsibility to reject racism and hate speech.”

Arbol Verde denied that the ad is antisemitic, saying that the caricature is referring to the purchase of alcohol via cash and that there was no intent to harm the Jewish community.

The company’s response and failure to admit its wrongdoing and apologize further enraged the Jewish community.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)