The House of Representatives yesterday unanimously approved a resolution sponsored by Rep. Gary Ackerman, a Democrat of New York, condemning both the restrictions on freedom of the press in Arab countries and the use of state-controlled organs in those countries to propagate anti-Semitism.

“The nations of the Middle East, with Israel being the sole exception, suffer profound deficits when compared to the global community with regard to both measures of human development and measures of human freedom and dignity,” the resolution says. “Many of the same Arab governments to which the United States has turned for assistance in ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, are themselves responsible for using their government-owned, government-sanctioned, or government-controlled publishing houses and media to promulgate stories of imaginary Israeli massacres, Jewish blood-libels, alleged Israeli medical experiments on Palestinian children, and to produce Arabic translations of anti-Semitic tracts such as, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf.”

“We have interests in the Middle East beyond oil, and expanding the scope of human freedom is one of them,” Mr. Ackerman, speaking on the floor of the House in favor of the resolution, said.