Yellow Journalism From Red Square (Two Accounts)
Korey, Betsy Gidwitz, William
YELLOW JOURNALISM FROM RED SQUARE Two distinguished scholars discuss the vicious anti-Semitic outbursts that prompted formal and angry protests by the U.S. Department of State SETTUG...
...Dragunsky and Zivs are still with us...
...Santo Barbara, who lives just up the coast...
...The aspirations of the Jews towards economic domination of the globe began long before the era of capitalism...
...All his various themes were assembled in this one publication, which was printed in an edition of 100,000...
...Zivs chose not to comment on the fact that more than 300,000 Jews still in the USSR have initiated the emigration process by requesting the required affidavits from Israel...
...She reported that her father had suffered greatly from the hypocritical role he was forced to play...
...It is interesting to note in this regard who is not a member of the Anti-Zionist Committee: one Aron Vergelis, editor of Sovietish Heimland and at one time the most prominent official Jew in the Soviet Union—and a man Western Jews have long considered unfit for normal contacts, causing his isolation...
...On January 29, 1983, Izvestia, the government organ, pronounced that the book holds "great interest" for the public and that it is "rich" in "factual material...
...Still another motive for the escalation, as also for the prominent use of Jews as its vehicle, may derive from an interesting difference between Brezhnev and Andropov on the question of Soviet ethnic policy...
...of these so-called Protocols . . . which are nothing but ridiculous nonsense...
...Sovets-kaia Kultura declared that its findings are "convincing" and lauded it as a "necessary and courageous" volume...
...Even in recent times—that is, long after the blatant excesses of the Stalin era—it has been a favorite Soviet device...
...His daughter, however, emigrated to Israel with her family in 1973, after his death...
...As described by one scholar, Shmakov's courtroom behavior was "a livid blur of incoherent malice" against Jews...
...It was published in an edition of 10,000, designed for use by party ideologues, journalists and lecturers...
...Such a struggle could best be pursued, the article proposed, by establishing a new organization—the "Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public...
...she had settled in Israel at his urging...
...These concerns are especially powerful in the U.S., where they are "under the control of Jewish banking capital of the Lazards, Lehmans, Kuhns, Loebs and other Zionist magnates...
...Andropov, in his first major address after assuming leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, stressed that the goal is to "merge" or "fuse" the different nations and ethnic groups that comprise the USSR...
...they financed the "mad monk" Rasputin in order to dominate Tsar Nicholas II...
...With the onset of monopoly capitalism, the "Jewish bourgeoisie" became economically "the most powerful" in the world, and it proceeded to form a global system of Zionist political organizations that surpassed the political organizations of any other clique of the world bourgeoisie...
...Besides, "many" of the principal U.S...
...And so forth...
...Here, one may find it in the hate-mongering publications of the lunatic fringe...
...Then, in 1975, Rabbi Moshe Lit-onsky, late of Leningrad, dispatched a parcel of Russian-language Bibles, siddurim and haggadot, originally sent to him from the United States and Canada, to the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Tel Aviv...
...He went on to say that the six million figure "is impossible to consider as scientifically grounded" and that "there is every reason to suppose that the real number of victims is lower...
...It gets worse...
...What were the basic themes of the Protocols...
...Department of State SETTUG JEWS Zionism is a form of "extreme nationalism, chauvinism and racial intolerance, justification for territorial seizures and annexations, armed adventurism, a cult of political permissiveness and impunity, demagoguery and ideological diversions, sordid maneuvers and perfidy...
...There is not only tragedy here, but also danger: The Tsarist Protocols of the Elders ofZion has been called a "warrant for genocide" by the leading scholar on the subject, Professor Norman Cohn of England...
...Our response to the Anti-Zionist Committee must challenge the Soviet authorities on the issues raised by the group's existence— and not invest the committee with any aura of legitimacy by directly addressing Dragunsky, Zivs or their comrades...
...since then, beginning with a series of articles in the journal Ogonek (with a readership of two million), a long essay in the leading military journal of the USSR and an essay in a major book on "international Zionism" published by the Academy of Sciences, he has published some 30 articles, several brochures and two books...
...crime for their purposes...
...Santo Moniko from California...
...So it was described on April 1, 1983, in a three-column article that appeared in both Pravda and Izvestia, boldly entitled "An Appeal" and signed by eight Soviet Jews...
...The "appeal" was directed to workers, fanners and members of the intelligentsia, who were asked to participate in the "exposure of Zionism" and to "administer a firm rebuff to its intrigues...
...In March 1978, Pravda, the official organ of the Communist Party, published Korneyev's booklet, The Enemies of Peace and Progress...
...His most recent article in these pages, "From Russia with Hate: A Bitter Centennial," appeared in March 1983...
...to social scientists, who were asked to provide "well-reasoned criticism of the reactionary essence" of Zionist ideology...
...Last summer, writing for a leading Soviet military organ, Military-Historical Journal, Korneyev placed quotation marks around the term "Holocaust" and suggested that the Holocaust may be one of the "myths of Zionist propaganda...
...But those who follow such Betsy Gidwitz is a lecturer at MIT and author of The Politics of International Air Transport...
...Their influence extends particularly to the currently all-powerful military-industrial complexes of the Western world: "Out of 165 of the largest 'death concerns' [the military-industrial complexes] of the West, 158 are controlled or directly owned by the pro-Zionist bourgeoisie of Jewish origin...
...The veneer of Leninism—Korneyev relies especially on Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Monopoly Capitalism—gives Korneyev's work a status that open bigotry might not enjoy...
...Indeed, it is quite likely the case that no other nationalist-oriented writer has been given so much exposure as Korneyev during the last half-dozen years...
...Solodar's "research" methods are unconventional, to say the least: By his own admission, much of the information for his second book was gathered during regular and prolonged visits to European discotheques, bars and brothels frequented, he says, by Zionists...
...Further, Soviet anti-Semitism can be used as a weapon in the increasingly tense battle with the West...
...It is, of course, "particularly deplorable," but it is hardly a surprise...
...The first chapter is entitled "Adolf Hitler—The Founder of Israel...
...Purportedly written by Isreal [sic] Berger of Leningrad, "Injured Veteran of the Great Patriotic War, Member of the First People's Volunteer Corps, Kirov Division," the five-page statement included a reference to a courageous American anti-Zionist, one "Mr...
...Its basic themes are today articulated by one of the Soviet Union's most prolific writers, Lev A. Korneyev, whose new book, The Class Essence of Zionism, has attracted worldwide attention and prompted the U.S...
...State Department to take the very unusual step of denouncing a foreign work as "viciously anti-Semitic...
...Together with Soviet Jews' own stubborn resilience, Western attention and pressure remain the mdst significant weapons of the Jews of the USSR in resisting the claims of the totalitarian state...
...Lev Korneyev now joins their company...
...In any event, the overt and unprecedented utilization of virulent racist literature from the Tsarist epoch is deeply disturbing...
...Since we cannot successfully distinguish between the types, let us reserve judgment on the Jews of the Soviet Anti-Zionist Committee, and focus our energies, instead, on the issues...
...On the one hand, Jews are urged to reject their Jewish particularism and to assimilate into the russified Soviet society...
...So far as the "uses" of anti-Semitism in Soviet foreign policy, the matter is more complex...
...The Soviet regime may also hope that the Anti-Zionist Committee will help explain the severe decline (and possible future absolute termination) of Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union...
...they were among the eight signers of the April 1 "appeal...
...Before that time, only two or three of his articles had been published...
...Further, the publication of anti-Semitic diatribes in the Soviet mass media, as distinguished from the limited Soviet Yiddish press, disproves any notion that Soviet authorities are simply trying to influence the Jewish population...
...they intimately collaborated with Hitler, helping bring him to power and subsidizing his conquest of Europe...
...This will be especially true if Jews and others in the West continue to respond vigorously to the plight of Soviet Jewry...
...oil companies that supply the Pentagon are "directly controlled by pro-Zionist capital...
...Jews, a la Korneyev, were the tax collectors for Genghis Khan and the Mongols who ruled Russia during the 13th- 15th centuries...
...The practice of using Jews to vilify Judaism, Zionism and Israel is deeply rooted in Soviet history...
...Jewish anti-Semitism comes to legitimize Soviet anti-Semitism...
...the most recent was "From Moses to Mao: When a Jew Visits China," in November 1979...
...Brezhnev had spoken of "drawing together" the various nationalities of the Soviet Union...
...And Tsezar Solodar, a failed propagandist and writer of vaudeville skits, now on the 37-member governing committee of the Anti-Zionist Committee, has found a new career as an expert on Zionism, writing several series of anti-Zionist articles for mass-circulation periodicals as well as four books (1975, 1977, 1978, 1980...
...ethnic Russians, increasingly receptive to currently fashionable nationalistic philosophies, observe Jews betraying other Jews and can only conclude that Jews would be a fifth column among Russians...
...to journalists, writers and artists, who were asked to "reveal even more fully the anti-popular and inhumane nature of Zionism's subversive propaganda and policy...
...Finally, by condemning Israel in such strong terms and relating it to "American imperialism and international Zionism," the Anti-Zionist Committee delegitimizes contact between Soviet Jews and world Jewry...
...It seems that Mr...
...The "Jewish financiers and industrialists" strive through "the system of the Zionist network of agents" to "direct the domestic and foreign policies of the USA, England, France, FGR [Federal Republic of Germany], Belgium and of other capitalist states...
...A wider audience is here sought, an audience that is especially impressed with the insidious use of Jews as spokesmen for the anti-Semitic campaign...
...To the casual observer, this might have appeared as just one more of the by now tediously familiar examples of anti-Semitic outburst in the Soviet Union...
...But others of the signers were to be trotted out again and again, for similar purposes, in the ensuing decade...
...In the wake of public protests in Canada, Canadian officials demanded that the USSR cease distributing the pamphlet...
...It would be imprudent not to weigh the possibility that Korneyev's updated version of the Protocols may become a new warrant for a new genocide...
...4) the established order will be subverted by dual loyalty of Jews, who utilize guile, cunning, espionage and William Korey, B'nai B'rith's Director of International Policy Research, served as Guest Scholar at the Wood-row Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC earlier this year...
...Jewish and Zionist organizations actively collaborated in the Nazi extermination of non-Zionist Jews...
...YELLOW JOURNALISM FROM RED SQUARE Two distinguished scholars discuss the vicious anti-Semitic outbursts that prompted formal and angry protests by the U.S...
...Shmakov was a leading prosecutor in the infamous Mendel Beiliss trial of 1913, a trial that resurrected for the first time—and the last—in modern Europe the horrendous 11th century blood libel myth, the myth that holds that the Jewish Passover ritual requires the murder of a Christian child so that his blood can be mixed with the matzah...
...The clashing struggles among the competing imperialist cliques evoked "a sharp increase of the chauvinism and expansionism of the Jewish branch of imperialism," which created Israel in response to "the myths of Judaism and the call of the rabbis to return to Jerusalem...
...On both those earlier occasions, groups of Soviet Jews were mobilized to challenge the very premise of the meetings, as well as to declare their support for the Soviet system in general and for Soviet policies in the Middle East in particular...
...Lockheed Aircraft is controlled by Lazard Freres, "one of the largest financial empires that was founded and directed by bankers of Jewish origin...
...Crackpot drivel such as this can be found in the West, too...
...At the time, its author was identified as Leo Korn...
...To understand fully what that means, one can examine the handling of two of his brochures...
...Yet that infamous Tsarist forgery, fabricated in the early part of the 20th century, lives on...
...Zivs is the "first deputy chairman" of the new committee...
...3) manipulation of the media is essential to deceive the gentile world...
...David Dragunsky and Samuil Zivs...
...The alarming element here is that this is not "just another" book by a Soviet anti-Semite...
...1) International Jewry, prompted by the "Chosen People" concept, seeks world domination...
...Only now has it been disclosed that Leo Korn is Lev Korneyev...
...A 62-year-old Doctor of Jurisprudence, he, too, has been a frequent spokesman at home and abroad on matters concerning Soviet Jewry and the general Soviet human rights record...
...Now Korneyev has done exactly that...
...The Soviet Embassy and Novosti feigned innocence, lamely suggesting that the views in the pamphlet were those of a Canadian Jew...
...Among 21 others reported to have signed the same statement, some did not actually do so, or did only under extreme duress...
...In The Ideology and Practice of International Zionism, published in 1978 by the prestigious Academy of Sciences, Academician Mark Mitin quotes approvingly from the most anti-Semitic writings of Karl Marx...
...such anti-Semitism is by now more severe than at any time since the final Stalin period...
...She has published articles on the Soviet Union in a number of academic journals...
...The exploitation of Jews in this manner serves to reinforce the image of the Jews as traitors, as disloyal...
...had written an article—"Psychological Attack by the Zionists"—that no American publication would accept because of "systematic" anti-Soviet coordination by "the entire [American] army of columnists, radio commentators, sociologists, historians and journalists...
...What was only a possibility in the summer is now a Komeyevian fact: In The Class Essence of Zionism, he announces that the figure is "significantly overstated...
...He also reports on the scandalous matters discussed at a secret anti-Communist Zionist conference that he attended in Vinnitsa in 1918...
...In none of his public statements has he mentioned that Boris Dragunsky, his nephew, emigrated to Israel in 1977...
...Here, for the very first time in Soviet history, a government-produced and a government-endorsed work cites with approval from a prominent and notorious Tsarist anti-Semite, Aleksei Shmakov...
...Indeed, on the same day "An Appeal" was published, the U.S...
...In the late summer of 1978, Korneyev's The Sword ofDa&id appeared...
...Especially now, when the Soviet authorities may be hoping that the West has come to feel that its concern for Soviet Jews is futile, it is essential that our own efforts on behalf of Soviet Jewry escalate to match— and block—Soviet anti-Semitism...
...The ruling cliques of these communities were comprised of tradesmen, usurers, bankers and tax farmers who "for centuries" constituted "a special kind of cosmopolitan, trade middle-man caste which, long before the formation of capitalism, was engaged in commerce and financial operations on a global scale...
...The authorities may hope that their blatant anti-Semitism will help mitigate the anger felt in Islamic countries towards the Soviet Union for its occupation of Moslem Afghanistan and for its failure to force a settlement of the Arab-Israel dispute in terms favorable to the Arabs...
...Such contact—in the form of letters, telephone calls, visits of foreign Jews, gifts of Jewish books and other Judaica, as well as the exercise of political pressure—has always been difficult...
...And such "multi-national corporation giants" as General Motors, Ford, General Electric, IBM, Mobil and Chrysler are "indirectly tied to Zionism" through complex capital relationships that "integrate" Jewish capital with "non-Jewish capitalist enterprises...
...by presenting the committee as the authentic voice of Soviet Jewry, the regime imposes an acceptable alternative to the kind of Jewish association it finds intolerable...
...The three speakers at a press conference arranged by the Belgian-Soviet Friendship League included Vladimir Peller, a Jewish collective farm chairman, Col.-Gen...
...Dragunsky, now 73, was a heavily-decorated tank officer in W6rld War II, and has long been one of the leading "official" Jews of the Soviet Union, showing up not only at home but also in Latin America, Western Europe and elsewhere, to extol the Soviet Union and excoriate Israel...
...By the late 1970s, the occasional statements and letters by Soviet Jews in support of the Kremlin's Jewish policy were overshadowed by an increasing emphasis on anti-Jewish books, some by Jewish authors...
...In a historic Swiss trial a half-century ago that focussed on the authenticity of the notorious Protocols of the Elders ofZion, the presiding judge declared: "I hope that one day there will come a time when no one will any longer comprehend how in the year 1935 almost a dozen fully sensible and reasonable men could for fourteen days torment their brains before a court of Berne over the authenticity...
...The irony, if history is any guide, is that this new official effort to intimidate Soviet Jews will almost surely have the opposite effect...
...No Soviet writer has until now questioned the reality of the Holocaust or the legitimacy of the claim that six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust...
...In 1971, both Dragunsky and Zivs were among eleven Soviet citizens who visited five American cities on a propaganda tour...
...Now it may encounter additional barriers...
...Zivs informed a Kansas City audience that the "very few" Soviet Jews who wished to leave the Soviet Union were suffering from "personal frustration" or needed "psychological counseling...
...Its formation in April, just a few weeks after the Third World Conference on Soviet Jewry was concluded in Jerusalem, is also consistent with Soviet actions following the 1971 and 1976 Brussels conferences...
...Conn based his conclusion on the powerful impact of the Protocols on Hitler and his associates...
...Korneyev repeatedly confuses Lazard Freres with the Lazarus brothers of Federated Stores, from which one may accurately surmise the quality of his historical research...
...the famed ballerina, Maya Plisets-kaya, was the most prominent of these...
...Indeed, the Jewish bourgeoisie attained such "exceptional power" that it was able to decide "the fates of many empires...
...It suggests that the authorities understand full well how deep are the roots of anti-Semitism in the Russian memory, and the readiness of the authorities to provide the current policy of anti-Semitism with an authenticity that is "above" politics...
...Beyond tradition, however, there has been a clear and vigorous escalation of official anti-Semitism ever since the later Brezhnev years...
...We have become used to the historical revisionism of the neo-Nazis...
...Korneyev suddenly emerged into prominence in early 1977...
...And these very same themes are today the principal teachings of Lev Komeyev...
...The "Jewish branch of imperialism" arose "historically" in the Middle Ages on the "foundation of Jewish communities" in "many scores" of countries...
...In a sense, then, the Anti-Zionist Committee is just the latest example of this venerable tradition...
...Once capitalist society emerged, the "Jewish bourgeoisie" was "considerably strengthened," with its members occupying "the highest stories in the pyramid" of the social order...
...Department of State issued a sharp criticism, asserting that it was "particularly deplorable that the Soviet regime should now enlist some people of Jewish origin to participate in their anti-Semitic diatribes...
...The public at large was urged to join in a "resolute struggle" against Zionism in order to assure "social progress and peace on earth...
...He is a member of the official Soviet Peace Committee and the author of Anatomy of a Lie (1982), a denunication of Amnesty International...
...In February 1971, when the first Brussels World Conference on Soviet Jewry convened, the Soviets dispatched a six-man delegation of official Jews to Belgium to counter the unwelcome publicity...
...And now we come to Korneyev's latest "contribution," his The Class Essence of Zionism...
...In 1961, he opined that "hardly 100 [Jewish] old people" want to leave the Soviet Union, and in 1982 he was busy comparing Zionists with Nazis and "Peking adventurists...
...The late Chief Rabbi of Moscow, Yehuda Leib Levin, vigorously assailed Zionism and denied the existence of Soviet anti-Semitism in the 1960s and early 1970s...
...At a June press conference, First Deputy Chairman Samuil Zivs declared that a majority of the Jews who wanted to leave the Soviet Union have by now done so, and, therefore, that emigration is now "completed...
...The Korneyev book is unprecedented in yet another respect...
...Herewith, a summary of Korneyev's views, as derived from his numerous writings: The "basic essence" of Zionism is "the attainment of mastery over the system of capitalism by the Jewish financial oligarchy...
...McDonnell Douglas is controlled by the Rockefellers' Chase Manhattan Bank which "constantly supports international Zionism...
...One of the more curious episodes in this sordid tale occurred in October 1974, when a number of American Jews who had expressed concern about Soviet Jewry received copies of a bizarre open letter entitled "Lies-Slander-Facts...
...The crude language of the anti-Zionist appeal indicates that the isolation of Soviet Jews remains a Kremlin priority...
...The Andropov statement suggests a stronger assimilationist approach, which may help account for the overstated patriotism of the Anti-Zionist Committee...
...matters sensed that something new, and especially sinister, was here involved...
...In the past, every such effort has led to strengthened, not weakened, Jewish identification among Soviet Jews...
...2) control over the international banking system and of the major industries will facilitate this objective...
...In 1918, Solodar was nine years old...
...We should also note that some Jews exploited as "house Jews" in the Soviets' anti-Semitic campaigns are indeed scoundrels—but others are victims of a coercive society and, in fact, deserve our compassion...
...on the other hand, antiSemitism—of the kind that is, for example, manifest in the work of the Anti-Zionist Committee—precludes the integration of Soviet Jews into the Russian mainstream, fostering the very alienation from the Soviet system it was meant to defeat...
...The difference, of course, is that Korneyev carefully reformulates the themes of the Protocols into the framework of Leninism...
...it was published in English by Novosti and sent in massive quantities to be distributed free at a Soviet space exhibit at the Ontario Science Centre...
...It was he who was named chairman of the new Anti-Zionist Committee when it was formally constituted on April 21...
...If the Soviets can persuade the world that Zivs is correct, then they can claim that they are not in violation of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Helsinki Final Act—all of which the USSR has signed, and all of which include provisions regarding freedom of emigration...
...Santo Moniko (cousin to Mr...
...But the insatiable appetites of "the bosses of international Zionism" are oriented to creating a "Jewish superpower" to dominate Egypt and the Arab world...
...Her work has appeared in moment several times...
...In the USSR, that means that he is a favorite of key Kremlin leaders...
...His accompanying letter requested that the items be distributed "among the Jews of Israel" because "we had so many that we decided to share them with others...
...It is for this reason that his fulminations cannot be dismissed, but require, instead, the deepest concern of the international civilized community...
...Because the outcry against such anti-Semitism comes mainly from the West, bigotry can be intensified to "punish" the West for its purported hostility to the Soviet Union—and, by using Jews as the spokesmen for that bigotry, the Soviets can deflect Western charges that anti-Semitism is official state policy...
...The articles have appeared in a wide variety of journals, including many with huge circulations...
...Thus, in March 1970, 31 Jews were assembled at a press conference where they presented a statement comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, accusing the "Jewish bourgeoisie" of "racist ravings," and pronouncing Israel guilty of collusion with oil monopolies...
...General Dynamics is "controlled by the finance super-giant of Jewish bankers—the Lehman bankers...
...But in the case of the Soviet Union, we encounter a holder of the Soviet equivalent of a PhD (in history), who has served on the staff of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences, and who is given major national exposure by the authorities themselves...
Vol. 8 • October 1983 • No. 9
