Updating the 'Protocols of Zion'

...Over the last decade, no ideology, no "enemy" has received so much attention or been subjected to so much abuse...

...in the shade...

...The Torah and the Talmud are presented as works preaching racism, hatred and violence...

...Even Maoism has fared better...

...It was 40 years, after all, before the genocidal consequences of the Protocols became apparent...

...It had an extraordinary run of 200,000 copies, and was heavily promoted in many Soviet journals...

...Yet a closer look at these developments in their larger context suggests that there is scant reason to be encouraged, let alone enthusiastic, about the emergence of a new Soviet humanitarianism...

...Anti-Semilic literature started to appear in editions two or three times larger than those of previous years...

...It has generated virulent anti-Semitic movements, triggered pogroms, and provided the Nazis with a "warrant for genocide...

...Discrimination in certain fields has also circumscribed opportunities for Jews...

...Zionism shakov...

...For instance, the weekly Ogonek (with a circulation of 2 million) charged in its January 29 issue that "Zionist agents" have succeeded in the "direct penetration of foreign secret services," including America's and England's...

...because the saxt talks are at a climactic stage, and when its anxieties are high over the Sino-American rapprochement...

...This is a variation on the classic notion of clannishness that, in the eyes of the prejudiced, stamps the Jew...

...even such "multinational corporation giants" as General Motors, Ford, General Electric, IBM, Mobil Oil, and Chrysler were said to be indirectly tied to Zionism through complex capital relationships that "integrate" Jewish capital with "non-Jewish capitalist enterprises...

...The 176-page work, a compilation of articles written by "scholars" drawn from various institutes of the Academy, was trumpeted by Tass in a special release and commentary on July 22...

...A similar volume, Tsesar Solodar's Wild Wormwood, equated Zionism with Hitlerism and the "Chosen People" concept with Aryan racism...

...According to the Academy version, Judaism considers the non-Jew as the "enemy" against whom "violence" is required...

...5) The deception is to be maximized by the infiltration of Free Masonic lodges...

...It depicts Jewish activists in the USSR as agents of international Zionism, in contact with the CIA and engaged in anti-Soviet subversive activity...

...The five long-discredited principal themes of the Protocols merit special attention, because they have been repeated or echoed in countless Soviet articles, books, speeches, and TV programs...

...For the root of the Zionist evil is traced to Judaism...

...3) Control of international banking is essential to the Jewish plan...

...Thus the recent arrival in Israel of physicist Veniamin Levich and his ailing wife, the permission granted the Boris Kats' to come to this country with their sick girl, and the overall rise in the monthly rate of Jewish emigration from the USSR-surpassing even the record 1973 level-have generated enthusiasm in many official and unofficial circles here...

...military-industrial monopolies are "to a considerable degree controlled or belong to the big pro-Zionist bourgeoisie," and that "many" of the oil companies who are among the largest suppliers of the Pentagon are "directly controlled by Zionist capital...

...4) Equally important is control and manipulation of the press, to enable Jews to acquire "the power to influence while remaining...

...Zionism...

...Several banking firms-besides the bugbear of the Protocols, the Rothschilds-are listed as "large financial-industrial Jewish monopolies whose sphere of interests spreads over many countries of Europe, America, Asia and Africa...

...The list was virtually endless...

...It is difficult to measure the impact of the Kremlin's propaganda drive on public attitudes...

...Between the academic years 1968-69 and 1976-77, Jewish student enrollment in Soviet universities declined for the first time, plunging from 111,900 to 66,900-a drop of over 40 per cent...

...It called on every District Committee "to intensify the struggle against [the] anti-Soviet activity of Zionism...

...a fat Jew-a stereotype of anti-Semitic cartoons- appears distributing L5 notes to Jewish demonstrators in Great Britain...

...Vlad-mir Begun's Invasion Without Anns, for example, was issued in an edition of 150,000 copies...

...On February 18, 1971, Pravda carried a lengthy article by Vladimir Bolshakov labeling Zionism "an enemy of the Soviet people"-a phrase that recalled the (error of the Great Purges of the late'30s...

...Rather, the "liberalization" appears to be of a more political??and therefore, of a more transitory-nature...

...This a decidedly Manichean vision: Displaying conspiratorial and perfidious talents, the Zionist force of darkness strives for domination of the world-the only thing standing in its way being the great Soviet power, the force of light...

...the use of all sorts of extra-market . . . kinship relations through 'one's own' . . . has always been practiced in a particularly wide manner...

...Verbal abuse of Jews was particularly marked after Traders in Souls was aired, and following the trials of dissidents in 1978...

...The authors then spice this medieval brew with an original interpretation of Messianism: The belief in the Messiah, they argue, is inculcated in Jews to motivate their pursuit of "mastery over all mankind...

...According to the Protocols, Jewry hopes to take over the world through the international banking system...

...in so doing, the Jews will be able to "throw dust in the eyes of their fellows...

...A week later, he turned his attention to militarism and found Zionism responsible for dumping arms into the world market to foil detente, thereby swelling the chance of war...

...According to the Protocols, the concept of the "Chosen People" gives the Jews a religious and ideological rationale for world domination...

...Its power is portrayed as bordering on the Divine, although a divine that is Satanic in character...

...Launched in the summer of 1967, the drive draws its inspiration from a document written 75 years ago by a leading Tsarist reactionary and anti-Semitic publicist, Pavel Krushevan...

...Bowing to "popular demand," the authorities decided to rerun Traders in Souls on March 11...

...The Kremlin still is not convinced...

...Post-graduate Jewish students were similarly affected, their number declining from 4,945 in 1970 to 2,841 in 1975...

...The campaign only thinly masks anti-Semitism...

...Since then, samizdat publications report, the trend has spread to other areas...

...Yet from reports of Soviet Jewish activists in samizdat literature and in their appeals to the West, there can be little doubt that the level of popular anti-Semitism has been significantly raised...

...The net effect of International Zionism was to give a "scholarly" imprimatur to a refurbished Protocols of the Elders of Zion...

...But we ought not to forget why they want to leave in the first place...

...The second initiative to broaden the anti-Semitic campaign has focused on the Soviet public's deepest fears and most painful memories-espionage, war and Hitlerism...

...Indeed, the ties between these two movements, the writer claimed, date back to the time Chaim Weizman and Mussolini got together "to exploit the expansion of international Zionism in the Eastern Mediterranean...

...twice...

...Picking up on the first four Protocols themes, it began: "A wide network of Zionist organizations with a common center, a common program, and funds exceeding by far the funds of the Mafia 'Cosa Nostra' is active behind the scenes of the international theater...

...Singled out in the United States are six Wall Street investment firms-Lazard-Freres, Lehman Brothers, Kuhn-Loeb, Loeb-Rhoades, Bache&Co., and Goldman-Sachs...

...In fact, the distinction between Jew and Zionist has increasingly blurred, and lately the words have often been used interchangeably...

...Nor was Lenin of much help in this case...

...During the summer, in a two-part series for Ogonek, Korneyev-who is nothing if not prolific-discovered to link Zionism-Hitlerism with the present-day military-industrial complexes of the West...

...As the campaign evolved over the next 10 years, it passed two more landmarks...

...For one thing, it has come at a time when Moscow is particularly eager to improve its image in the U.S...

...In November 1977, Korneyev began FAMILIAR HANDWRITING (FROM "BAKINKSY RABOCHY") On Bombs...

...According to International Zionism, "Among the Jewish bourgeoisie...

...It continues to take the exact opposite course -and in the process is spurring the desire to escape...

...They are called 'soldiers of Zion inside the USSR,' paid from abroad...

...He warned that only if it is systematically countered will Jews stop trying to emigrate...

...Of the 165 largest 'death concerns' in the West," he maintained, "158 are controlled or directly owned by the pro-Zionist bourgeoisie of Jewish origin...

...According to the principal essay (by V. Kiselev) in the Academy volume, the "Jewish bourgeoisie," using Zionism as a cover, seek "the expansion of their positions in the economy of the largest capitalist states . . . and in the economic system of world capitalism as a whole...

...And the "prisoners of conscience," from Edward Kuznetsov to Anatoly Shcharansky, continue to suffer the endless hardships of exile, hard labor, or prison...

...In retrospect, the president's act seems mild compared to the blatant and vulgar anti-Semitism the Academy is endorsing nowadays...

...Two weeks afterward, he declared that the U.S...

...According to the Protocols, Jewish magnates are intimately linked by family in a giant conspiracy...

...London's Institute of Jewish Affairs, in a paperback on Soviet Anti-Semitic Propaganda, has provided a concise and accurate summary of the program...

...In addition, the Kremlin began to employ television to spread its message...

...It is remarkable for its ability to combine the language of Leninism with the thoughts of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion...

...Nonetheless, given some social convulsion in the Soviet Union, the stirrings of the embers of hate could have a fiery outcome...

...A moral sanction had been provided by the UN General Assembly resolution of November 10, 1975 defining Zionism as a "form of racism and racial discrimination...

...The author of that absurdity was Lev Korneyev, whose vitriolic pen has brought him into the front ranks of the professional hate peddlers (a position he shares with six other men: Yevgeny Yevseev, Trofim Kichko, Yuri Ivanov, Begun, Valery Yemelyanov, and Bolthat Zionism and Fascism were secretly allied against the Soviet Union...

...Flic first further intensified the use ol the media as a weapon...

...Moscow is today equating Zionism with every conceivable evil-racism, imperialism, capitalist exploitation, colonialism, militarism, crime, murder, espionage, terrorism, prostitution, even Hitlerism...

...Purporting to be the secret protocols of the World Zionist Congress held in Basle in 1897, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion has exerted a profound influence on the mind of the bigot...

...The relationship with Hitler was termed even more intimate...

...This work justified Tsarist pogroms and described the To-rah as "a textbook unsurpassed for blood thirstiness, hypocrisy, betrayal, perfidy, and moral dissoluteness...

...But perhaps the most tempering fact of all, where Soviet Jewry is concerned, has been the little noticed step-up in the last two years of an already massive anti-Zionist propaganda campaign in the Soviet media...

...They are: 1) International Jewry, believing itself the "Chosen People," strives for world domination...

...Then, in the fall of 1974, the Party Central Committee formally adopted a directive that removed all doubt about the official character of the effort to combat Zionism-a seven-point "Plan of Measures to Strengthen Anti-Zionist Propaganda and Improve Patriotic and National Education of the Workers and Youth...

...The approximately 800 families who repeatedly have been refused exit visas are still being refused them...

...The gap was finally filled-and the third initiative wheeled into place- with the publication of the prestigious Academy of Science's International Zionism: History and Politics in the summer of 1977...

...On January 22,1977 Russian TV carried-on prime time, 7 p.m.-a vicious hour-long documentary, Traders in Souls...

...For all of its vigor, though, what the anti-Semitic campaign clearly lacked was intellectual and ideological legitimization...

...that McDonnell-Douglas is controlled by the Rockefellers' Chase Manhattan Bank, "which constantly supports international Zionism and the ruling circles of Israel...

...Racism, Anti-Soviet Provocations Whenever the Kremlin shows signs of relaxing its reins, the West tends to see an encouraging movement toward humaneness...

...Not until 1977, however, did the most significant push in the propaganda onslaught get underway, with initiatives taken on three fronts...

...This, of course, will bring about an absolute decline in the number of Jews entering the professions...

...The Jews abroad, who support the struggle of their brethren in the USSR for their rights, are no better...

...Primary among these are the restrictions that have been placed on the number of Jews allowed to enter higher education...

...It contended, too, that the Zionists were out to win "mastery over the whole world" by getting "into their hands the most powerful propaganda apparatus," and by Jewish bankers gaining "control of national governments...

...2) That goal is to be reached through guile, cunning and conspiracies...

...In 1970, Roy Medvedev pointed to a secret Party circular that called for a reduction in the quota of Jews allowed to hold responsible posts in highly sensitive scientific institutions...

...But that was hardly of ideological use...

...Other developments, running parallel to the anti-Semitic media barrage, or perhaps flowing from it, have worsened the situation of Soviet Jews as well...

...So the news that it is now easier for Jews to leave the Soviet Union is welcome...

...It also was the signal for the flood of books attacking Zionism that have since been produced by various official publishing houses...

...The Collected Works of the founder of the Soviet State have a mere 15 references to Zionism, and only one of them is more than a passing remark...

...Fundamental tenets of the Jewish faith, appropriately distorted and vulgarized, are pictured as the embodiment of inhuman aspirations...

...This global "Zionist Corporation," it continued, is composed of "smart dealers in politics and finance, religion and trade" whose "well-camouflaged aim" is the enrichment by any means of the "international Zionist network...

...The Jewish prisoners of conscience are presented as criminals engaged in deceit and speculation...

...Medvedev, in a perceptive analysis of the Soviet Jewish question written over eight years ago, noted that anti-Semitism was "the chief factor" behind the emergence of" Zionist tendencies in the USSR...

...Second, apart from the Levich and Kats cases, little dent has been made in the "refusenik" problem...

...Lazard-Freres and Lehman are said to have "firm ties" with one another-ties that symbolize an "international amalgamation of Jewish finance capital...

...Exercising control over more than a thousand newspapers and magazines in "very many countries," the Zionist "machine" with its "unlimited budget" services the vast monopolies of the West in their attempt "to establish control over the world...

...He expanded his analysis in the summer of 1978, contending in an Ogonek essay that Lockheed Aircraft is "controlled" by Lazard-Freres, "one of the largest finance empires founded and directed by bankers of Jewish origins...

...A decade ago, Andrei Sakharov publicly chastised the president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences for supporting anti-Semitic discrimination in personnel appointments...

...and General Dynamics by "the finance supergiant of Jewish bankers -the Lehman bankers...

...True, there has been no overt violence, and to suggest that pogroms are around the corner would be a serious exaggeration...

...The Kremlin campaign was started in August 1967, with an article published simultaneously in the main provincial magazines that was entitled, "What Is Zionism...

...Stereotypes of the Jew dominate its paranoid descriptions of William Korey, a veteran New Leader contributor, is International Policy Research director of B'nai Brith...