Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: La prigione ha una breccia!  W la liberta!

Un ringraziamento sincero ai poliziotti egiziani che hanno messo la
loro coscienza al di sopra degli ordini,
e non hanno sparato.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7204029.stm
Palestinians blow up border wall
Hundreds crossed the border after holes were made
Hundreds of Palestinians have surged into Egypt from the Gaza Strip
after masked militants blew several holes in a border wall.
The Gazans rushed to buy food, fuel and other supplies that have
become scarce because of an Israeli blockade.
The radical Hamas movement which controls Gaza has repeatedly appealed
to Egypt to open its border to relieve the siege.
Egyptian border guards and Hamas police took no action against the
border raid.

Vediamo se indovino: la Livni farà un bel cazziatone a Mubarak e le 
guardie saranno punite e cambiate.
------------------


 border raid.
Ci mancherebbe che la polizia di Hamas impedisse la cosa, dopo che suoi
membri erano li per far saltare il confine.
Quanto alle guardie egiziane, e' intervenuto l'esercito egiziano che ha
catturato parecchie centinaia dei palestinesi entrati illegalmente.
-Stefano

 guardie saranno punite e cambiate.
Oppure le guardie non saranno cambiate perche' non erano presenti quando
*NELLA NOTTE* hanno fatto saltare *IL MURO* (e non il valico di confine,
caro *PIRLA* di un Persio) in 7-8 punti diversi con esplosivi e uomini
incappucciati e armati che hanno liberato la strada.
-Stefano

 guardie saranno punite e cambiate.
sono piuttosto prevedibili le fantasie che suscita una donna di potere
in un Paese mediterraneo


adesso non esageriamo...chiamare la Livni donna è un
bell'azzardo...per fortuna Richelieu ha resistito alle sue avances
(cfr. Livni: "Italia modello per l'Europa"  "Massimo D'Alema è un
ottimo amico di Israele"
http://www.repubblica.it/2006/08/sezioni/esteri/medio-oriente-18/livni-visita-roma/livni-visita-roma.html
)
e ha mostrato di avere gusti di ben altro livello (http://
lexiamberson.blogspot.com/2006/08/louting-di-baffino-lequivicino.html
)
PS: ma com'è che i nostri ottimi post compaiono sempre ai primi posti
nelle ricerche su google? Non è che diventiamo famosi?

 bell'azzardo...
perché, tanto per cambiare, non la hai mai vista da vicino. Cmq c'è
una voce dedicata a lei sulla Encyclopaedia Judaica mentre se scrivo
Dykhovichnaya non viene fuori niente
Curioso, vero?

 
quella troietta non fa altro che postare foto su foto di se stessa nel 
suo blog.

 Curioso, vero?
però sui siti porno che bazzichi in sti giorni di svacco c'è spesso,
eh, discepolo?

 una voce dedicata a lei sulla Encyclopaedia Judaica
se per questo sulla EJ c'è anche una voce dedicata a Nasrallah e 27
voci sulle comunità ebraiche del centro-sud scritte dal grande storico
Ariel Toaff...:D
vediamo un po' cosa dicono dei perfidi comunisti...
The legal emancipation of the Jews, which had already been proclaimed
in the February Revolution, seemed in Soviet practice to be
implemented to an extent unprecedented in any other country. The
Soviet regime also derived a propaganda benefit from the legal and
political equality of Soviet Jews, in contrast to the neighboring
states, such as Poland and Romania, which followed an antisemitic
policy in practice and sometimes also in law. Antisemitism was branded
as being counterrevolutionary in nature, and persons participating in
pogroms or instigating them were outlawed (by a special decree issued
by the Council of Commissars in July 1918, signed and personally
amended by Lenin to sharpen its tone). A statement against
antisemitism made by Lenin in March 1919 was one of the rare occasions
on which his voice was put on a phonograph record, to be used in a
mass campaign against the counterrevolutionary incitement against the
Jews. The regime made every effort to denounce the pogroms and punish
the persons taking part in them, even when they were Red Army
personnel. When the civil war came to an end, a law was passed against
"incitement to hatred and hostility of a national or religious
nature," which, in effect, also applied to antisemitism, including the
use of the pejorative epithet Zhid."
e son cose...
mentre questo è quello che pensavano 20 anni fa i cittadini del
migliore alleato di Israele:
"They saw Jews as pushy, aggressive (25%), clannish (40%), going out
of their way to hire only Jews (57%), controllers of movie and
television (25%), willing to use shady practices (33%), choosing money
over people (34%), and control over international banking (43%). In
1981, 35% thought Jews had too much power in the business world, 20%
that they had too much power in the U.S. (11% in 1964) and more were
concerned about the loyalty of Jews to Israel. In a poll in April
1987, 28% thought Jews placed the interests of Israel ahead of the
U.S.
a questo punto Logi si allargherà in un gesuitico sorriso:
"Antisemitism was higher among Protestants than among Catholics. About
80% of Southern Baptists and 70% of Missouri Synod Lutherans agreed
that Jews remained unforgiven for the death of Christ."
ma andiamo avanti spulciano qua e là, tipo "antisemitismo e
antisionismo":
"Some observers, and especially certain Israeli politicians, have
argued that all so-called anti-Zionism is antisemitic, because Israel
is representative of Jewish endeavors and therefore every attack on
any Israeli interest is anti-Jewish. Others (e.g., Shlomo Avineri)
have argued that criticism of Israeli policies is hardly antisemitic,
as practically all Israeli citizens have at one time or another been
opposed to their government, and if such opposition were anti-Zionist
or antisemitic, these terms would lose all meaning."
quoto.

 vediamo un po' cosa dicono dei perfidi comunisti...
mah, dai una occhiata a Antisemitism - In the Soviet bloc

 mah, dai una occhiata a Antisemitism - In the Soviet bloc
vabbè, quello è colpa di Stalin, un ex seminarista...e ho detto
tutto...

 quoto.
quoto pure io.

 quoto pure io.
toh, quota anche questo. E' tratto dalla Encyclopaedia Judaica.
In the Soviet Bloc
Antisemitism - THEORY AND PRACTICE
Antisemitism, according to Communist doctrine, is an extremely
negative social phenomenon; it could only be part of reactionary,
capitalist, and pre-capitalist regimes, in which hatred of the Jews is
exploited for the gain of the ruling classes. Lenin, along with the
other revolutionaries in czarist Russia, was a sincere and resolute
opponent of antisemitism and of any form of oppression,
discrimination, and persecution of Russian Jewry. However, after the
consolidation of the Soviet regime, principally under Stalin 's one-
man rule, a distinctly anti-Jewish policy was sometimes planned and
implemented in the Soviet Union. This policy consciously exploited the
traditional antisemitism of the people in the Ukraine and in other
parts of Russia, who viewed the Jews as a foreign element, "rootless
in the homeland," who tended to conspire with the country's enemies,
to evade dangerous defense duties in time of war, and who quickly
profited by illicit economic manipulations and by exploiting the
toiling masses. The word "Jew" itself has been mentioned relatively
rarely in Soviet antisemitic propaganda, precisely in order to avoid
breaking an ideological taboo; the antisemitic intent, however, was
clear to everybody through the use of thinly disguised, conventional
terms, such as "*Cosmopolitans ," "Zionists," "people without a
fatherland," etc. The aim was mostly "a so-called educational" one: to
produce tangible evidence that certain popular tendencies which the
regime tried to eradicate (such as interest in Western life and
culture, or illicit manufacturing and marketing of goods) were
initiated and conducted by foreign, traitorous, "rootless" elements,
i.e., the Jews. A further stimulus arose during the Cold War years,
when the system of suspecting and supervising whole groups of the
population by the security organs reached its peak. Every Jew was thus
regarded as a real or potential security risk because of his family
ties with Jews in the U.S. or other Western countries, and because of
his sympathy, open or hidden, for the young State of Israel. This
"cosmopolitanism," presumably an inherent characteristic of every
Jewish body, was considered dangerous from the security point of view
and warranted the liquidation of all Jewish institutions and
organizations, with the exception of only a few synagogues which were
placed under constant supervision by the security police. A further
stage in Soviet antisemitism was reached in the late 1960s when the
Soviet Union adopted an extreme anti-Israel policy, particularly after
the Six-Day War in June 1967. Soviet propaganda started a campaign
grotesquely inflating the image of Zionism as a sinister international
conspiracy spread over the whole world, very similar to that
propounded in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
AFTER THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION
During and immediately after the October Revolution, antisemitism
served as one of the prime weapons of the Russian counterrevolution,
when the White forces depicted the Bolshevik regime as executing the
enslavement of Mother Russia by the Jews. Lenin saw antisemitism not
only as a socio-political evil, in accord with his ideological
outlook, but also as a formidable factor which he had to combat in his
struggle for saving the revolution. He attacked antisemitism in his
statements and speeches, including the well-known resolution of the
Soviet government which defined perpetrators and instigators of
pogroms as enemies of the revolution who had to be outlawed
(Izvestiya, July 27, 1918). This atmosphere existed in the Soviet
Union for years, at least up to the consolidation of Stalin's
dictatorship toward the end of the 1920s. Among the masses antisemitic
feelings continued in the 1920s, particularly during the NEP ("New
Economic Policy"), sometimes even increasing, as when a large influx
of Jews from the townlets came to the industrial and administrative
centers, where they competed for the available jobs. Antisemitism also
increased among the peasants as Jews received land in southern Russia
and Crimea for agricultural settlement. But, despite popular
antisemitism and the official persecution of the Jewish religion and
the Zionist and Jewish Socialist movement (carried out to a large
extent by Jewish Communist party members), vast numbers of Jews in the
U.S.S.R. enjoyed (during the 1920s and most of the 1930s) considerable
geographic and social mobility, with no obstacles of an antisemitic
nature standing in their way.
The turning point began toward the end of the 1930s with the Great
Purges, during which the Soviet government discontinued denouncing and
punishing expressions and outbursts of popular antisemitism. At this
time, the government initiated a systematic liquidation of Jewish
institutions and leading figures. Then, however, it was possible to
view this as part of the general processes designed to secure Stalin's
dictatorship, since there still were significant numbers of Jews
holding middle and higher positions of power in the party hierarchy
and in vital branches of government, such as the political secret
police. From 1939 onward, after the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact
(Ribbentrop-Molotov Non-Aggression Pact) and the outbreak of World War
II in the West, the Soviet press and radio systematically concealed
reports about the anti-Jewish character of the Nazi regime and about
the oppression and murder of Jews after the invasion of Poland. In
this respect, there was a considerable improvement following the
German attack on the U.S.S.R. in June 1941. However, in the many
detailed accounts of Nazi atrocities in the Soviet press and radio
there was still a discernible tendency to cover up the fact of the
genocide of the Jewish people, which was mostly described in vague
terms, as the murder of "peaceful, innocent citizens." This systematic
concealment continued even more strongly after World War II. Anyone
attempting to emphasize the special suffering of the Jewish people
under the Nazi occupation of the U.S.S.R. (as, e.g., Yevgeny
Yevtushenko) was strongly criticized by official spokesmen.
THE BLACK YEARS
1948–1953. The Black Years began for Russian Jewry when the anti-
Jewish line became the active policy of the highest government
echelon. These were the last four or five years of Stalin's regime
(1948–53). The secret police murdered Solomon *Mikhoels , director of
the Jewish State Theater in Moscow and chairman of the Jewish *Anti-
Fascist Committee, thus touching off what became the systematic
liquidation of all Jewish cultural institutions which were remnants of
the 1930s or established during the war. At the end of 1948 and the
beginning of 1949 Soviet newspapers and journals opened an anti-Jewish
campaign, condemning the alleged cosmopolitan rootless elements in
intellectual life. This campaign was the first undisguised expression
of the wide exploitation of popular antisemitism for Soviet government
aims. The ingrained hatred and suspicion of Jews – as a foreign
element liable to treason – served here as a powerful demagogic means
of educating the nation against "westernizing" tendencies and for
seclusion behind the wall of Russian nationalism. The closing down of
the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee; the arrests and execution of Jewish
writers, artists, and public figures; the "Crimea Affair" trial behind
closed doors; the Slansky *trial in Prague (initiated and run by
emissaries from the Soviet Union); the *Doctors' Plot ; the dismissal
of many thousands of Jews from their work; and the portrayal of the
State of Israel and of the Zionist movement as instruments of an anti-
Soviet American spy network, were all part of the anti-Jewish program
of the "Black Years." Antisemitism served as one of the principal
tools of Stalin's regime and policy during the Cold War years both in
the U.S.S.R. and in the satellite countries. According to reliable
testimony, Stalin intended, following the Doctors' Plot trial," to
initiate a mass deportation of the Jewish population from the
principal cities of the U.S.S.R. to Eastern Siberia, but he died in
March 1953, before he could carry out his plan.
THE KHRUSHCHEV PERIOD
The period following Stalin's death was inaugurated by an apparent
reversal of the anti-Jewish policy through the official retraction of
the "Doctors' Plot" accusation, but expectations that the Jewish
institutions would be reinstated and that there would be a vigorous
campaign against popular antisemitism were frustrated. Nikita
Khrushchev, who in a closed session of the 20th Congress of the Soviet
Communist Party (February 1956) denounced  Stalin and his methods,
completely ignored the anti-Jewish aspect of the defunct dictator's
rule, and silence on this subject was regarded as ominous for Soviet
Jewry. Khrushchev himself, who was the supreme party and government
representative in the Ukraine during and after World War II, was
apparently deeply impressed by the immense power of popular
antisemitism as a socio-political factor. Upon becoming prime minister
and first secretary of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R., he more
than once expressed his own anti-Jewish thoughts and feelings in talks
with foreign personalities, delegations, and newsmen and once even
spoke out in defense of Stalin's stand in the "Crimea Affair," thus
indirectly vindicating the liquidation of the Jewish Anti-Fascist
Committee and its members.
Khrushchev's antisemitic policy was moderate in comparison with that
practiced in Stalin's last years. It took the form not only of a
consistent concealment of the genocide inflicted on the Jews during
the Nazi invasion, but also of using Jews for show trials in the
campaign against "economic crimes." This campaign was carried out by
the security police from May 1961 until Khrushchev was removed from
office in 1964. The Jews accused of "economic crimes" were picked out
from a large number of people engaged in illicit economic activities
and assigned the role of alleged initiators, instigators, and
organizers of transgressions and other "crimes" against the Soviet
laws in matters of production, marketing, and foreign currency
regulations. Jews were the majority of those found guilty. Many of
them received the death penalty, and their being Jews was emphasized
in various ways in the press. During Khrushchev's office, books and
pamphlets appeared which strongly denounced not only Zionism and the
State of Israel, but also Judaism as such, as an extremely negative
historical, cultural, and religious phenomenon. These publications
were sometimes accompanied by crude antisemitic cartoons (as in the
book by the Ukrainian antisemite Trofim Kychko, Judaism without
Embellishment, published by the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian
Soviet Republic, Ukrainian, 1963). A new effort to eradicate organized
Jewish life in the U.S.S.R. was made under Khrushchev through the
closing of many synagogues, often following a smear campaign by the
local newspapers in which the synagogues were described as hangouts
where criminals met for their sinister purposes. Synagogue leaders
were arrested; minyanim in private homes were brutally dispersed; and
the baking of maẓẓot for Passover was gradually abolished. In some
places, burial of Jews in separate Jewish cemeteries was discontinued.
In these years, popular antisemitism made itself felt in several
outbursts, as, e.g., the arson of the synagogue and murder of the
Jewish cemetery's shammash in the town of Malakhovka near Moscow,
accompanied by the posting of antisemitic proclamations in the streets
(Rosh Ha-Shanah 1959); the burning of the synagogue in Tskhakaya,
Georgia, in 1962; anti-Jewish street riots, at times incited by blood
libels (in Tashkent and in Tskhaltubo in 1962); public tension created
by a blood-libel story in Vilna in 1963; and in one instance, the
publication of an anti-Jewish blood libel in the official organ of the
Communist Party (in the town Buinaksk, Dagestan, in the local
newspaper on August 9, 1961, where a few days later an official
apology of sorts was printed).
In widespread circles of the Russian intelligentsia opposition to the
official and popular antisemitic clime was expressed in several ways,
but for the most part by hints and implications rather than by overt
criticism. It reached its climax in Yevtushenko's poem *Babi Yar
published in Literaturnaya Gazeta in 1961 and in the fact that Dmitri
Shostakovich included the poem in one of the movements of his 13th
symphony. The poem immediately aroused severe criticism, with
antisemitic overtones, on the part of official literary critics and
even from Khrushchev himself. A clear hint was given that any public
declaration on behalf of the Jews was in contradiction to official
policy. At the same time Jews of the U.S.S.R. were affected by
systematic discrimination in many spheres. Jews almost completely
disappeared from the foreign service, from commanding posts in the
army, from positions as representatives of the government, the party
hierarchy, the judiciary, etc. The number of Jews in local,
republican, or Soviet government bodies fell far below the percentage
of Jews, not only in the cities (where about 95% of the Jews reside),
but in the population as a whole. Young Jews met with increasing
difficulties in getting accepted in higher institutions of learning in
the main cities of Russia and the Ukraine, particularly in those
fields of study which usually lead to positions of power or to
classified fields.
UNDER KOSIGIN-BREZHNEV
When Khrushchev was demoted in October 1964, and the "collective
leadership" headed by Alexei Kosigin and Leonid Brezhnev initiated,
there were signs of slight improvement in the attitude to Soviet
Jewry. The campaign against "economic crimes" and the synagogues
ceased; baking of maẓẓot was to a certain extent renewed; Jews were
mentioned as victims of the Nazi Holocaust on Soviet soil; and even a
public denunciation of antisemitism as one of the evils of society was
once made in a speech by Prime Minister Kosigin. Following this,
editorials in the same spirit were published in several leading
newspapers in 1965. However, after the Six-Day War in June 1967
between Israel and the Arab states, a most severe anti-Jewish campaign
in the Soviet press and propaganda media was unleashed again. Its
declared aim was to condemn Israel and Zionism, but its general spirit
and the caricatures accompanying it were markedly antisemitic. The
Ukrainian style of antisemitism, which represents Judaism as a
criminal religious tradition from ancient times, educating its
followers in racial superiority and hatred of other peoples, began
reappearing in widely diffused publications, as well as in tracts
written by Trofim Kychko who reappeared on the scene after having had
to remain silent for a few years, as his 1963 book had caused a world-
wide scandal even in Communist parties in the West. In the new
campaign, "Zionism" was assigned a central place: it was depicted as a
powerful instrument or a main ally of "imperialism," serving its
sinister global aims, such as enslaving nations and exploiting them,
undermining Socialism, and, of course, manipulating Israel for
criminal aggression against the progressive Arab states. These
descriptions of Zionism closely resembled the description of the world
Jewish conspiracy in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It created
an atmosphere of depression and deep apprehension in Soviet Jewry, who
again were led to fear for their physical and economic security.
However, no persecutions of Jews in the manner of the "Black Years" of
Stalin are known to have taken place; it seems that the government
took steps to prevent any outbursts of popular antisemitism such as
those which occurred in Khrushchev's time.
POLAND AND CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Popular expression of antisemitism in Poland became overt when
Wladislaw Gomulka's government rose to power in October 1956. One of
its sources was hatred of the overthrown Stalinist higher echelon,
which in Poland included a number of Jews in key positions (e.g.,
Jacob *Berman and Hilary *Minc ). However, Gomulka's regime was
expressly opposed to antisemitism. In the framework of repatriation of
former Polish citizens, it made possible the return of many Jews from
the U.S.S.R. and their further migration to Israel. It did not
interfere with the exodus of the remnant of Polish Jewry to Israel and
other countries. However, its policy underwent a marked change
following the Six-Day War in June 1967, becoming extremely anti-
Israel, in line with Soviet policy. Gomulka even went a step further,
when he publicly warned the Jews in Poland against becoming a "fifth
column" by expressions of sympathy for Israel. Following this stand, a
number of books and articles appeared that sharply attacked Israel and
Zionism, with distinctly antisemitic overtones. This paved the way for
wide anti-Jewish purges in the ranks of the government, universities,
and other fields in the spring of 1968, when government circles blamed
"Zionists" for mass demonstrations held by students and professors in
the universities. The anti-Jewish purge and propaganda campaign was
directed and exploited by one of the party factions for political
ends. This faction, known as the "Partisans," was headed by the
minister of the interior and head of the security police, Mieczysław
Moczar.
In Czechoslovakia, where traditional antisemitism has no deep roots,
as in the Ukraine and in Poland, Antonin Novotny, president of the
republic and secretary of the Communist Party, ruled continuously from
the period of the (Rudolf) Slansky Trial until early in 1968. When he
was ousted by the liberal wing of the Communist Party, there was a
general improvement in the atmosphere. Jewish cultural and religious
life was favorably affected. But, during the sharp controversy between
the Soviet government and the liberal regime in Prague that led to the
invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet army in August 1968, Soviet
and Polish propaganda used anti-Jewish allusions (e.g., that
"Zionists" had pulled the strings of the "counterrevolution" in
Czechoslovakia). Following the invasion, Jewish figures in the liberal
Czechoslovak regime, such as Eduard *Goldstuecker , Ota Šik, and
others, were forced to disappear or even to leave the country. In the
Czechoslovak crisis, as in the anti-Jewish purges in Poland that year,
antisemitism, mostly disguised as "anti-Zionism," was one of the prime
elements in the influence exerted by Soviet agencies in Soviet bloc
countries; it naturally served even more the needs of the anti-Israel
campaign conducted by the Soviet government and propaganda media in
Arab countries.
Trends in the 1970s
SOVIET ANTISEMITISM
The major antisemitic threat during the 1970s was from the Soviet
Union. With the tightening of the Stalinist dictatorship came an
increasingly anti-Jewish tendency, reviving pre-Bolshevik anti-Jewish
stereotypes as butts of propaganda in a crisis-ridden society.
Culminating in the mass murder of the leaders of Jewish culture in the
U.S.S.R. in 1949–50 and the so-called "Doctors' Plot" of early 1953,
this tendency caused Jews as a group to be seen as the protagonists of
an imperialist campaign designed to topple the Communist regimes in
Eastern Europe. Loyal Communists of Jewish descent were tortured into
admitting impossible deeds of treachery as part of the regime's
efforts to strengthen its hold over the satellite nations. Stalin's
death on March 7, 1953, prevented the tragedy of a mass expulsion of
Soviet Jews to Siberia. Under Stalin's immediate successors, the anti-
Jewish campaign abated. After the Six-Day War in 1967, and the
consequent breaking off of diplomatic relations between Israel and the
Soviet bloc, a new campaign started.
In literally hundreds of publications, some with very high circulation
(up to quarter of a million copies), and at what must have been a
tremendous cost, Soviet writers and journalists, some of whom of
Jewish descent, focused on a number of Jewish questions: first, the
theme of an inherently evil Jewish culture, whose central text, the
Bible, was presented as the source of racism, as the expression of the
vilest human qualities, and as endangering the human race through its
nefarious cultural influence (V.Y. Begun, The Creeping
Counterrevolution, Minsk, 1974; T. Solodar, The Wild Woodworm, Moscow,
1980, and many others). The second and perhaps major theme was that of
a Jewish world conspiracy which managed to gain effective power in the
West, where it controls Western imperialism. Writers such as Yuri
Ivanov, Lev Korne'ev, and others represented the "Zionist clique"
dominating the West as equivalent to the traditional concept of the
Devil. Continuing a tradition that started in Christian antisemitism
long ago and was perpetuated via the Protocols of the Learned *Elders
of Zion (1903) and on through Nazi writings, contemporary Soviet
writers did not actually accuse Soviet Jewry of being part of an
international conspiracy. The accusation was directed against a
nebulous entity, interchangeably described as Zionist or Jewish, which
controlled the levers of economic and political power in the West. By
comparison, attacks on Israel's policies were relatively rational,
obviously reflecting Soviet political, strategic and economic
interests as perceived by the ruling oligarchy.
In a large number of Soviet publications, then, Jews, Judaism and
Zionism (the terms are interchangeable) were seen as the greatest
danger to the Communist world. This view was echoed, among East
European states, mainly in Czechoslovakia, which excelled in the most
violent antisemitic propaganda in its major newspapers. The impact of
all this on the general public in the U.S.S.R. and Czechoslovakia was
difficult to gauge, but it could be assumed that government-organized
antisemitic propaganda could have catastrophic consequences for the
remnants of the Jewish populations at some future date; there
appeared, however, to be some opposition among Soviet intellectuals,
including some close to official circles, to the excesses of Soviet
antisemitic propaganda (e.g., G. Martynov).
Antisemitic writings were rife indeed: the bibliography runs into
hundreds of items for the years since 1967, including  pseudo-
scientific writings in a number of disciplines, fiction (including
science fiction), and journalism. Little was done to distribute these
publications in other countries. They were mainly intended for home
consumption and appeared to answer a deep-seated need for an
explanation of the failures of the regime in the economic, social and
political spheres.
ANTISEMITISM AND ANTI-ZIONISM
The campaign to identify Zionism with racism, which reached its apogee
in 1975 with the resolution at the UN equating the two, was initiated
and orchestrated by the U.S.S.R., in cooperation with Arab and Third
World countries, as a direct consequence of its antisemitic campaign.
The aim seemed to be the delegitimization of the Jewish State, which
was increasingly being forced into the position of a pariah within the
international community, reminiscent of the situation of the
individual Jew in antisemitic societies in pre-modern times.
The 1970s Soviet antisemitic propaganda denied without exception that
it was antisemitic. It was everywhere claimed that the attack was
against Zionism. Some observers, and especially certain Israeli
politicians, have argued that all so-called anti-Zionism is
antisemitic, because Israel is representative of Jewish endeavors and
therefore every attack on any Israeli interest is anti-Jewish. Others
(e.g., Shlomo Avineri) have argued that criticism of Israeli policies
is hardly antisemitic, as practically all Israeli citizens have at one
time or another been opposed to their government, and if such
opposition were anti-Zionist or antisemitic, these terms would lose
all meaning. Anti-Zionism should therefore be defined as denying the
existence of a Jewish people as such and their right to an independent
state, and not as criticism of policies or acts. Such anti-Zionism is
then considered to be antisemitic, when antisemitism is equated with
anti-Judaism. Jewish anti-Zionists, with some exceptions (such as
those who align themselves with the deniers of the Holocaust), are
regarded as collective self-haters, though some will admit a category
of Jewish antisemites.
The attempt to differentiate between criticism of Israel and anti-
Zionism in principle is especially important in the study of Arab and
Third World antisemitism, on the other hand, and Western liberal and
left-wing antisemitism on the other.
The study of Arab antisemitism – as contrasted with anti-Israeli
attitudes, including opposition to Jewish national aspirations – is
problematic, as the elements are obviously intertwined. However, a
case study of Egypt might well show this differentiation because of
the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty (1978), which was accepted as a fact
by some of the more extreme antisemitic writers in the pro-government
camp (e.g., Anis Mansur). In mass publications such as Akhbār al-Yawm
or the government party's ideological periodical, October, articles
were published lauding Hitler's attitude to the Jews, quoting the
Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as a basic historical text,
and comparing Israeli (interchangeable with Jewish) actions on the
West Bank and in the Lebanon with the Holocaust. Stereotyped
descriptions of Jews as controlling the wealth of the world, as
exploiters and usurers, as a morally defective community were
abundant. Fanatic Sunni writers opposed to the peace treaty repeated
these accusations but combine them with the view that the Jews are
enemies in principle of Islam from its inception; the idea of
independent Jewish political existence is totally unacceptable as it
would mean relinquishing territory within Dār al-Islam, the area of
Islam, to a subject people viewed as the enemy of Islamic traditions.
This is the view of the Muslim Brotherhood (e.g., Sayyid Qutb, Al
Yahud, al Yahud, Riyad, 1970), just as it is of the Khomeinite Shiʿa
movement, whose anti-Jewish ideology increasingly penetrated into
Sunni countries (Syria) and areas with large Shiʿite populations
(Iraq, Lebanon).
The Palestine Arab Nationalist organizations fighting Israel with
terrorism are an entirely different case. The Palestine National
Covenant of 1968 (article 20) states that "Judaism, in its character
as a religion of revelation, is not a nationality with an independent
existence. Likewise, the Jews are not one people with an independent
personality." Article 22 sees Zionism as "aggressive, expansionist and
colonialist in its aims; and Fascist and Nazi in its means. Israel is
the tool of the Zionist movement and a human and geographical base for
world imperialism." These statements are clearly antisemitic, and even
genocidal, in two respects: first, because the destruction of Israel
clearly implies the destruction of its Jewish population, despite the
declaration in article 6 that Jews who were living in Palestine before
1917 could remain (not many of these were still alive in 1968, and
even fewer later); second, because the majority of Jews see Israel as
an expression of their nationality or ethnicity and not only their
religious beliefs. All other national or ethnic groups are likely to
have such sentiments recognized by the international community,
including, presumably, the Palestine Liberation Organization. The non-
recognition, in principle, only of the Jewish case is therefore not
merely antisemitic but genocidal by implication. However, from the
mid-1970s, the PLO took great care to avoid any antisemitic statements
or propaganda, with the important exception of refusing to budge from
the original statements included in the 1968 Covenant.
In the West, the apparent ease with which anti-Israeli criticism can
turn into clearly antisemitic statements was exemplified in the 1982
media attack on Israel's entry into Lebanon. Beyond political or moral
opposition to a military move, which in itself cannot be termed
antisemitic, the following was characteristic of media criticism of
Israel's action: the Jews (not Israel) are "said to be God's chosen
people; at all times and in all countries and with every means they
have stolen the property of others" (Ostersunds-Posten, Sweden, June
1982); the ritual murder story was revived: "A child disappeared" (in
Lebanon) "and was found a few days afterwards in a crevice, shot in
his head, ritually executed" (Aftonbladet, 25.9.82). Respectable
papers compared the attack on Lebanon with the Holocaust and then
joined the deniers of the Holocaust: "How ironic it is that the word
'holocaust,' now synonymous with the deaths of supposedlyPage 237  6
million Jews in Nazi concentration camps, is the only word that can
describe what is now going on in Lebanon… there is much controversy
going on now about the accuracy of that 6 million figure… perhaps it
was a type-setter's error that was repeated" (The Barrie Examiner,
Canada, 3.7.82). British papers and many Continental journals
published similar material. Alongside political or moral criticism of
Israel's government, which in itself is certainly not antisemitic,
traditional antisemitic themes were introduced – Jewish world
conspiracy, ritual murder, flawed Jewish character, including racial
superciliousness – all directed against the Jewish people as a whole
and not just an Israeli government. It would appear that the Lebanese
war only served as a pretext for these outbursts.
Anti-Jewish feelings, often masquerading as opposition to Israeli
policy, could be found in liberal circles, among which media was but
one example. In another context, the 1983 Assembly of the World
Council of Churches – founded by Willem A. Visser t'hooft, who was
active in efforts to rescue Jews during World War II – declared its
support for PLO participation in Middle East negotiations and lamented
the rift in the ranks of the Palestinians and the loss of consensus
among Arab nations.
Dangerous tendencies could be discerned in New Left circles. Thus, for
instance, the National Union of Students in Britain attempted to ban
university and polytechnic Jewish societies on the grounds that as
they were pro-Israel and as Zionism was racism they should be denied
platforms and union facilities (House of Commons, Hansard, 25.22.1977,
cols. 2058–2072).
On the other hand, there is no consensus regarding the many Protestant
groups on the American Right, loosely described as Fundamentalist or
Evangelical. Many, though by no means all, are ardent supporters of
Israel, and many also abjure any kind of anti-Jewish stance. Some may
have different views, but no in-depth investigation or self-analysis
was attempted during the 1970s.
The increase in antisemitic expressions since the late 1960s justifies
calling it a wave. "Classical" antisemitism was gradually declining,
but what is more important is that new configurations were cropping
up, though here too a clear continuation from previous periods can be
shown: the emphasis was on Jewish world conspiracy and rule and the
Jewish state as the embodiment of the flawed Jewish character and as
the center of the conspiracy
In the 1980s - ANTI-ZIONISM AND ANTISEMITISM
Much expression of antisemitism at the beginning of the 1980s was
disguised as anti-Zionism. Although by no means all anti-Zionists were
antisemites, many groups across the political spectrum, but
particularly on the extreme left, couched their antisemitism in anti-
Zionist rhetoric. For some Communist countries too, anti-Zionism was a
convenient tool for concealing state-sponsored antisemitism. The 1975
UN General Assembly resolution 3379, which equated Zionism with
racism, was a principal tool of the antisemitic anti-Zionist campaign,
which reverberated for a number of years, well into the 1980s, with
over 200 denunciations of Israel or the Jewish people or both in
national and international forums.
The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 sparked off a wave of
antisemitism which was closely related to negative images of Israel.
In the following few years, criticism of Israel provided effective
cover for expressions of antisemitism, generating considerable debate
as to the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Some
believed that since anti-Zionism denied the rights of Jews on a
collective level, it was the equivalent of denying the Jew individual
rights – a classic element of antisemitism.
As the 1980s wore on, however, anti-Zionism began to diminish. The
Third World forums in which anti-Zionist rhetoric was constantly
featured declined in importance as many of the participants saw that
it brought them no benefit. The collapse of the Soviet empire led to
an end to Communist state-sponsored anti-Zionism. Far-right groups
which utilized anti-Zionism continued to do so but, as anti-Zionism
became less of an acceptable notion on the international political
stage, it became less useful to those seeking a "respectable" front
for their antisemitism. In addition, as socialism appeared to be
discredited, far-left antisemitic anti-Zionism declined markedly.
In many Arab countries antisemitism was used in the continuous fight
against Zionism and the State of Israel. Much of this antisemitism was
imposed from above since practically all Arab governments exercised
strict control of the media. However, in some countries, Egypt in
particular, there was clear evidence of antisemitism becoming
increasingly a grassroots phenomenon, linked to the rise of Islamic
fundamentalism.
Antisemitism from Islamic fundamentalist sources became a cause of
increasing concern during the period, with extremist groups in certain
Western countries propagating violent anti-Jewish rhetoric and using
traditional far-right Christian antisemitic themes. Much of this
activity was encouraged by Iran and although it resulted in little
actual violence against Jews outside of the Middle East, the potential
for violence was certainly increasing at the end of the period under
review.
The 1990s and After
WAVES OF ANTISEMITISM AND THEIR CAUSES
Antisemitic activities and expressions were on the rise from the
beginning of the 1990s: during the first Gulf War world Jewry,
especially the U.S. communities, were accused of pushing their
countries into a war that was in Israel's interests. This accusation
served to bolster the "conspiracy theory" that was already in place
and according to which the Jewish desire for world domination
manipulates global events. Moreover, the waves of immigrants and
foreign workers caused by the fall of the Soviet Bloc and the
globalization process exacerbated problems of defining and relating to
ethnicity, nationality, and the rights of newcomers arriving from the
poor Southern Hemisphere to the richer Northern one – all bearing on
attitudes to Jews, the symbol of the eternal other. Indeed, the year
1994 was by far the worst of the decade – more than 300 cases of
violence against Jews were registered worldwide. Violence doubled in
Western Europe, most notably in Germany, and increased in Russia.
Great Britain remained the most violent country with respect to racist
and antisemitic activities for the third year running.
Additional reasons for these developments were the considerable
increase throughout the Western world of the role of extremist Muslim
groups and movements affiliated to fundamentalist organizations in
North Africa and the Middle East. The extreme right, reacting to the
growing presence of immigrant minorities, escalated its response to
Jews as well, and even more so, having at their service the skinheads,
youth devoid of ideology and of institutionalized frameworks. New and
constantly improving techniques, the Internet first and foremost, that
facilitated the dissemination of antisemitic propaganda and the
cooperation among extremist groups, defied government efforts to
impose bans and legal constraints. Worst of all was the impact of
public debates on World War II (see below), the gradual dissolving of
former taboos and the filtering of instigation by hard-core extremists
down to the general public.
In 1995 these developments prompted government agencies, police and
parliaments included, to increase anti-terrorist and anti-racist
legislative and enforcement efforts. Their unequivocal response to
these few years of rising violence against foreigners and Jews
resulted in a sharp decline in such violence for the following two
years, until 1998, especially in Western Europe, Canada, and the U.S.,
but not in Russia. However, use of the Internet by extremists was not
hampered and served as a vehicle to disseminate their views,
especially the "world Jewish domination" notion that was still
prevalent in Japan at the time and was enhanced by additional claims
made by U.S. Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan: having been slave
traders, the Jews fabricated a Holocaust story to divert public
attention from the suffering of the blacks, and distorted their image
through Jewish control of Hollywood and the media. The ongoing
globalization, resulting in rampant unemployment, cuts in welfare
spending, and subsidization of newcomers' needs, caused public
dissatisfaction. The extreme right-wing parties were not slow in
exploiting the situation, and their leaders – Jorg Haider in Austria,
Filip Dewinter in Belgium, and Jean-Marie le Pen in France, made
impressive electoral gains in 1995–97. A few years later, Corneliu
Vadim Tudor in Romania, Christoph Blocher in Switzerland, and Istvan
Churka in Hungary would follow. While such parties became stronger,
extra-parliamentary extremist groups weakened.
After three relatively quiet years, 1998 and 1999 were years of great
concern and unease as violence became more severe and each attack
caused more damage and underscored the enhanced local and
international organizational capacities of the perpetrators. The first
signs of cooperation between Islamic extremists, active even during
the years of the Oslo Accord, and ultra-rightists or -leftists
surfaced in a number of countries. They were coupled to attempts by
the right-wing organizations to compensate for their weakness through
regional or even European reorganization, and to maintain "leaderless
cells of resistance" that were harder to identify and monitor. Indeed,
the far right orchestrated a violent summer in the U.S. in 1999, and
German authorities warned that the number of such groups whose members
are prepared to use arms is on the rise, and that some areas in slowly
adjusting East Germany were closed off by hooligan youngsters even to
the police. Moreover, violence spread to countries hitherto quiet in
this respect, not to speak of overt and uncurbed use of antisemitic
motifs and an atmosphere of violence in Russia that kept intensifying
each year, with the beating of rabbis on the streets of Moscow, Buenos
Aires, and London – blatant acts unknown for decades. Violence was
accompanied by a no less troubling proliferation of graffiti, slogans,
personal insults, threats, and harassment, together with a host of
verbal, electronic, and visual anti-Jewish expressions.
Following two difficult years, the year 2000 ushered in a new century
with cautious hope. At the Stockholm Conference  some 45 countries
declared their commitment to embarking on a less violent century by
implementing the lessons of the Holocaust. Pope *John PaulII visited
Yad Vashem, and Holocaust denier David *Irving lost his lawsuit
against American Jewish historian Deborah Lipstadt with an unequivocal
condemnation by a British court that upheld the contention that he had
falsified truth and facts – all dealing Holocaust denial a severe blow
and creating a new atmosphere. But within a few months, in October
2000, with the outbreak of the second Intifada, an unprecedented wave
of violence against Jews swept Western Europe, the U.S., and Canada.
Young immigrants from Muslim countries perpetrated most of the 180 or
so incidents of violence within a few weeks, during the High Holidays.
From then until 2005 a number of waves occurred, each more violent
than the previous one, primarily targeting the young and old who
looked Jewish on the streets and in educational institutions, but not
abandoning the desecration of cemeteries and synagogues. The Durban,
South Africa, U.N. World Conference against Racism, held in September
2001, originally assembled to address acute world problems of
discrimination, xenophobia, and intolerance originating in the
migration process, turned into a wholesale attack that singled out
Israel and the Jewish people from among 160 countries and nations.
Together with the September 11 events, for which American Jews and
Israel were immediately blamed, the conference opened a new wave of
virulent antisemitism, later followed by another in 2002, with the
opening of Operation Defensive Shield, and another with the invasion
of Iraq led by the U.S.
Fueling the fire were the concurrence of interests between radical
Islam and the European left; deep-seated anti Americanism and
pacifism, combined with anti-globalization movements, associating rich
Jews operating in the global economy and the State of Israel with both
their bugbears; post-nationalist and post-colonial discourse in a
unifying and repentant Europe when the Jewish people exercised a
unique kind of nationality; the unspoken wish to shake off the heavy
shadow of the Holocaust and the Jewish demand to be compensated for
its property looted during the war. Violence against persons has been
perpetrated in countries with a large immigrant population, most
notably a Muslim one (France, Great Britain, and Canada), while
attacks on property and communal sites are more evident in countries
where the far right is active (U.S., Russia, and Germany). Thus, the
left, gradually realizing that millions of frustrated immigrants have
not really been integrated, and are being used in the industries of
aging countries, are stricken with guilt feelings toward them, but not
toward the Jews. Since the liberal left comprises a considerable part
of academia, the media, and government, the scene was set for
hostility towards the Jewish communities and the Jewish state.
WORLD WAR II AND HOLOCAUST-RELATED ISSUES
Ceremonies held in 1994–96 all over the world, commemorating the 50th
anniversary of events that took place during the final stages of the
Holocaust and World War II, brought relations between Christians and
the Jewish people to the fore. The impact of these ceremonies on
public debate and extremist activities was especially marked in
Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, where most of the
Holocaust victims had lived and were killed. The central issues were:
compensation for Jewish property; rewriting of the dark history of the
past in terms more flattering to local collective memory;
rehabilitation of war criminals who became anti-Communist national
heroes; cooperation of the local population with the Nazis, which is
still being equated with Jewish support of Communism. Every
commemoration and new monument or financial agreement – themselves
Jewish achievements – took their toll in anti-Jewish terms.
Compensation for Jewish property came to the fore when archives were
opened in the Western world in accordance with the 50-year archive
laws, and in the former Soviet Bloc after its collapse. While
governments, mainly in the West, supported the demands of Jewish
organizations, bolstered by American pressure, and even hailed the
courageous fight for lost rights and property, grassroot attitudes,
especially in Eastern Europe, were different: they clung to the notion
of Jewish domination of the world and the image of the rich
manipulating Jew first found in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,
imagining a Jewish grip so strong that the Jews can sell the world any
horror story, blackmail it, and get paid for it twice, even 50 years
later. Holocaust denial thus became an even more convenient solution,
exonerating former generations. The first example was the "Swiss Gold"
affair, which pointed to a large number of countries that benefited
either from Jewish assets or from transactions with the Nazi regime,
in effect collaborating with and supporting, it. Indeed, antisemitism
in Switzerland, long dormant, was openly expressed on the individual
and even the official level. Another example was Hungary, where a rise
in antisemitic violence was registered with the passage of the 1996
law recognizing Jewish rights. Jewish demands generated resentment
especially then, when the majority of the Jews were seen a residing in
wealthy countries while millions suffered poverty and human rights
abuses worldwide.
As the century drew to a close, World War II was increasingly
perceived as the major event that shaped it, and other issues
accentuated the pivotal role of the Jewish people: the political and
economic crisis in Russia highlighted the alleged role of the Jews in
the pre- and post-Communist regimes; Pope John Paul II's epistle to
his Catholic flock worldwide, "We Remember: Reflections on the
Holocaust," summarized two millennia of Jewish-Christian relations and
admitted that Church antisemitism had paved the way to the Holocaust.
Right-wing organizations, especially in Germany and Austria, were
cautious in formulating their messages, taking into account the
resonance of World War II-related issues in public opinion. Their
caution paid off in electoral gains, which encouraged the extra-
parliamentary extremists. Germany struggled to find a way to remember
its past with a new generation in government office. This was evident
in a continuing  controversy over the erection of a central Holocaust
memorial in Berlin, and the first voices among intellectuals doubting
that the centrality of Auschwitz in public life is still justified.
While the 50th anniversaries and commemorations of World War II
brought to the fore the negative image of the Jewish people and
resentment of the Jews' role as an eternal reminder of sins that
people preferred to forget, the opposite occurred 10 years later,
during the 60th anniversary. A special event dedicated to the
liberation of Auschwitz at UN headquarters in New York, not to mention
a ceremony in the camp itself, with the participation of leading
international figures and hosts of declarations and speeches, might be
explained either as a form of compensation for the antisemitic
violence that had not yet been suppressed by these same leaders; or as
the use of Auschwitz as a symbol of human suffering as such, and not
only Jewish suffering.
THE NEW ANTISEMITISM AND ANTI-ZIONISM
The new antisemitism is a term that surfaced after the events of
October 2000, to distinguish it from late 19th century political
antisemitism and post-World War II antisemitism. It is characterized
by increasing violence mainly against the person of the Jews, mostly
in Western Europe, where France is the biggest trouble spot, and North
America and Russia; it is marked by a transfer of initiative from the
Christian world to the Muslim one for the first time in the long
history of antisemitism. Virulent propaganda keeps spreading from Arab
countries, especially those in the Middle East, into the Western
world, and Muslim immigrants, numbering about 15 million in 2005 in
Europe, have become an electoral and economic asset overshadowing the
Jewish communities and Israel. The basic negative characteristics of
the collective image of the Jew as they accumulated throughout history
have not changed, and traditional and even primitive antisemitism is
still put to use. What has changed is the sharpening of the image and
the degree of vilification as well as the intensity of the political
use that is being made of it. The new antisemitism is political,
serving as a tool in the war of the radical Muslim world against the
West, and first and foremost against the U.S., a war in which Israel
and the Jews represent modernity, a primary enemy in the radical
Muslim worldview. And it is political as a convenient fusion of
antisemitism and anti-Zionism based on the contention that Israel and
the Jewish people are one entity, each responsible for the other and
for the whole.
One might say that while part of the antisemitism in Christian
countries in recent decades has turned into anti-Zionism, in the
Muslim world anti-Zionism appears to be turning into anti-Jewishness,
thus broadening a political and territorial conflict into a clash of
ideological and religious world views. The use of Christian and
secular European antisemitic motifs in Muslim publications has been on
the rise, yet at the same time Muslim extremists are turning
increasingly to their religious sources, first and foremost the Koran,
as a primary anti-Jewish source. Indeed, in the media and in public
meetings in Arab countries antisemitic motifs ranged from absurd
accusations that Israel and the Jews engage in the spreading of AIDS
and corruption in order to dominate the Middle East, to the extensive
use of Nazi motifs, the blood libel and the Protocols of the Elders of
Zion, with a hero's welcome to the French Holocaust denier Roger
Garaudy.
Two of the most debated issues in this regard are the correlation
between antisemitic events and the Middle East conflict and the
question of when anti-Zionism becomes, if indeed it does,
antisemitism.
While some of the antisemitic waves and incidents were clearly
connected to the Middle East, many others were not connected to the
outbreak of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, especially
those which occurred during the years of the Oslo Accords or following
the death of Chairman Yasser Arafat, when a process of rapprochement
between the parties seemed to be underway. Also, many of the Muslim
immigrants come from countries not necessarily connected to the Middle
Eastern conflict, such as those from India and Pakistan in the U.K.,
from Turkey in Germany, or from central Africa and the Caribbean
Islands in France and Canada. Indeed, by 2004 this correlation,
previously considered a basic tenet, was being reconsidered because of
the growing awareness that the results of immigration are basically a
European and global problem, and that the declared correlation with
the Middle East is a convenient way to blame the situation on external
factors.
While there is general agreement that criticism of Israel's policies
is not necessarily antisemitism, there is also agreement, among non-
Jews as well, that there are forms of anti-Zionism which are not just
criticisms of Israel's policies but an objection to its very
existence, thus becoming antisemitism: (a) when the language and
images used and the character traits attributed to Israel are imbued
with known antisemitic stereotypes, and Israel becomes the collective
Jew, or the Jew among the nations; (b) when Israelis and Jews are
depicted as a cosmic evil, are blamed for worldwide disasters, and are
compared to the Nazis, the ultimate evil; (c) when Israelis and Jews
supporting the State of Israel are singled out and attacked, and are
treated out of all proportion to the issue at hand and in comparison
with the response to the actions of other nations; the often mentioned
higher expectations from Israel as a democratic state are at the same
time a way to avoid confrontations with despotic regimes, certainly
the Muslim ones, spawning such phenomena as a ban only against Israeli
universities; (d) when the very existence of a Jewish people, and/or
its right to have a national movement and a state are doubted or
delegitimized; the Merriam-Webster dictionary stated in 1966 that
antisemitism is "opposition to Zionism; sympathy with opponents of the
State of Israel"; (e) when the Holocaust is denied, distorted, and
made a political weapon, and when the Jews are blamed for allegedly
misusing it to extort financial support and to make political capital.
While Jewish communities perhaps pay the price for the Middle East
conflict, Israel pays for the image of the Jew: "in polite  company,"
wrote a London Sunday Times observer, "one uses 'Israel' when
hesitating to use the word 'Jew.'"

 E quanto costa?
boh. tanto.