Izabella Tabarovsky is one of the world’s leading scholars of anti-Zionism. As she says, the
manipulations, fabrications and incitement that have flooded global media over the past nine months have been shocking. But have they been unprecedented? From the technical standpoint, the answer is yes: never before has it been so cheap and easy to pump out lies and anti-Zionist conspiracy theory to so many people simultaneously. In terms of content, however, the current campaign is hardly innovative, borrowing wholesale from the global anti-Zionist propaganda campaigns the USSR ran in the wake of the Six-Day war.
She goes on to prove that claim by recommending three books on the subject. One, on the KGB and the battle for the Third World, shows a key motivation for the USSR’s endeavors.
Israel’s victory over the Soviet Arab clients in the Six Day War—unexpected and inexplicable from the Soviet perspective—set off major alarms in Moscow. With anti-Semitic conspiracy theory firmly part of KGB’s thinking, the agency’s head, Yuri Andropov, elevated Zionism to the rank of USSR’s primary ideological nemesis.
Another book “provides a detailed look at the themes, techniques and infrastructure of the Soviet anti-Israel campaign,” and shows how “Moscow spread sensationalist lies often sourced from Arab media,” including, often, variations on the blood libel theme.
Tabarovsky’s final choice, meanwhile, examines why so many intellectuals were drawn to the USSR and to other repressive and corrupt societies—and, by extension, why they are still.
More about: Anti-Semitism, Anti-Zionism, History & Ideas, Israel & Zionism, Soviet Union