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Defamation of Zionism:
The new anti-Semitism
by Simon Griver
World Zionist Press Service
When the United Nations General
Assembly passed Resolution 3379
in November 1975 which equated
Zionism with racism, few people
fully grasped that a momentous
milestone in Jewish history was
being laid in place. On that day a
decade ago, a new and notorious
formula was legitimated that would
threaten the existence ot Israel, the
Jewish people and even the demo
cratic values of the West.
On that fateful day a new slander
was promulgated by which to
persecute the Jewish people.
Historically the Jewish people had
been harassed and massacred for
its tenacious refusal to convert to
Christianity. Then anti-Judaism was
superceded by anti-Semitism, a racist
European doctrine which saw the
Jew as an alien who belonged to
the Middle East. Now, ironically,
anti-Zionism inverts this theory
and characterizes the Jews as a
European people who have no place
in their Middle Eastern ancestral
homeland.
This merciless persecution of the
Jews has always been accompanied
by libelous slogans. In the super
stitious age of devout religion the
blood libel supposedly exposed how
Jews murder Gentile children to
drain their blood for use in ritual
sorcery. Part and parcel of classic
anti-Semitism is the belief that an
international Jewish conspiracy of
capitalists and communists is plotting
to take over the world. And now
Jewish enemies have spawned the
lie that Zionism is a racist and
fascist ideology.
The probiem is that there are
delicate distinctions between anti-
Zionism and anti-Semitism. This
makes anti-Zionism a disease that
is cunningly resistant to many of
the medicines traditionally used to
treat anti-Semitism. While anti-
Semitism has always focused on
groundless lies, anti-Zionism is built
around distortions and half-truths.
Zionism as a legitimate liberation
movement is denied, as the notion
of the Jews being a nation is negated.
Actions of the Israeli government
are taken out of context in order to
legitimate the liquidation of the
Jewish state.
Amidst the confusion the Irish
diplomat and journalist Connor
Cruse O’Brien has coined a new
phrase: anti-Jewism. Here the
semantic threat to Jews is made
explicit and is not dressed up in
euphemistic words like anti-Semitism
and anti-Zionism.
Gideon Raphael, a former director-
general of Israel’s Foreign Office is
emphatic about what must be done.
“The resolution is a battle cry not
only against Israel and Zionism
but against human decency,” he
stresses. “The strategy of our adver
saries is: defamation, isolation,
liquidation. We have to mobilize
the freedom loving forces in the
world and to clean the U.N. of this
mark of shame.”
Israel’s enemies in this battle are
the Soviet Union, the Arab world
and in the West, groups of neo-
Nazis and small factions of Marxists,
Trotskyists and anarchists. For the
Soviet Union, Israel represents the
freedom of the western democracies,
while for the Arab world Israel
symbolizes the secularism of the
West.
But by repeating “the big lie”
and making Israel synonymous with
racism, the Jewish state’s potential
enemies can multiply. As Jeane
Kirkpatrick, former U.S. ambassador
to the U.N., states, “It is important
to remember that inside the U.N.
racism is the ultimate crime.” She
says, “When Israel is designated a
racist state, the word is out that
Israel is fair game for every would
be aggressor in the world."
Furthermore, many of Israel’s
supporters, even Jews in the Diaspora,
are beginning to believe the lie
because it is not being effectively
countered. Students on university
campuses in the West have take the
brunt of anti-Zionist propaganda.
See Zionism, page 5.
^Se Southern
Israelite
The Weekly Newspaper For Southern Jewry
'Since 1925'
Vol. LXI
Atlanta, Georgia, Friday, November 1, 1985
No. 44
Reagan says human rights
won’t be big issue in Vienna
by Joseph Polakoff
TSl's Washington correspondent
WASHINGTON —President
Reagan has indicated that the human
rights issue will not be a major
subject at his summit conference
with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev
in Vienna later this month. In an
interview with the British Broad
casting Corporation (BBC), the
president was asked how he felt
about the visa having been granted
to Mrs. Yelena Bonner, wife of
Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov,
to come to the West for medical
treatments.
The president said he felt it is “a
step along the road” toward improve
ment in the Soviet Union’s treatment
of dissidents. He went on to say,
“There need to be more cases of
exist visas such as that granted
M rs. Bonner.” keagan said that “I
don’t think, however, that the human
rights thing” should be “a kind of a
public discussion and accusing fingers
being pointed at each other and
their claim that this is an internal
matter with them.”
“What they (the Soviets) have to
understand is that on some of the
major areas where we could seek
agreement,” the president said, “We
have a better chance in our type of
society of getting the approval that
we need from our Congress, from
our people, on some of these agree
ments if these human rights problems
are not standing in the way. And
maybe 1 can point that out.”
Regarding terrorism, the president
said in the BBC interview that the
United States “had no choice” in
the interception of the Egyptian
plane carrying the four Palestinian
hijackers of the Achille Lauro.
He pointed out that the United
States had to take the action “if we
were going to prevent those terrorists
from suddenly, as many in the past
have, disappearing into the rabbit
warren that is found in the Middl
East—Lebanon and so forth—am
therefore they would escape being
brought to justice. They had murdered
a man, a helpless individual.”
The president’s interview came
as the Soviet Union issued an exit
visa to Irinia Grivnina, 40, a Jewish
member of the group investigating
Soviet use of psychiatric hospitals
to confine dissidents. Grivnina arrived
with her family in Amsterdam where
her case received wide attention
because her arrival came three days
before the Dutch government is to
announce its decision on the
deployment of U.S. medium range
missiles. The Soviet Union has
vigorously opposed this deployment.
The Bonner and Grivnina de
partures indicated that the Soviet
Union was apparently using Soviet
Jews to influence decisions of a
military and political nature apart
from human rights aspects of them.
When Steve Mendel and Dan
Berman visited the Soviet Union
recently “to encourage the refusniks
to continue their fight for freedom,”
the trip ended abruptly when the
two Atlantans were expelled by
Soviet authorities.
Deeply touched by the plight of
Jewish refusniks in the Soviet Union,
23-year-old Mendel and Berman,
24, went to Russia to see what
contribution they could make to
the refusniks’ cause. During the
trip, the two young men not only
got a better understanding of the
refusniks’ lives and problems, but
came face-to-face with the authori
tarian policies of the Soviet govern
ment.
A Jewish organization, which
Mendel declines to identify,
sponsored their trip which began
on Sept. 21 and was scheduled to
last until Oct. 9, but was cut short
by the expulsion.
Mendel and Bergman obtained
a list of refusnik names and addresses
from local organizations, and were
interested in visiting families who
had been refusniks for a long time
and had been denied exit visas
despite the fact that members of
their families had been allowed to
emigrate to Israel.
They began their trip by contacting
Atlantans expelled by Soviets
for offering comfort to refusniks
by Allen Rabinowitz
Refusnik Seman Indiktor (left) and Steve Mendel.
families in Leningrad, Minsk and
Vilnius. “In Leningrad,” Mendel
explains, “we didn’t have any
problems with the police. We felt
we were being followed, but it was
difficult to tell. In Minsk, we still
didn’t feel like we were being followed,
but we understood from people
who had been through before and
the refusniks we were visiting that
Minsk was one of the more difficult
cities to be involved in activities.
On our third day there we were
visiting refusniks when we were
brought in by the KGB Their
excuse was that they wanted to
make sure that our papers were in
order. A captain from Ovir—the
immigration and visa department—
came and interrogated us for two
hours.”
They were warned that they would
be contacted in the other cities on
their agenda. When they reached
Vilnius, the authorities again brought
them in and warned them to dis
continue their contacts with the
refusniks. They asked the police if
See Expelled, page 28.
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