Soviet Propaganda Challenges Concept of Jewish Nation, Monitor Reports

The Soviet anti-Israeli propaganda line has escalated to the point of challenging the concept of there being such a thing as a genuine “Jewish nation,” the Christian Science Monitor said Monday in a full-page article devoted to the Moscow propaganda campaign. The paper said that the new Soviet line “borders on challenging Israel’s existence” but added that “the Soviet Union still appears not to deny Israel’s right to exist, while, at the same time pouring arms into Arab countries whose dominating motivation is to annihilate and destroy Israel completely.

The report, by Bertram B, Johansson, filed from Jerusalem, charged that “in an unusually subtle and, at the same time obvious manner, Soviet propaganda is trying to equate Israeli actions with Nazi and Hitlerite characteristics.” It summarized the chief Soviet anti-Israel current propaganda themes as the following: Israel is an agent of American and British imperialism; the Israelis were the aggressors in the June war; Israel has acted much in the way Nazis acted, committing Nazi-type atrocities on military and civilian populations; there is a resistance movement among the general Arab population quite apart from the Syrian-coached terrorist groups, and Israel unconditionally should give up the occupied Arab areas and leave all territories it overran.

The survey pointed out that “what Israelis see today as the most vicious of Soviet propaganda attacks is the even more recent trend to utter not only anti-Zionist, anti-Israel remarks but also anti-Jewish religion references.”