Thread by @IzaTabaro

Excellent piece. Some context: tokenism twrd Jews has a very long tradition on the left. The Soviets cultivated & excelled at it. Esp after the 6 Day War, they actively used Jews in their anti-Israel propaganda campaigns to show that they weren’t antisemitic, just anti-Zionist

https://twitter.com/howard_lovy/status/1163844651792687104

The Omar/Tlaib presser yesterday especially made me feel like I was back in the USSR. Back in the 1960s-80s, the Soviets would also organize public events to condemn Israel & Zionism & trot out their token Jews to support their points.

Sometimes these Jews were popular artists who knew that unless they participated in these ideological circuses, their careers would come to an end. My beloved entertainer Arkady Raikin & ballerina Maya Plisetskaya were, sadly, used in that way.

And then there were those who really served the regime. Who knows what they did it for—prob also some kind of career considerations. Or maybe they really believed what they were saying. One famous name in this category is General Dragunsky.

Dragunsky was a genuine WW2 hero who in post-war years lended his name to the needs of Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda. In the early 1980s, he was put in charge of an org that the KGB created specifically to fight what they saw as the “global anti-Soviet Zionist conspiracy.”

The org was called the Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public. Almost all of its members were Jews. US State Department viewed its activities as “active measures”—a set of tools that the KGB used to promote its domestic and foreign political objectives.

Committee’s Jewish membership allowed the Soviets to say, See! Jews agree with us. This despite the fact that thousands of Jews were actively fighting the regime at the time for the right to live as Jews, to study Hebrew, to practice their religion, & to emigrate.

And this despite the fact that millions of Soviet Jews privately despised the regime that discriminated against them, diminished their educational & professional opportunities & prevented them from living fully as Jews (whatever that meant for each).

All of this is to say that what we see today has a long history, & those practicing it need to understand that it didn’t work then & it won’t work now. Those who believe they can assess the views of the Jewish community from these displays are fooling themselves.

And if you want to read more about this sordid history, which, unfortunately, remains all too relevant today, see my @fathomjournal piece. fathomjournal.org/soviet-anti-zi…