From American college campuses to the cloisters of Western European media rooms, Israel's actions, intentions, and values are once again being misrepresented. Instead of seeing military action as a necessary—albeit gut-wrenching—response to the savagery and nihilism of Hamas, these actions are being portrayed as malicious, opportunistic, and colonialist.
For Jews, this prompts feelings of dismay, but also deja vu. After all, we've witnessed, endured (and overcome) this playbook before—during the Cold War when the Soviet Union leveraged antisemitism for its own political ends (as well as an end in itself).
In the aftermath of World War II and the establishment of Israel as a nation state, the Middle East became one of the major theaters of the Cold War. Arab states were considered proto-socialist by Soviet intellectuals, and the Arab intelligentsia often looked to the Russian Revolution of 1917 for inspiration. The age of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser was one of "Arab socialism." Meanwhile, as Israel embraced democracy, capitalism and aligned with the United States, Arab states became the only viable potential clients for Soviet power in the region.
While Jews were often prominent in early socialist movements, the attitude of the Kremlin under Stalin and then Khrushchev was one of suspicion and contempt. From an ideological perspective, Jews were monotheists rather than atheists. From a contemporary perspective, they were American allies embarking on an imperialist enterprise. From a historical perspective, the centuries-old folk antisemitism of Europe was easy to awaken in the general population.
In addition to drawing on a medieval legacy of prejudice against Jews, a new form of antisemitism developed in the industrial age—the "socialism of fools," to borrow a term prominent on the German left in the 1890s. The concept, most likely coined by the socialist leader August Bebel, was an indictment of those who blamed Jewish wealth and power for the ills of working people. Instead, Bebel and others chose to face down their own leaders and offer constructive solutions to the plight of their people.
As Soviet client states were dealt resounding blows in their quest to wipe Israel off the map in the 1960s and '70s, a new socialism of fools gained ground as an apologia for inept foreign policies and corrupt leadership.
In this view, Israel was aggressive not defensive; Jews were colonizers, not people with a deep historical and religious connection to the land; the Palestinians were agentless victims with no role or responsibility in their predicament.
Soviet propaganda said that Zionism was fascist, imperialist, racist, colonialist. In other words, Zionists were Nazis. And all Jews, according to the playbook, were Zionists.
In a post-Holocaust world, Nazis symbolized the ultimate ideological evil—as we saw again last year when Russian President Vladimir Putin's government accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, of heading a "Nazi regime" with blood ties to Israel. The delegitimization and dehumanization was directly built on the rhetoric created by the Soviets.
Because Soviet antisemitism was couched in anti-Zionist, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist rhetoric, it gained an air of respectability in Western academic circles and among global non-government organizations. The influence of this language and the manipulation of these terms was apparent when the United Nations issued UN Resolution 3379 in 1975 which equated Zionism with racism. The resolution was not repealed until 1991, but the consequences of this language had a lasting impact.
That lasting impact is seen today.
From students chanting "from the river to the sea" or to accusations of genocide and apartheid, the same old Soviet playbook of disinformation is being deployed. And the same combination of low and high culture antisemitism has combined to weaponize words and ideas against Israel. Ultimately, the new socialism of fools will go the same way as the old one did. The question is: how many people will it take down with it?
Aviva Klompas is the former director of speechwriting at the Israeli Mission to the United Nations and co-founder of Boundless Israel, a nonprofit organization that partners with community leaders in the U.S. to support Israel education and combat hatred of Jews.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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