By Yana Grinshpun
(this article was written before October the 7th. The URSS was not the only actor of the anti-Jewish propaganda, the the collusion of European anti-Semitism with Islamist and Nazi propaganda has largely contributed to this. Follow me on you tube to learn more. https://www.youtube.com/@perditions-ideologiques)
“There is a primitive truth to be recalled: that history is first and foremost a narrative. Through the practice of storytelling, the fundamental elements of the logical function in discourse are constituted. But at the same time, this practice is given as reality itself”[1].
The word ‘apartheid’ as applied to Israel is a classic example of the discursive and rhetorical confiscation of the word, its semantic distorsion, and the successful creation of the narrative that has associated the Jewish state with racism since 1961 and has become an endlessly reactivated cliché in media and political discourse.
The history of the word
The word apartheid comes from Afrikaans, a language derived from Dutch, developed by the Boers, settlers in the 17th century at the Cape of Good Hope, which was then a trading post run by the Dutch East India Company. It means ‘to stand apart’.
The concept of apartheid refers initially to the history of the relationship between the Boers and the African populations, but also to the way in which the Afrikaans government established unequal racial segregation. Its scope was political, legal, economic and cultural.
The creation of Bantustans (territories demarcated for black populations) which local populations could not leave without permission, the regulation of access to services and public places, political representation (black provinces represented by Whites), access to property ownership, unequal education, etc., thus constructed a society in which mixing was legally impossible. The apartheid regime was abolished in 1991 in South Africa.
The history and foundations of Israel are of a profoundly different nature since the Jews are an indigenous people, whose presence on the land in question is discontinuous; they have been conquered, oppressed and deprived of their sovereignty for centuries, colonized by successive empires. The national revival in 1948 marked the political autonomy of the Jews as a people and as a nation. The Basic Laws of Israel (constitutional texts, adopted by the Israeli Parliament) provide for equal rights for all citizens, and have done so since the end of the 19th century, from the very beginning of the Zionist movement.
For example, Vladimir Zeev Jabotinsky spoke of equality between nations long before the establishment of the State of Israel, both in his Helsinki program and in the article « The Steel Wall » written in 1924:
« My emotional attitude towards the Arabs is the same as that which I adopt towards other peoples: a courteous indifference. The political attitude is determined by two principles. First, I consider that the eviction of Arabs from Palestine in any form is absolutely impossible; there will always be two peoples in Palestine. Secondly, I am proud to have been among those who formulated the Helsinki program. We did not formulate it for the Jews alone, but for all peoples. Like everyone else, I am ready to swear for ourselves and for our descendants that we will never violate this equality and that we will never try to supplant or oppress… »[2]
The Declaration of Independence states that all citizens of Israel enjoy equal rights, regardless of origin:
« THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations”[3].
Both in reality and on paper, there is no racial segregation or the ambition of ethnic separation in Israel, which is one of the most multi-ethnic societies in the world with many minorities (Arabs, Druze, Eritreans, Circassians (Sunni Muslims), Baha’is…) all having the same rights. The Baha’is, for example, persecuted by the Iranian regime, are recognized as a common religious community in Israel.
The accusation of apartheid is absurd, counterfactual, ahistorical and more a matter of false propaganda than anything else.
The stages of the construction of the apartheid myth
First, we observe the semantic mutation of the word ‘apartheid’, the extension of the meaning of the term, the loss of specificity. For example, one hears talk of ‘health apartheid’ or ‘sexual apartheid’. This means that from being a hyponym, the word becomes a hyperonym (it refers to the whole class) and gradually takes on the meaning of the word ‘discrimination’. The term then no longer refers to the original situation, but is applied by analogy, in comparison with other situations. This phenomenon is frequent, on the one hand it is not uncommon to see the extension of the meaning of other words that refer to complex historical realities (e.g. the word « genocide ») and that start to designate similar situations, on the other hand it is enough to see how « fascist », « Nazi », « Stalinist » etc. are used today. These are two sides of the same coin. As Jean Szlamowicz notes:
“The semantic mutation of a historical term into a political concept is relatively common, but such an evolution is not only conceptual: it is likely to take place within a framework that is that of militant instrumentalisation”[4]
In the case of Israel, it is an application of the term that retains its primitive meaning (segregation according to ethnicity). Better still, since its circulation in the political and media spheres, the term has acquired qualifiers that reinforce its negative charge and participate in nominal constructions as a complement to the noun: « apartheid mineralogy », « the apartheid wall », « apartheid roads », « apartheid crimes », « apartheid week », etc.
The accusation of apartheid against Israel has multiple origins. Among its promoters are states, non-governmental organizations and militant associations.
One of the states most involved in the construction of the anti-Israeli mythology was, before its collapse, the former USSR.
The USSR’s active role in apartheid mythology
The Soviet Union played a crucial role in the emergence of the PLO. Numerous sources, recently opened archives, and testimonies of former politicians officially confirm the role of the USSR in arming, providing substantial financial assistance and training to Palestinian terrorists.
It all started with the R. Slansky trial in Prague[5], which also marked a radical change in the Soviet Union’s policy towards the Jews and Israel. Czechoslovakia was one of the first countries to recognize Israel. Rudolf Slansky, ironically a fervent anti-Zionist, was accused of being a ‘bourgeois nationalist Jew’ by the Czech Communist Party. This trial set a precedent for many other trials and accusations. It was around this time that comparisons of Zionist leaders with the Nazis began to circulate in the Soviet press. For example, West German aid to Israel was presented as the result of Israel’s promise to keep silent about the presence of Nazis in the German government. Later, the execution of Eichmann in Jerusalem was explained by Russian Communist Party ideologues as a desire to silence anyone who could testify to the links between Zionists and Nazis. A certain Lev Korneev, a notorious Nazi denier and official “nazificator” of Israel supporter of the Soviet state, published a book entitled « The Secret Service of International Zionism and the State of Israel ». (The only academician who protested against this author’s anti-Semitic ravings, Ivan Martinov, was imprisoned and sent to forced labour camp.)
On the initiative of Andropov, who was then head of the KGB, an operation codenamed SIG – (Sionistskije Gosudarstva) (in English « Zionist States ») was developed. These were to be represented in anti-Zionist propaganda by two countries: Israel and the USA. The idea was to imply that these countries, under the control of the « fascist Zionists », were to implement the Zionist plans for world conquest and domination, and for the conversion of the Islamic world into Jewish colonies. The implementation of the GIS operation involved the secret services of the satellite countries, which were to train in disinformation methods and terrorist operations some 4,000 agents, who in 1978 were already « working » in the Islamic countries. Their task was to incite a blind and ferocious hatred of Jews and « American Zionism ». The distribution of thousands of copies of the Arabic translation of the «Protocols of the Elders of Zion», as well as the opuses of the Soviet anti-Zionists, was subordinated to the same objective. Thus, the ideology of Soviet nationalized anti-Zionism was organically combined with terror. The attacks on Israel, Zionism and the Jews became even more violent after the victory of the Jewish state in the Six Day War.
This is when the second stage of the mythological construction takes place. The Soviet media began to portray Israel not only as a Nazi state but also as a ‘racist’ and ‘colonial’ oppressor of the Arab world. This period coincided with the Algerian war of Independence depicted as an anticolonial war. “Colonialism” has become a new type of crime committed by the West against the Third World, a crime of rich against the poor, capitalists against oppressed populations. The Nazi Germany, being qualified as imperialist in the soviet historiography, it was easy to create a semantic proximity by lexical contamination between Nazism and Colonialism. Progressively, due to the never stopping propaganda these two terms were associated to Israel.
During this period, an active search for ways to resuscitate the energy market was conducted to restore the grandeur of the Russian-Soviet Empire. All the failures and misfortunes of the Soviet Union are now explained by the machinations of the omnipotent and omnipresent « international Zionism », which, as a certain Yuri Ivanov, a KGB employee and a great anti-Zionist Party activist, wrote, is « the enemy of all nations, […] of all freedom-loving people in the world »[6]. The Jews are now treated not only as a political enemy, but as an ontological enemy, consisting of a criminal conspiracy against all nations of the world.
The violent campaign with this finding where Israel was regularly compared to the Nazi state started after 1967, the year of the break of diplomatic relations of the former USSR with Israel. It was in 1969 that Ivanov brought out a book « Осторожно: сионизм! » « Beware of the Zionists ».
It was translated into Ukrainian, Belarusian, Armenian, Tajik and other languages of the peoples of the USSR; into Polish, English, Spanish, French and Arabic. Ivanov was the first to declare that Zionism was an ideology akin to fascism, « which it is rapidly replacing ». The myth of the Nazi-Zionist conspiracy during World War II that he described follows logically from this.
Here is what the Great Soviet Encyclopedia says in the article « Zionism »:
« The main content of contemporary Zionism is militant chauvinism, racism, anti-communism and anti-Sovietism.
Judaism’s politicized dogmas of Jewish ‘election’ and messianism and the mythical thesis of their ‘exceptionalism’ constitute one of the foundations of the extreme nationalism, chauvinism and racism inherent in Zionism’s ideology and practice. »[7]
The Jewish victory undermined the prestige of the Soviet Union after the defeat of its Arab allies to whom the former USSR was selling arms. Two new components appeared in an already effective ideology: « racism » and « apartheid », a term officially used on the European stage by Ahmed Shukeiri, the first PLO president, approved by the KGB. As Pierre Lurçat notes in his book Les mythes fondateurs de l’antisionisme (in French) after Shukeiri’s speech to the United Nations, it is in the PLO charter, in the drafting of which the Soviet sponsors participated, that we find the amalgam Zionism=racism.
The Soviet Union had close relations with the PFLP and the PLO in supporting the promising terrorist program. Three days before the opening of the first Palestinian national congress on 28 May 1964, Nikita Krustchov met Ahmed Shukeiri in Cairo and expressed the solidarity of the Soviet people with the struggle of the Arab people of Palestine. In the Soviet archives there are many testimonies of the PLO’s close relations with the former USSR.
Some secret documents were opened after the fall of the regime, secret documents exchanged between Andropov, then Chairman of the Security Committee and Brezhnev were found in the archives. Here is an extract from Vladimir Bukowski’s Judgment in Moscow[8]:
24 April 1974 Andropov to Brezhnev:
« At a meeting with our KGB resident in Lebanon in April of this year, in a confidential conversation, Uadia Hadad outlined a promising program of terrorist and diversionary activities undertaken by the PLO, the essence of which boils down to the following:
The main purpose of the PLO’s actions is to increase the effectiveness of the struggle of the Palestinian resistance movement against Israel, Zionism and US imperialism
-the porosity, by special means, of the « oil war » of the Arab countries against the imperialist forces that support Israel
-carrying out actions against US and Israeli personnel in third countries in order to obtain reliable information about US and Israeli plans and intentions
-carrying out terrorist and diversionary actions on Israeli territory ».
On 14 December 1973, the UN General Assembly condemned in a resolution « the alliance between South African racism and Zionism », in August 1975, the Organization of African Unity, meeting in Kampala, Uganda, denounced the racist regime in occupied Palestine. It did so again in 1975 with the famous resolution 3379 « Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination » which was welcomed by the Soviet Party in the following terms:
« The decision to condemn Zionism as a form of racism is linked to the numerous Israeli attacks and aggressions, the genocide of the Palestinians and the Israeli attempts to destroy Arab civilization ».
It should be noted that the repeal took place in 1991, the year of the collapse of the former USSR, which Russian anti-Semites deplore to this day.
The next step was the Durban Conference of 2001. Pierre Lurçat calls it « the key stage » in the constitution of an « Israel apartheid state » myth. The analogy has been widely used. Many French politicians have used it: Gérard Araud, the former ambassador to France, Jimmy Carter, recently, Yves Le Drian.
However, and this is important to say: comparisons of Israel with Nazism and racism are not purely a Soviet invention, the Zionism-Nazism equation circulated in the Arab press in Arab Palestine in 1945. Shmuel Trigano quotes in his book Les frontières d’Auschwitz[9], Jamal Husseini, member of the Arab High Committee who declared in 1945 that when he hears Ben-Gurion speak, « it is as if he hears Hitler’s voice », « the same tone, the same spirit » (Al Hayat al Jadida).
Mahmoud Abbas, AKA Abu Mazen, devoted his state thesis, which he wrote under the supervision of Yevgeny Primakov at the Patrice Lumumba University in 1982[10], to the secret links of the Zionists with the Nazis. He was accepted as a doctoral student under the agreement between the PLO and KPSS (Communist Party of the Soviet Union).
All theses and dissertations on subjects concerning Zionism were carefully checked and approved not only by the Academic Council, but also at the highest level of the Party, and the thesis and abstract were signed by the candidate and the supervisor. Primakov et alii write in the file concerning the thesis:
« As the general crisis of capitalism deepens at the present stage, the crisis of the ideology of Zionism becomes more and more evident… The role of Zionism as one of the shock troops of the world imperialist reaction has not diminished, its reactionary and aggressive essence … appears in an increasingly crude expansionist and racist form … To expose the reactionary ideology… is the urgent task of the whole anti-imperialist camp… The urgent task of all progressive anti-imperialist forces is to defend peace, decoupling, democracy and social progress.
« In addition, the supervisor’s evaluation of the work and the candidate was attached to the file. And two years later, he published his book « The Secret Links between Zionism and Nazism during the Second World War » in Arabic at Dar Ibn Rashid in Amman, Jordan, an expanded edition of his Moscow thesis[11].
The effect of propaganda
Propaganda gives justification to actions. The individual needs it to be constantly renewed. The use of the word « apartheid » justifies all the NGOs, the European academics who write anti-Israeli works, articles and columns, the pro-Palestinian associations, in short, all these agitprop organizations. This is how we see in all LGBT+ demonstrations « sexual apartheid », Palestinian flags that are not there to defend any mythical cause, but to testify to the rhetorical effectiveness of the propaganda that relies on the semantic component of the word « apartheid ». The formula then functions on a now established dichotomy: oppression/Jews and victims/oppressed. Thus, in people’s minds, ‘Jewish’ becomes an intrinsic feature of the representation of the term ‘apartheid’ which has been emptied of its semantics in favor of a new re-semantisation.
[1] Fay Jean-Pierre (2009), Introduction to the totalitarian languages, Paris, Pocket
[2] Jabotinski, Vladimir, “O zheleznoj stene », 1939, in Evrejskij legion, Moskwa: Algorythm, my translation.
[3] https://m.knesset.gov.il/en/about/pages/declaration.aspx
[4] Szlamowicz, J. https://www.menora.info/etude-semantico-politique-dun-concept-lapartheid-et-sa-mutation-discursive/
[5] See Wistrich, R. (2021)° From ambivalence to betrayal, Meir Cotic, University of Nebraska Press, The Prague Trial: The First Anti-Zionist Show Trial in the Communist Bloc (New York and London, 1987)
[6] Yuri Ivanov (1970) , Ostrorozhno sionism, Izdatelstvo Politicheskoj Literaturi.
[7] Soviet Encyclopedia (1969-1978), third edition, 30 volumes, volume n°24, my translation,
[8] Bukowsky, V. Московский процесс М.; Париж:Judgment in Moscow: Soviet Crimes and Western Complicity,
[9] Trigano, Shmuel, (2005), Les frontières d’Auschwitz, Paris, Le livre de Poche.
[10] https://www.rudn.ru/cooperation/honorary-doctors/mahmud-abbas
[11]The name in Arabic الوجه الآخر: العلاقات السرية بين النازية والصهيونية. (Another face : he secret relations between Nazists and Zionists). The thesis can be consulted in Jerusalem National Library in Arabic
https://nashe.orbita.co.il/read/19909 and http://www.alefmagazine.com/pub117.html
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