this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
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"Anti-Semitism means spreading enmity towards the Jews. When the accursed tsarist monarchy was living its last days it tried to incite ignorant workers and peasants against the Jews. The tsarist police, in alliance with the landowners and the capitalists, organised pogroms against the Jews. The landowners and capitalists tried to divert the hatred of the workers and peasants who were tortured by want against the Jews. In other countries, too, we often see the capitalists fomenting hatred against the Jews in order to blind the workers, to divert their attention from the real enemy of the working people, capital. Hatred towards the Jews persists only in those countries where slavery to the landowners and capitalists has created abysmal ignorance among the workers and peasants. Only the most ignorant and downtrodden people can believe the lies and slander that are spread about the Jews. This is a survival of ancient feudal times, when the priests burned heretics at the stake, when the peasants lived in slavery, and when the people were crushed and inarticulate. This ancient, feudal ignorance is passing away; the eyes of the people are being opened.

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There are a lot of Trotskyites in my synagogue with the explanation 'Stalin was a special evil guy' which does not feel adequate. Nor does it explain later Soviet opposition to Zionism/Israel. See for instance the linked article. The extent of the explanation relies on the syllogism 'the USSR did a bad thing because it was failed socialism headed by the vile man Stalin'; no explanation is attempted:

A few days later, on May 17, the bureaucratized Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin also recognized the Zionist State after initially expressing support for the creation of a Jewish state. The following day, May 18, Czechoslovakia, which was already part of the Soviet Bloc, added its recognition and later sent weapons to the Zionists.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I remember This article from Mosaic did a pretty deep dive. There were several reasons:

-Israel wasn’t in lock-step with American imperial aims like it is now. Before ‘67 some would argue they were closer aligned to France.

-Quick way to get the British out of the Middle East

-Communist Party in Palestine was fairly strong and might have been able to make Israel closer to non-aligned

-Eastern Bloc had a surplus of weapons, but few currency reserves. Israel had currency reserves and desperately needed weapons