Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 17 – An instructor
at the Russian foreign ministry’s training academy told participants at a
government-sponsored youth camp that “Zionism is a movement for the
establishment of the world rule of Jewish bankers,” that it “finances pagans to
destroy Orthodoxy,” and that it has so “Judaicized” Catholicism that “almost
nothing remains” of that faith.
Olga Chetvertikova of the Moscow
State Institute of International Relations made these noxious comments at the Seliger
Civic forum camp a week ago, when they were picked up by “Nezavisimaya gazeta”
(ng.ru/politics/2014-08-08/2_seliger.html).
Tragically, in the days since, they have been disseminated by other outlets (news.eizvestia.com/news_politics/full/4380716).
What makes these words so disturbing
is that they represent a revival of the ugly Soviet-style of anti-Semitism and
anti-Zionism that has become possible thanks to Vladimir Putin’s increasingly
authoritarian and imperialist rhetoric and the Russian government’s media
outlets ever more virulent attacks on ethnic Ukrainians and others.
Many commentators while decrying
those attacks in and of themselves have ignored the way in which such ugligness
when visited on any group tends to spread and ultimately to come to target the
Jews who have all too often been the “default” ethnic “enemy” among Russian
nationalists.
Until a few months ago, it would
have been unthinkable, even in Putin’s Russia, to hear such things at a
government-organized meeting, given that many Russians will see that as a green
light for the expression of such feelings by themselves. But now, the door to
this kind of viciousness has been opened.
It is critically important that any
such expressions be monitored and denounced and that those in Russia and the
West who care about human rights demand that the Russian authorities distance
themselves from such comments and make it clear that any repetition of them
will further isolate the Kremlin from all people of good will.
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