Anti-Semitism Just Below Surface in Putin’s Russia Re-Emerges in Force, Yakovenko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 21 – Anti-Semitic statements have always been a staple of Russian social media; but ordinarily, Igor Yakovenko says, the government media don’t include “openly anti-Jewish texts and statements. But the armored train of anti-Semitism always is always at the ready, as this week showed in Russian media reaction to Syria’s downing of the Russian plane.

            Even though the Il-20 was shot down by Syrian forces, much of the Russian media acted as if Israel were to blame, with what can only be described as anti-Semitic language covered by “the fig leaf of hatred for Israel, the Russian commentator suggests (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5BA37C1AEC411; cf. kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5BA1F3AB5E82A).

            “After the Holocaust,” Yakovenko continues, “open demonstration of one’s anti-Jewish attitudes became somewhat more difficult for public persons and was transformed into an occupation of marginals or entirely simple-minded anti-Semites of the type like Petr Tolstoy with talk about how people came out of the Pale of Settlement in 1917 and destroyed churches.

            “The anti-Semitic campaign in the USSR was masked under the struggle against ‘rootless cosmopolitans.’” Later, Soviet writers could indulge their anti-Semitism with talk “under the pseudonym of ‘Zionism,’” all the more saw because “as Soviet propaganda asserted, it was ‘equal to fascism.’”

            According to Yakovenko, “Judeophobia in Putin’s Russia still publicly speaks under the cover of hostility to Israel. Potential pogromshchiks pick up the signals coming from the powers that be. A troglodyte sense allows them to sense their brother Judeophobe under any mask. And they with impatience wait from the authorities the signal to action.”

            “But at a certain moment,” the commentator says, “they may begin to act without any signal being given.”

            In support of his contention, Yakovenko points to what has happened since the Russia Il-20 was downed by a Syrian missile, something that the nationalist Tsargrad TV immediately sought to blame on Israel and on “the Israeli lobby in Russia.”  It urged giving modern weapons to Israel’s enemies as part of a genuine “’Russian response.’”

            According to Tsargrad commentators, Israel’s guilt for the downing of the Russian plane is equal to that of Turkey for its shooting down of a Russian jet earlier; but “the Israeli lobby” in Moscow has blocked officials from taking actions even as harsh as those the Kremlin did against Turkey earlier. 

            Appended to the website version of Tsargrad’s program on this point are some 550 commentaries, “with the most humane commentators,” demanding only that Moscow adopt toward Jews in Russia the slogan “suitcase, airport, Israel,” but some insisting that the latest event had led them to begin “’to understand Hitler.’”

            Meanwhile, writing in Vzglyad, commentator Vitaly Tretyakov called for “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” given that in his view, “Israeli military personnel have no honor” and are prepared to commit any crime, even though of course the Syrians not the Israelis shot down the Russian plane (vz.ru/opinions/2018/9/18/942270.html).

            And Col. Gen. (ret.) Leonid Ivashov, “an anti-Semite of longstanding,” Yakovenko notes, called for sending advance weaponry to Hezbollah so that that group could “destroy Israel.” In addition, he demanded that the Russian ambassador to Israel be recalled and the visa-free regime ended. His words were seconded by LDPR Duma deputies.