ADL Charges Soviet Union Adopts Czarist Anti-semitic Position

The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith today charged that the Soviet Union is aping the anti-Semitic Czarist secret police with the release of a purported scientific study of Jewish influence in the United States.

According to Seymour D. Reich, chairman of ADL’s fact finding committee, the study–“International Zionism: History and Policy,” published earlier this year by the Science Publishing House–is “a modern echo of the anti-Semitic forgery, ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ and is equally fraudulent and malevolent”.

“What distinguishes this new calumny from previous Soviet works of the genre,” Reich said, “is the free use of the word ‘Jew,’ rather than ‘Zionism,’ in both the publication and a commentary by the official Tass news agency.” “Zionism” is the euphemism usually employed by the Russians to avoid the risk of being accused of anti-Semitism.

STUDY CLAIMS JEWS CONTROL U.S.

Reich noted this makes it obvious that the “Kremlin authorities have now dropped all pretenses and are adopting openly and flagrantly in a wide-spread propaganda campaign the anti-Semitic line that Jews control the United States.”

Earlier this month, Tass, the Soviet news agency, claimed that Jewish financial and political power in the U.S. and control of the major news media precluded any shift in American support for Israel. The Tass commentary, based on the Soviet study, appeared in the news agency’s French language service and was viewed as part of Moscow’s ongoing criticism of U.S. Middle East policy.

According to the study cited by Tass, “From official American data 20 percent of American millionaires are Jewish. Jewish capital plays a considerable role in banking, commerce and industry.” At another point, Tass said “The biggest group of Jewish capitalists in the world” are found in the U.S. it said “The Jewish Bourgeoisie enjoys strong positions in the American press, notably in the New York Times, Washington Post, the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC).”

According to the Soviet agency, “Jewish monopolists” provided a fifth of the campaign contributions to former President Nixon but “The Democratic Party has even closer links with Jewish capital.” Tass said the “Zionist lobby” was deeply entrenched and “It is for this reason, the Soviet experts state, that one must not expect a change in American policy supporting Israel.”

STUDY SEEN AS DANGEROUS PORTENT

Warning of the “ominous implications of this development,” Reich declared that “although few were fooled by the Soviet use of Aesopian language to disguise bias against Jews, the fact that even this verbal restraint has been discarded is a dangerous portent for its captive Jewish community and peace in the Middle East.”

He noted that the study’s so-called findings of Jewish control of banking, industry, the media and legislation were evidently released at this time in a widespread propaganda attempt to counter the harmonious result of the meetings between Israel’s Premier Menachem Begin and President Carter.

Reich said that this attempt is doomed to failure not only because there is “no factual basis to the insidious claim of pervasive and decisive Jewish influence in the United States,” but also because of enlightened American self-interest. “United States Middle East policy,” he stated, “is what it is because of the American interest in supporting the only democracy and stable government in the region. American interests and convictions, not Jewish influence, determine this policy.”