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Moscow Intensifies Anti-israel Drive; Says U.S. May Give Rockets to Israel

December 18, 1958
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The Soviet delegation to the United Nations today distributed propaganda here charging the United States and Britain with arming Israel in preparation for “aggression” against the neighboring Arab countries.

The United States, according to the material disseminated here by members of the Soviet delegation, is conducting negotiations with Israel to equip the Israel army with rocket installations. Britain is charged with selling Israel not only submarines, but also radar equipment, helicopters, jet aircraft, heavy tanks and other armaments valued by Soviet authorities at $140,000,000.

“Military facilities are being built in the Negev desert in the immediate vicinity of Arab territory,” states a Soviet tract handed out today to delegation members and correspondents at the United Nations. “The United States intends using this area as a testing ground for rocket weapons,” it adds. It alleges that Israel, the United States and Britain are planning anti-Arab aggressions.

Similar allegations were voiced by the Moscow Radio last Friday. The Moscow broadcast said Israel is “viciously subservient to dying imperialism.” It contended that the United States and Britain were both giving top priority to stepping up arms shipments to Israel.

At the same time, the Moscow broadcast urged the Soviet people to read the anti-Israel book, “The State of Israel, Its Position and Policy,” just published by the state-owned Soviet Political Literature Publishing House. The broadcast also asserted that Israel’s 1948 war for independence was “not really a war between Arabs and Jews, but actually a war which was provoked by foreign imperialists who were striving to retain their positions in this part of the world.”

WEST BUILDING UP ISRAEL’S MILITARY POTENTIAL, MOSCOW ALLEGES

Parallel with the Moscow broadcast in the Russian language, the Soviet radio also carried a broadcast in Arabic beamed to the Arab countries. The broadcast dealt with Israel’s complaint to the United Nations Security Council against the recent Syrian shelling of Israeli villages.

“It is obvious that there is a strong desire to give the events on the Syrian-Israeli borders a wide international significance,” the broadcast said. It claimed that “it was the Israeli frontier guards who began the exchange of fire.”

Asserting that” the West is devoting great care to the strengthening of Israel’s defensive potential,” the Soviet broadcast told the Arabs that “recently, a large number of Israelis arrived in the United States, France and West Germany for military purposes” and that “the Israeli Chief of Staff went to France on a secret mission.”

“If war between the Arabs and Israel should break out again, the United States would try to benefit from it for the purpose of realizing its aims after declaring that the situation threatens world peace and makes Western armed intervention necessary,” the Soviet radio “warned” the Arabs.

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