Moscow Newspaper Charges Israeli Tourists with Spreading Propaganda

A Moscow newspaper has renewed the Soviet charge that Israeli tourists carry out “Zionist propaganda” in the Soviet Union, Radio Liberty reported today.

Appearing a month after Khrushchev’s ouster, an article in the daily Evening Moscow also charged that a part of the Jewish population of the USSR has political contacts with Israel and conducts “nationalistic” propaganda on its own. The article described a purported operation involving two Israelis, and four Soviet citizens, one of whom was a staff member of a Soviet research institute.

The Israelis, identified as I. Oren and his sister L. Cherkasska, were alleged to have made repeated trips to Moscow, carrying “Zionist pamphlets, magazines and information bulletins.” They were accused of leaving the “propaganda materials” with a relative of theirs, B. Diskina, an employee at a Moscow scientific institute whose “Zionist past had enveloped her in its naphthalene embrace.” Thereupon, writes Evening Moscow, “the brothers of Diskina appeared very opportunely in Moscow: one from Tula, another from Leningrad and a third from Chelyabinks. They returned home loaded with ‘gifts.'”

“From the pages of these pamphlets and information guides protrudes the camouflaged attempt to separate the Jewish nationality from the friendly family of the peoples of the Soviet Union and to enclose it within the bounds of national isolation, customs and religion; and thereby to create propitious soil for the revival of Zionistic sentiments which have long been forgotten in our own country,” the Soviet newspaper wrote. Noting was said in the article about the fate of Diskina and the other “Zionists,” Radio Liberty said.