Posted on 04/11/2018 8:55:14 AM PDT by GoldenState_Rose
The highest-ranking intelligence officer ever to defect from the Eastern Bloc says the Soviet Union orchestrated an anti-American and anti-Israeli propaganda campaign in the Middle East four decades ago -- and the effects of the effort still reverberate.
The Middle East was a key battlefield in the Cold War, and Moscow spent considerable resources courting Arab states in the region and vocally backing the Palestinian cause.
Humiliated by the defeat of the Soviet-backed Arab states in their 1967 war against Israel, Yuri Andropov devised the operation to discredit the Jewish state and present Zionism as "Nazi-style racism" while at the same time restoring Moscow's stature in the region.
The authors claim the operation, code-named SIG, was launched in 1972 and involved sending thousands of agents of influence into the Arab and Islamic world to foster anti-American and anti-Israel sentiment. Some of the agents were drawn from among the Muslim minorities of the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries.
But "Disinformation" adds some shocking details that don't appear to be corroborated elsewhere.
For example, Pacepa and Rychlak write that the KGB facilitated the translation and distribution of thousands of copies of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," a forged tsarist-era, anti-Semitic pamphlet that purported to describe plans for Jewish domination of Europe.
The KGB assisted and trained groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in planning and executing terrorist attacks.
"The cumulative effect of the portrayal of the United States as a criminal Zionist surrogate should have made some dent over more than two decades. After September 11, 2001, thousands of Palestinians danced in the street for days in a row to celebrate the glorious victory over the American evil."
"Tsarist anti-Semitism spawned the pogroms. Nazi anti-Semitism engendered the Holocaust. Soviet anti-Semitism generated today’s international terrorism."
(Excerpt) Read more at rferl.org ...
you telling me McCain is a russian operative because he supported Jihadis ?
and Ronnie R. too because he supported Afghani jihadis in the late 1970s ?
LOL
Fake news and fake academics.
Who knew the attacks on Byzantium were preceded by the cold war?
Terrorism is rooted in the Koran.
Since the koran put murder in the hearts of musselmen for Jews and Christians this was low hanging fruit for the Soviets and the Nazis.
This article’s premise is only half-true. The Soviet Union supported Shia Islamists (Iran) against the US and its allies. The US supported Sunni Islamists (Afghan Mujahadeen and their Proto-Al Quaeda Saudi patrons) against the Soviets and their allies.
We supported Israel. Plain and simple. Even as UK/Europe had abandoned it.
That is America’s main legacy in the region and its what grounds us moving forward.
The preoccupation with Iran's brand of Islamism while turning a blind eye to or supporting Sunni Islamism reflects this skewing of priorities. Iranian clerics have Israel as their main target. Wahhabi Sunni clerics have Europe and America as the main target of their hatred. None of the 9/11 attackers were Iranian or Shia. Neither were any of the ISIS-inspired recent attacks on America or its NATO allies.
Saudi Arabia was definitely touched by Cold War.
Fast forward to today: I trust Trump’s navigation of US/Saudi relations. And this new Saudi prince on the scene...he’s an interesting one. For now he irks me less than Assad/Khomeini/Erdogan.
Reagan wasn’t president until 1981, so your timeline is a little off.
And there are those who will tell you that support for the Afghani jihadis in their fight against the Soviets was more the work of Dem Congressman Charlie Wilson than Reagan or anyone in his Administration. We still believed in budgeting via the Congress in those days, and he was the man who made the money flow.
https://www.amazon.com/Charlie-Wilsons-War-Extraordinary-Congress/dp/0802143415
A bestseller in the Arab world to this day is “Mein Kampf” in Arabic, first translated by the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1930’s. It is logical that the Soviets would continue to use it to foment anti-Israel hatred following their loss of billions of rubles’ worth of equipment in the desert in 1967.
“O Hitler! O he of blessed memory!” is a phrase often uttered in Gaza & elsewhere every April 20th.
Mein Kampf and the koran are parallel books with the same message.
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