^{Credit: Chabad}

In 1945, the allied armies completed the much-needed pincer effect on the Nazi troops. Tens of thousands of Jews who were on the front line – Soviets, Americans, English and many others –embraced for the first time before the dead and survivors of the Holocaust. The facts were so dramatic and sentimental that Stalin since then poured out his fury against the most “cosmopolitan” faction of the USSR. Russians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Belarusians, Asians and others were praised in the East for their meritorious role in a patriotic war. The Jews were forgotten, and among them the first unfortunate ones who displayed their medals in Kiev and Moscow heard a terrifying question they would never forget: “Where did you buy these medals?”

Soon “Victory Day” against the Nazis began to be commemorated: on May 8 in the United States and May 9 in the Soviet Union and Israel. Thousands of soldiers and officers of the Red Army moved to the Jewish state after its foundation. From the USSR, that witnessed their departure, serious antagonism arose against the small state, as soon as it became clear this would not be a mere socialist fiefdom, but a country concerned with Jewish interests. With successive lies, aberrant propaganda, a torrent of money, intense training and intelligence services, the Palestinian identity was born, separate, and supposedly branching from the ancient Philistines. This was the first great Soviet invention, which had no correspondence with reality. Suddenly the newborn “Palestinian people” already had the “right to claim their own state, to free themselves from the Israeli occupation.” In addition, the outline of the founding letter of the Palestine Liberation Organization was drafted in Moscow and approved by hundreds of “Palestinian Che Guevaras,” selected one by one, by the Soviet political police. The same happened with the Palestine Liberation Army, created from within the KGB, because from day one the state of Israel showed great valor in its direct confrontation with more than a dozen hostile Arab and Muslim countries.

The “Palestinian cause” still presides over political debate today, and the fuse has become widespread. A fuse engendered by Soviet-style socialist-based comrades, some of whom drafted the very constitutions of their respective countries, documents they proudly call “fundamental laws” protected closely by magistrates appointed directly and indirectly by the ruling power. At the same time, pressure-driven elites rail every day against discrimination, but seem to forget that anti-Semitism is an attitude intertwined with a negative perception of a Jewish or Israeli person, of Jewish tradition, Jewish religion, Jewish culture, Jewish success and the Jewish state. Blacks, trans, gays, gypsies and Muslims preside over the hierarchy of oppression, which could not be more suitable to destroy the future viability of countries that in the coming decades will have to face ancient civilizations who are in coordination with one another. The Jews and, above all, the Israeli Jews have disappeared from the categories anointed with the right of protection. They were thrown headfirst into the “oppressive classes,” when in fact no other people are known have been massacred in such different places as Lisbon, York and Odessa. They are called white, when in fact they comprise all ethnic groups since Mount Sinai. They are said to be wealthy, although only a tiny minority among them possess real wealth. And it is said they are occupants of a land, a land from which they were forced to leave when Jerusalem, the queen of the capitals, became a tributary by dint of Roman brute force.

Today’s global anti-Israelism is entirely linked to the “Jewish question” and steeped in the way the USSR destroyed Jewish communities comprised of millions of people. This despite never officially banning Judaism or closing major synagogues, which in reality served exclusively as propaganda for a regime constructed on a materialistic axiological basis and excessively involved with the gains from Arab and Muslim countries. Let us look at what happened there and what light it sheds on the current situation.

To escape accusations of anti-Semitism within the international political press, Soviet government actions were directed exclusively at the destruction of the most important Jewish personalities and realities, one at a time, never two at the same time, however strong they were in terms of religion, culture and work, leaving only those that were less significant in Jewish terms, and could be used to the regime’s advantage. Everything that was good in Jewish religion, culture, works, and audaciousness was described as “immoral business,” while everything that was useless or inconsistent with Jewish values was described as good. The apparatchik always mollycoddled one or two Jews from the capital with connections to the party, or even to officials of the ruling political apparatus, putting in their mouths that there was no anti-Semitism and that “to say the opposite is slanderous to the Jews themselves.” There was always “a Jewish friend,” as if Adolf Hitler had not had them too! There is plenty of bibliography on this topic.

The Soviets constantly disseminated the idea that there was no Jewish problem in the country and that the empty synagogues of Moscow, Odessa, Kiev and Leningrad shone brightly. These were empty words that bore no relation to the reality of Jewish life. Those buildings were dead in terms of Judaism, and the representatives put forward to speak were nothing but puppets, manipulated to legitimize the persecution of people and groups that had been targeted for death. The Jew who was “liked” was not the traditional, productive individual, standing in the way of the ongoing cultural revolution, but the strawman at the service of the regime, the most secular, or the mad, mentally ill, or condemned. The system’s willingness to punish the “evil” Jews of each city, the “Netanyahus” of each community was total, all while claiming, like an angel that “even a Jew says . . .”

Soviet anti-Semitic work has always been carried out in three stages: defamation of the structure and leaders of synagogues through the press; mobilization of public opinion against the condemned community in turn; and finally, character assassination through the legal system that could not be more corrupt and unconcerned with the idea of justice, with total degradation of equity, independence, objectivity, impartiality and equal treatment of all. Invariably, the synagogues were invaded as if they were brothels and robbed of everything, acts which later were distorted in favor of the Soviet program.

Contrary to what is happening today in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, where Jewish communities thrive in the shadow of the Lubavitch Chabad, the socialist homeland made every Jew and every community a skeleton adapted to its interests. A tourist could take a photograph of the beautiful façade of the capital’s synagogue and perhaps even find a Jewish official willing to speak highly of the regime. However, Judaism was dead and buried in an immense territory of 22 million km2, because the persecutorial wave had been spread so loud and by so many voices simultaneously that temples were already seen by the public as black markets, causing individual neuroses throughout the Soviet Jewish community that did not want to be seen near such censured buildings.

The greatest figures in the community – invariably sold to the public as speculators, parasites and cheaters – had been so successively slandered and assaulted that they had lost their creative ability and inspiration to continue to produce Jewish life and create a solid generation of continuators. The servile press had used against them the erroneous suspicions of the authorities and the anonymous denunciations of the dregs of society, while opening the microphone of radio stations to specialized professional slanderers, who loved to connect anything that moved to illegalities. On the other hand, the angry anonymous writings, produced on demand, had been forwarded by the government itself to authorities whose leaders it had itself appointed, promoting the brutal slaughter of the strongest communities and their alleged “illegal” activities.

This was the terrible anti-Semitic game in the USSR, where it was impossible for the servants of justice to put their conscience above all, because economic dependence and a large network of interests and possible punishments had enslaved them. The functionaries who outdid themselves and wanted to have a voice ended up either without a career or were even executed. It is absolutely perverse how the Communists always corroded the system of justice before the Bolshevik revolution, because there have always been meritorious exceptions and even the Czars failed to confront several magistrates in their day.

The “party,” whether from the USSR or the Portuguese one, whose official flag is similar, has never said anything about these facts without serious adulteration. The latter has always been caustic to dishonor the centuries of Lusitanian history, in which the Jews participated, a story full of merits and triumphs, completely undoing the image of the justice apparatus of the past, especially that of the “despotic” monarchy. The Jews have a right to discuss all this, because for more than a millennium they lived in the lands that eventually became Portugal and the USSR. Free judges always existed. They could be part of the apparatus, but they were not slaves as in the homeland of socialism. What happened in Porto in 1618 is a significant example. All the forces that politicized society wanted the New Christians thrown into the pyre, but two men alone—the president of the Court of Appeal and the city’s chief magistrate—impeded the impetus of the Inquisition. They even ordered the siege of the Ecclesiastical Tribunal with guards on horseback, against the protests of the Inquisitor, who went to Madrid to ask for help from King Filipe, because he did not dare face the strength of good, courage, independence and sense of justice displayed by these two simple souls, whom history will forever uphold as great indeed.

Modern anti-Judaism and anti-Israelism are twins. The womb from which they awakened to life was Soviet, which soon denied Jewish and Israeli individuals and groups, the smallest merit and strength of their reasons. Even today, Soviet-inspired political societies do not value an Israeli winner or a traditional Jew with a synagogue, culture, science, business, and so forth. They are silenced and, when they cannot be silenced, lies are fabricated about everything they do. The focus falls on an alleged standard of living. The flag of privilege and injustice toward others is held aloft. Which others? Everyone.

It is unquestionable that each nation state can choose its elites and philosophies through its internal struggles, as a rule made up of betrayals and not of love of the people. But with such a reddish light, Israel makes no sense, and nor do the Jews. There is no other example in history of a people returning home after two millennia, much less when this had long been predicted by their prophets. In that sand, where a few decades ago poor people rode on camels, there is now a scientific power that drinks from the sea, thrives in agriculture and exports food, medicine, security and technology.

Surrounded by enemies since its foundation, trampled by noisy majorities on the stages of supranational political organizations, the permanent target of delegitimization, dehumanization and application of double standards, condemned by celebrities and boycotted in all forms, this very small nation without natural resources continues on its way without fearing anything or anyone. Many empires have disappeared before their eyes; Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Romans and all those that history has recorded up to the Nazis and the Soviets.

Something does not make sense according to materialistic philosophies. Perhaps there is a people with an existence that makes sense. Influence, settlements and bellicism cannot explain everything. Israel and the individual and collective Jew should have disappeared if only matter counted. But no. The Jew exists, lives, suffers, dies, and rises sustained in tradition and bringing their dead back to life – in memory, in identity, in strength, in prosperity and in courage. The same is true of the Jew of the nations, the state of Israel. If the current logic prevailed, Israel should not be as strong, nor blow up enemy missiles into the air, nor monitor in real time the security of the Jewish diaspora, nor document the most unbelievable devices, nor seek out Nazis thousands of miles away to bring them to justice. It does all this and is still evaluating producing legislation with extraterritorial application to combat global anti-Semitism that is practiced freely, and often in the most blatant way by the elites themselves, such as “Kill, kill!” which has so dishonored people, countries and civilizations of the past.

The main cause of the Jewish and Israeli question was always spiritual. The very symbolism of the state of Israel reveals the shield of David’s kingship and the candelabra that once stood in the Temple of Jerusalem. The materialist may think well and write better, but his bases are all wrong. He dreams of the boulders in space and attributes no logic or meaning to them. The materialist denies the rationality that surrounds the Universe, its meaning, its destiny. Altogether everything is reduced to weak assumptions about energy, history, ego, power, and justice. This is the creeping intelligentsia in which we live. This is the moral compass that tries to define reality in its own way. This is the amorphous mass that meditates on national interest in multiple countries. At no time does divinity cease to be a myth and Jewish success escape indifference.

The Kabbalistic sap of the Hebrew alphabet leaves bold marks in all civilizations. Emet (the word truth) stands upright, since it is written with two-legged Hebrew letters and it is enough to exist in order to be; sheker (the word lie) loses its balance, because it is composed of letters with only one leg and requires constant balance and maintenance, obsessive insistence, theatricality and unfolding in the emotion of hatred; and matará (the word intention) reveals how and to whom the last fruit will be served.

When the North American and Soviet nuclear scientists first met and gathered, the possible kinship between the heads of the delegations, both Jews named Winkler caused discomfort. And as someone once said at the UN, “We were here before you, we will be here after you.”