Israel’s 1967 victory triggered the Soviet campaign equating Israelis with Nazis

Evidence

Until the Israeli victory of 1967, however, the problem of Zionism in the U.S.S.R. was manageable, and individual suppression sufficed. The Israeli victory in the Six-Day War generated enormous enthusiasm among Soviet Jews and a certain amount of sympathy even among Soviet non-Jews; for the first time, Zionism was seen as a serious problem, comparable with other nationalist move­ ments which had plagued the colonial administrators of Tsarist Russia and their Soviet successors. The results were immediately visible in a vehement campaign of abuse, particularly in the attempt to equate the Israelis with the Nazis as aggressors, invaders, occupiers, racists, oppressors and murderers. Some of the literature produced at the time in the Soviet Union and its satellites was anti- Semitic and not merely anti-Zionist, sometimes even resorting to such classical themes as the world Jewish conspiracy and the use of Gentile blood for religious purposes. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1370

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• QUESTION: This is a chilling early example of the ‘Zionism equals Nazism’ rhetorical conflation that has since spread globally — worth investigating how this Soviet-era propaganda template diffused.

Related

• Israel’s 1967 victory triggered Soviet anti-Zionist demonization of the classical anti-Semitic type (similarity 0.91)
• Soviet anti-Zionist racism charges derived from earlier pan-Turkism and pan-Iranism attacks. (similarity 0.79)