The Soviet propaganda against the Brussels conference which began weeks ago, went into top gear this week.
In almost a carbon copy of the Soviet attack on the first Brussels conference in 1971, “house Jews” were brought out to condemn the event.
A Tass dispatch quoted from numerous letters from Soviet Jews, attacking the conference. °We do not need any protection rights on the part of Zionist circles”, one is alleged to have written.
The. Kremlin also tried to make capital out the fact that there are a few Jews who wish to return to the USSR. These people have been waiting, sometimes for years, to go back after failing to make a go of it in Israel. The Soviet authorities deliberately prolong their wait until they are so desperate that they are willing to sell themselves at any price to acquire the right to return.
It was not surprising, therefore that the official Novosti press agency, staged a news conference last week for four Soviet Jews waiting to return to the Soviet Union.
On the eve of the first Brussels conference, three “official” Soviet Jews spoke at a similar meeting under the auspices of the Soviet-Belgian friendship society.
The most virulent assault this time has come in Soviet broadcasts to the Arabs to incite them to greater hatred of Israel. In a broadcast in Arabic entitled: “Dirty Zionist exploitation”, Leonid Medvenko commented: “Zionism is a chauvinistic form of racial exclusiveness, the aggressive doctrine of territorial expansion to build what is known as Greater Israel and the man-hating concept of genocide against those people who dare to oppose its creation”.
In defiance of the official propaganda, many Soviet Jews in Israel and the Soviet Union have spontaneously declared their support for the conference.
Jewish Observer 20 February 1976