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5.0 out of 5 stars
Bonds that could not be broken, May 24, 2007
In 1983, Martin Gilbert, journeyd to the then Soviet Union, under the iron-fisted grip of Communist dictatorship, to meet the 'refuseniks', those Soviet Jews, whose application to emigrate to Israel, had been refused.
In this book, published in 1985, Gilbert tells us the moving story of the struggles of these courageous men, women and children, under conditions of extreme opression and persecution.
We learn of the brutal attempts of the Soviet authorities, to stamp out Jewish identity, and assimimilate the Jews, into the 'Soviet people' by force.
The Soviet medi was completely poioned by a daily barrage of hate-propaganda against Israel, and Jews were put under draconian pressure to renounce Israel, the homeland of their people.
In some places Soviet Jews, were accused of 'Zionist propaganda' because they recited the traditional prayer at Passover, 'next year in Jerusalem'.
To speak as a Jew, or for Jews, in any Jewish cause was dangerous. Thousands of Jews languished in cruel Soviet prisons and labour camps in Siberia, for practising their faith, learning Hebrew or indentifying with the Jewish State.
"Hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews were electrified by Israel's victory in the 1967 war. But it was the shrill Soviet propaganda about Israel's imminent and total defeat that that ignited the fuse of national identity. Some recall that this propaganda was so gloating in tone as to heighten to it's limit the sense of affinity with the apparently doomed State. From that moment, many Soviet Jews regarded Israel as their nation, and emigration to Israel as their national purpose".
It was in the Soviet Union that the propaganda so-beloved of the radical Left, today of 'zionism is Fascism', 'Zionism is racism', 'Zionism is Nazism', was incubated.
"Each week, and at times, almost daily, press articles, television programmes and wall posters portray Israel as a brutal, evena Neo-Nazi State. 'It is a deliberate attempt', one refusenik commented, 'to try to create a revulsion in Jewish minds, a revulsion against going to Israel'.
With the collapse of Soviet Communism, this sort of anti-Israel culture is now endemic in countries such as South Africa, and Venezuela, and on university campuses across the globe.
The Jews of the Soviet Empire persevered, and today hundreds of thousands have made their homes in the ancient Jewish homeland, Israel.
When the Soviets launched an Anti-Zionist Campaign, headed by vicious anti-Zionists of Jewish birth, that clamied that Russian Jews needed no outside defenders, the refuseniks clealry stated: " Yes we need to be defended. We have no other defenders besides our brothers who call themselves Zionists, brothers from whom you want to isolate Soviet Jews. You say we a re an inseperable part of the Soviet people, but we say we are an inseperable part of thew Jewish people".
Jewish communities in the diaspora, who are being put under pressure, by evil forces, to renounce Israel, should remember these words.
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