The Honest Take

THT Izabella Tabarovsky — corrected transcript
English (US)

00:00:00.000 — 00:00:31.240 · Izabella Tabarovsky
And I realized that the language that was coming out of campuses at that point was like 99% identical to the language the Soviet Union had produced in the wake of the Six-Day War. Once you proved that the Zionists are like Nazis, then everything else becomes possible. Everything flows from there. Because who are Nazis?

Nazis are the secular devil. And so if you could prove that Jews are the devil, then you can essentially charge them with anything and people will believe it.

00:00:34.600 — 00:00:55.520 · Ben Chertoff
Welcome to The Honest Take, the show that goes past the headlines to find out what's actually true about Israel, and about the people covering it. I'm Ben Chertoff, and my guest today is Izabella Tabarovsky, a historian of Soviet propaganda, who went looking for the paper trail behind the slogans on American campuses and found it.

00:01:00.020 — 00:03:13.210 · Ben Chertoff
In 2018, Izabella Tabarovsky saw students on an American campus holding signs. Zionism is racism. Israel is an apartheid state. Something about them seemed off. A recognition she couldn't place. So she called her father and he said, look, we've heard all of this before. Now, every conversation I've had about where campus anti-Zionism comes from ends in the same place.

Postcolonial theory, Foucault, Derrida, Fanon — a family tree of ideas. Tabarovsky points somewhere else entirely — not influence, not descent. The same product built on purpose by a state and shipped because the Soviet Union didn't just dislike Israel, it assigned the problem to institutes and told them to build a scientific sounding case against Zionism.

Footnotes. Endnotes. Citations to Hannah Arendt. Citations to Herzl. So Tabarovsky sat in the National Library of Israel and checked them one at a time. The footnotes are fake. Real quotes turn to mean the opposite of what they meant. The scholarship was never the point. It was the costume. And today we follow it out of Moscow and into a UN resolution, into Mahmoud Abbas's dissertation, into an American Communist Party book that somebody quietly re-serialized for young readers one month after October 7th.

And then the part that makes this urgent. This isn't a museum piece. There's a socialist revival in American politics right now, and the rocket fuel underneath its ascendancy is anti-Zionist activism. The DSA platform puts Gaza in the same paragraph as your rent is too high. Izabella Tabarovsky grew up inside the system that wrote that sentence first.

She's a fellow at the Wilson Center, a senior fellow at the Z3 Institute, a contributing writer at Tablet Magazine, and the author of Be a Refusenik. Izabella Tabarovsky, welcome to The Honest Take.

00:03:13.970 — 00:03:15.730 · Izabella Tabarovsky
It's great to be here. Thank you for having me.

00:03:15.770 — 00:03:38.290 · Ben Chertoff
Thank you for being here. I want to start before we get into the anti-Zionism part that we're going to talk about. For most of this, I wanted to start with your story and what it was like for you. I mean, I'm sure we could spend a podcast talking about this specifically, but what was it like for you growing up in Siberia behind the Iron Curtain?

00:03:39.770 — 00:07:09.360 · Izabella Tabarovsky
So, you know, I always say, I always start by saying that I was born in 1970. I'm not. I've long abandoned any embarrassment about dating myself because I want people to understand the era that I grew up in. Born in 1970, in the say in the the suburb of Novosibirsk. Novosibirsk is a pretty big industrial city in Siberia, but we lived in its suburb, which was associated with science.

There was a university, there were a lot of research institutes. It was known as Academy City and we lived there. I lived there until around 87, when I moved to Moscow to go to school, to college for two years. And then in 1989, we emigrated. So this was my life. I was sort of I called myself sometimes the last part of the last Soviet generation, you know, coming of age during perestroika.

And then essentially, you know, if we hadn't left, I would have seen the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. You know, it was a very Jewish city, but Jewish in what sense? There was nothing, uh, that you would associate with Judaism. There were no synagogues. There were you would never see any signs of you wouldn't see a mezuzah on the door.

You wouldn't see anybody wearing, you know, kippahs. But there were a lot of Jews in Soviet science, and so we were surrounded by other Jewish families whose only identification who's who had very strong Jewish identity. But if you asked any of us what it really meant to be Jewish. I don't know if it would have been if we would have been able to really answer this question.

Certainly not my generation, because by then Jews had been so profoundly assimilated, especially in, in in a place like this that was dedicated to science, you know, where there had never been a very strong Jewish community or history before, you know, in Ukraine or in the Baltic republics, where there had historically been large Jewish populations, you still had people who spoke Hebrew, you still had people who went to synagogues or who remembered what it was like to go to synagogue.

Where I grew up. There was none of it. And so, you know, I often say that growing up as a Soviet child, at that time, we all kind of learned, imbibed the dogma that the Soviet Union was a country where that consisted of many different peoples nationalities. They all had their traditions. And I could probably tell you, you know, I could talk to you about Uzbek cuisine, or I could probably dance a Ukrainian dance for you.

I could describe a Belarusian national costume. But if you ask me, what about any of this is related to Jews? I think I would have been surprised to hear this question. It just wasn't part of my awareness that being Jewish entailed anything special about it. And so essentially, my Jewish identity was based in the in the knowledge that being Jewish meant that I was different and that it made me open to anti-Semitism and in particular, um, some teasing from children in schools or people in the streets, but also and less so in the school for me, because again, because it was a very heavily Jewish place.

But but in the streets, you certainly heard it sometimes. And then when entering college then that I knew that there I faced an obstacle just because I was Jewish.

00:07:10.000 — 00:07:31.920 · Ben Chertoff
Yeah. You had written that the math division of the Academy was that that anti-Semitism was a fact of life. I mean, how how does that phrase work out in, in practical reality? And did everyone know about this or was this just Jews kind of felt it and other people didn't weren't conscious of it?

00:07:32.680 — 00:09:38.390 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Well, so the math department, you know, it's a really interesting point, actually, because it tells you that, you know, there was a policy of essentially state, uh, state driven anti-Semitism in the country, state sponsored anti-Semitism. But the way it was implemented in every place was a little bit different, and it depended on who was in charge.

And so the people in charge of the math departments of the field of math studies in the Soviet Union at that time were known for not loving Jews. And so and this I actually learned more about it already after I left. There were there are other people who've published really excellent research about it. Uh, Jewish kids, when they wanted to enter math departments in at universities, were given problems, special problems at the entrance exams that were known as coffin problems.

They were known as coffin problems because they would bury you. Now, you could ask again, how would the the commission, the entrance commission at the university know that you were Jewish because you're not wearing a kippah. You're not wearing tzitzit. How do you know that? Well, first of all, your documents, your internal documents said that you were a Jew.

But not every Jew's document said that they were Jewish. And sometimes people managed to, you know, to change that. But really, you were recognized as a Jew basically by your facial features. And sometimes it's, you know, for Americans, sometimes it's hard to understand. I often say it to, to Americans that they would say, well, what do you mean?

What does a Jew look like? And and it was, you know, in the USSR, you were just if you had those kind of stereotypical Jewish features which you could call Mediterranean features, you would immediately be recognized as a Jew. So anyway, so Jewish students would be given problems that often did not really have a solution, like super, super hard problems.

So this is how they would control the number of Jews that would enter the profession.

00:09:38.590 — 00:09:45.250 · Ben Chertoff
It's it it is outright racism is what it sounds like. I mean, what Americans would, would understand as racism.

00:09:45.890 — 00:10:28.090 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Well, that's exactly right. And you know what's interesting about your Jewish. What was interesting about our Jewish identity at the time is I think it was very much, you know, in the absence of any other knowledge, religion, history, language. You know, when you are recognized as Jewish from your face, it essentially becomes a racial identity.

You know, it's the only identity you have. And it created, you know, when we moved to the US, it took a little bit of time to realize that actually, in America, it works differently. And, you know, for me to start developing a thicker Jewish identity and to start learning, uh, because, yeah, the difference was very, very radical in how you identified yourself.

00:10:28.130 — 00:10:49.820 · Ben Chertoff
Yeah, it was it was a state imposed identity as well. I mean, as you said, it was on your documents. It's it's my understanding. And this might be simplifying the whole thing, but it said on on Russian passport, Soviet passports that Jewish instead of whatever nationality you were. It literally was your identity.

00:10:50.420 — 00:11:17.660 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Well that's right. And I should say that everybody, you know, the Soviet state was really obsessed with all the different nationalities and ethnic groups that that the country was made up of. And it was really important for the authorities to know who belonged to which nationality or ethnicity. And so everybody's ethnicity was stamped on their internal documents, on their internal passport, but only for Jews.

It was essentially a a

00:11:18.700 — 00:11:25.100 · Izabella Tabarovsky
mark that opened you to discrimination at various various places at various stages of your life.

00:11:25.500 — 00:11:40.220 · Ben Chertoff
Was this, in some ways an extension of the 19th century anti-Semitism that so many, so many Jews fled from in the Pale of Settlement? I mean, is there a through line from that?

00:11:41.720 — 00:14:42.010 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Well, I think it's complex. I think, you know, at the grassroots level, uh, kind of grassroots anti-Semitism. Yes. For sure. There is a through line from there. You know, in terms of state policy, um, it's complex because the Bolsheviks actually came to power announcing that they were against anti-Semitism, you know, Lenin said that, you know, anti-Semitism belongs with the ruins of the old world, you know, socialism.

He believed that or announced declared, uh, you know, in theory that socialism was going to, that anti-Semitism would wither away under socialism because socialism, right under socialism, everybody is equal. Uh, socialism doesn't tolerate any form of racial or any kind of discrimination. And so, as I said, anti-Semitism would just go away, which of course it didn't, you know, but but then the Bolsheviks were also at the same time, were anti-Zionist, and the Soviet state was always anti-Zionist.

And I think that this is where the some of the complication begins. You know, so so they weren't against Jews as Jews, although they did expect Jews to to assimilate. They wanted them. They planned to. They thought that Jews. Jews aren't a nation. They said that was based on Marxist thought, because Jews, we don't have to get into it.

But they said the Jews are not a nation. They don't have their own republic. So, for example, let's say Ukraine or Tajikistan or Georgia, you know, that's a nation, you know, that's a people that lives together. They speak the same language. They, um, you know, they have they share territories. Okay.

That's a nation. Jews don't have any of it. So they're not a nation, so they just need to assimilate. Uh, and that was the plan. What starts, really, is fighting Zionism. Fighting Zionism proactively. Once it becomes. Once they start viewing Zionism as a serious ideological enemy, then that also influences the authorities view of Jews.

Because essentially then all Jews become suspect of Zionist loyalties. And and that's why that's why, you know, at the time where I was born, when I was born, at the time when I was growing up, that was really the idea. You know, it was important for them that I was Jewish because they viewed Israel as a American puppet in the Middle East and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Again, we can get into it. But but they just didn't they didn't want Zionists. They didn't want Zionists in their academy or in any positions of power, certainly not in positions of influence where they might be interacting with foreigners, because that could be really dangerous. So. So this is, you know, that's what, uh, it's a mix of, uh, motivations.

00:14:42.690 — 00:15:01.130 · Ben Chertoff
So you've written about the concept of doublethink, which I think people who, you know, from Orwell would, would, would remember that term. How did that how did that manifest in, in a real life situation as somebody growing up with it?

00:15:02.250 — 00:17:34.180 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Yeah. Well, and and I'll say that Natan Sharansky wrote also extensively about it. Um, look, how did it manifest? Uh, you know, so in my family, you know, it was very typical that, for example, I would come home and I would tell my parents what I had been taught in school, and then my dad would give me a lecture about, uh, the truth, you know, about what was really, in fact, true as opposed to what I had been taught, you know.

And so. So then you hold within you these two stories, you know, so at school, you can't really share what you've learned at home because you know, that it's, you know, it's not as dangerous as it would have been under Stalin, but it's still not something that would be welcome, you know, and you might get punished and you might get shamed in front of everybody.

You might get laughed at. And so you just keep quiet about that, you know. And so that creates sort of this doublethink, you know, and like all Soviet children, I went through all these stages of young, um, at first you join, uh, there are different youth organizations that you join when you grow up. The children of the of October, basically.

That's before you become a pioneer. Then you become a young pioneer, then you become a member of the Komsomol. Um, and, you know, throughout all of it you are given certain received truths about communism and the Soviet Union. And so you take all of that on and you wear all the symbols that are associated with it, like the red scarf that the pioneers wear or the special pin that the Komsomol members wear.

Uh, but, you know, but but you don't take any of it seriously because you know that all of it is a lie. And so you come to all these meetings, all these young precursor to party meetings, right? Young Komsomol members get together. They're supposed to solve all these crucial questions facing the Komsomol youth.

But you're sitting there and you you know, obviously you didn't have iPhones then, but you're just you're daydreaming. You're you're reading a book or you are, you know, secretly corresponding with a friend in the back, you know, so so this is what it is really. You never really betray who you are. And it's like everybody knows by then, you know, 70s and 80s, everybody already knows that.

No one takes any of it seriously, but you still keep playing the game. And so that's really what it is.

00:17:34.220 — 00:18:36.600 · Ben Chertoff
So let's get into this Soviet origins of modern anti-Zionism. So like most people, myself included, have understood this as something that kind of descended from Soviet propaganda, that it was a recycled thing or a product of it, an echo. But reading your work and especially your your essays in Tablet, like your Zombie Anti-Zionism piece, it it seems like it's something much more direct that this is actual Soviet propaganda that was transmitted to the West in the 70s, 80s and 90s and has, I guess, more 70s and 80s and has like found a found a footing and metastasized.

And now we're seeing the actual Soviet propaganda still alive today. Can you explain that through line and how like how unified that thread is?

00:18:37.960 — 00:23:57.320 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Sure. So I should probably say how I first started researching it because it's it's relevant. So I came to America in 1990 and I spent some 20 years in America not thinking about anything related to anti-Semitism. I never experienced it really at all. And until one moment I think it was around 2018 when I suddenly on more than 20 years, this is more than 25 years.

And when I suddenly saw an item on the news, uh, with young people on, on a campus carrying signs that said Zionism is racism, Israel is an apartheid state. And it was the first time that I saw something like that uh, in America. And it's, uh, you know, it's sort of it triggered some kind of memory or some recognition which I couldn't really put my finger on.

Um, and so I called my dad and told him about it, and I said that, you know, they, by the way, they're also saying that they're not being anti-Semitic. They're just being anti-Zionist. And I'm telling him this not because I'm telling him this. Because I'm trying to understand what is it that I'm recalling?

You know, what is it that I'm really why why does this seem so strange? And I immediately associated with with something anti-Semitic or an anti-Semitic expression. And my dad said, look, we've heard all of this before. You know, this is so it was the first inkling that I had that this was something that had a Soviet connection to it.

And so I started looking into it, and I noticed and I realized that the language that was coming out of campuses at that point was like 99%, uh, identical to the language that the Soviet Union had produced in the wake of the Six-Day War. And my next thought was that, you know what? You don't just reinvent language like that from scratch, you know?

My thought was that there must have been a link. There must have been channels of transmission, because you just can't. It's really idiosyncratic language. You know, the language that equates Zionism with imperialism, colonialism, racism, fascism, Nazism, all the things that we're hearing today.

It's you don't just reinvent it. Um, and and so I identified, in fact, there were channels of transmission that for the Soviets at some point, Zionism becomes a really kind of they view Zionism as a really dangerous ideological enemy, and they invent this whole story around what Zionism is, how Zionism is in cahoots with, uh, the Soviet Union's greatest Cold War enemy, which is the United States.

And so a whole set of sort of this conspiratorial views about Zionism develops. They charge a number of academic institutions with developing theories that would support these ideas, to make it look scientific, to make it sound scientific. They develop relationships with other institutions abroad so that they can jointly keep developing these theories.

And I should say that, you know, the Soviets didn't just invent this on their own. There were, I think, that there were kind of two way. The influence was two ways. So they were with different with different groups and, and organizations and constituencies. So we know that the Soviets were very close with the Arab states.

And the Arab states, of course, had their own anti-Zionist propaganda, their own ideas about Zionism as colonialism. And we know that, at least in some cases, Soviet propagandists were borrowing from Arab propaganda. But and I think now that they probably also borrowed. It's like it's not only that leftist intellectuals took ideas from the Soviets.

I think leftist intellectuals also produced their own ideas that the Soviets then took on and integrated into it to their whole, you know, perspective on Zionism. But what they did that was so powerful is that they kind of melded it all together, processed it, and and turned it into this unified view, essentially, of the evil of Zionism, and then sold it back to the world as something really, well, kind of streamlined and developed with well-developed slogans and memes and tropes and stories.

And because their power was really in having this access to, you know, this massive propaganda machine and having influence in, in multiple, many, many organizations and countries throughout the world, you know, because after essentially when Khrushchev came to power, they set themselves the goal of, um, bringing the newly independent post-colonial states into their sphere of influence.

And they do it very successfully, to the detriment of the United States and the West. They have enormous influence in the UN, so they work through the UN. We, of course, in 75 the the resolution equating it with racism is adopted. So they're working through left wing parties, communist parties and just left wing parties in the West and elsewhere which they finance.

These parties publish their own, um, have their own publications which from 1967 begin to publish.

00:23:59.400 — 00:24:43.020 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Articles about Zionism and Israel that very much speak in this, in this um, uh, Soviet idiom. So, uh, so these are, these are the many kind of channels of influence that they use. You know, they bring together young people to various youth festivals where they also introduce anti-Zionist slogans, uh, you know, with participation of prominent people like Angela Davis, you know, who, uh, condemn, uh, Israel and extol Palestine.

And obviously, Angela Davis is still with us. And there are others like that. So so this is, you know, it's it's a very complex, uh, uh, process that they engage in order to demonize, uh, Zionism in Israel.

00:24:43.060 — 00:25:30.630 · Ben Chertoff
It's it's astounding how much energy to that the Soviet Union put into this that they, they had, uh, it was a directive on further measures to fight anti-Soviet and anti-communist activities of international Zionism. And out of that came a commission for the scientific criticism of Zionism. I mean, this was, uh, one of the things that I found fascinating in your writing is how you talk about the way that social sciences were used as political weapons.

And it especially as an antecedent of what we're seeing today in the academy. But can you can you explain that, um, that Soviet method of using the social sciences in that way?

00:25:32.230 — 00:26:19.490 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Sure. Well, so first of all, the Soviets, um, in general viewed social sciences as their, um, I guess, you know, they they didn't view them as sciences in the sense that they're supposed to pursue truth, right? That they're supposed to explain reality and find answers to crucial questions in the most truthful way possible.

They were supposed to serve the socialist enterprise and whatever ideology they were pursuing in any given moment. So, uh, philosophy was very much, uh, under the heel of the Communist Party. Uh, sociology, history, essentially all of these, uh, sciences, which is why they had very few Jews in them,

00:26:20.690 — 00:29:13.900 · Izabella Tabarovsky
because Jews were just not trusted enough. Or if they were there, they essentially were forced especially to perform certain ideological tasks such as, uh, you know, attacking Israel specifically from using their Jewish identity, which sounds so familiar to us today. Yeah, but but yeah, once they identify Zionism as a particularly dangerous ideological enemy, which happens after Israel's victory in the Six-Day War, they appoint several, uh, institutions, what we probably would call today think tanks, uh, which again, not real think tanks.

They're there to provide kind of policy advice and foreign policy advice. Uh, that would be that would serve the Communist Party. And they set up a special, uh, department to deal with Israel, but again, not to understand Israel, but to develop this kind of the ideology that would justify what the propaganda is already saying.

And so there is. Look, when you are an employee of the state and your salary depends on the state, and your well-being depends on the state, the well-being of your family depends on the state. You know, we were talking earlier about doublethink. It takes an exceptionally independently minded person to say no to ideological demands.

And basically you could do that. And but you would have to know that this would basically be the end of your career. Again, these are not style in these times. Nobody is going to take you out and execute you, but you would lose your job, you know, or something worse might happen. You may get harassed by the KGB if you're particularly stubborn.

They may put you into a psychiatric institution, uh, you know, to treat you against your wrong ideas. You know. So? So it's dangerous. It's very dangerous. Nobody wants to risk that. So a priori, when you enter these fields, you have to agree that you're going to toe the line that the state assigns you. And and then, you know, when you look at the anti-Zionist literature that these institutions were producing, it's really interesting.

They look like bona fide academic volumes. You know, they have footnotes and endnotes. They have all these scientific, scholarly kind of explanations, scholarly language. And when I first started reading them, I saw I spent a lot of time with them at the National Library of Israel, where there is a ton of this literature.

And when I first started reading them, I saw that they would sometimes like they would reference Hannah Arendt or they would reference Herzl, they would reference all these, you know, you could see that they were they had access to commentary. They would reference something that they read in commentary.

00:29:14.940 — 00:31:23.370 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Yes, it's very interesting that the guys at Commentary would be delighted to hear that. But what? So. First of all, this told me that these are the people who wrote these books, had access to literature and journalism that were not available to everybody else. And this is in fact, true. You know, we know that historians, Russian historians who have looked at the archives, uh, tell us that, yes, this group of scholars that were supposed to justify the anti-Zionist policies of, of the Kremlin had access to special collections of books and journals and magazines.

But then I would look at the footnotes and I would say, see, you have to be a real nerd to do this work. I would look at the footnotes and I'd be like, well, is that really is that really what Hannah Arendt said? Is this really what Herzl said? Is this really what this or that writer said? And so I started checking the original sources.

And so what you see there is that the footnotes completely distort the source material. So they would take out or they would take a quote out of context. And, and so that in their interpretation, the quote means something completely different from the way it is. It was meant by the original author. And so the method then emerges.

You know, you could ask, why did they need all these footnotes? Why did they need all these notes? They could just write whatever they wanted. But no, it was important for them to look scholarly because I think they were addressing themselves to educated people, but they were also and they were also addressing themselves to foreign audiences, to foreign academics, to foreign journalists.

And so they wanted to look, you know, scholarly. It was very kind of for socialists. Like, Soviet socialism was very scholarly. It was supposed to be scholarly, scientific. And so they create this whole, um, you know, this whole like, huge lie, basically that's built on distortions and decontextualized quotes and footnotes, etc..

And this is really how it was built.

00:31:23.410 — 00:31:46.090 · Ben Chertoff
I found it astounding to learn that Mahmoud Abbas, who is now the head of Fatah, had done his own studies in these very institutions and wrote his dissertation on this specifically. And, as you said, using the same sort of like deep, decontextualized quotes.

00:31:46.610 — 00:32:12.030 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Right, exactly. So yes, he, uh, came he studied at the Institute of, um, the Patrice Lumumba University of Friendship of the Peoples. And a lot of times, people who write about it make a mistake here. They say that he defended his dissertation there, but that's actually not the case. He was accepted there because that was kind of the central place where promising

00:32:13.070 — 00:34:51.700 · Izabella Tabarovsky
members of the pro-Soviet elites were brought in and educated and propagandized. But at the Patrice Lumumba, they didn't give. They couldn't. You couldn't defend your dissertation, your doctoral dissertation. There. He defended his dissertation at the Institute of Oriental Studies, which was at the time headed by Primakov, who was a Soviet spymaster and Arabist and expert in the in the Middle East, in the Arab world, and specifically the issue that was specifically part of that cohort of institutions that was tasked with creating scholarly justifications for, um, for the anti-Zionist propaganda.

So what's interesting about his dissertation is, you know, this is here's another kind of, Um, fact about the mechanics of how it was done. When you look at the people who were in his dissertation committee who essentially approved his dissertation. You look at them and you look at their backgrounds, and you see that none of them are experts on Jewish history, on the Holocaust and World War two, on Israel.

They're essentially all of them are Arabists. So they assign an Arab revolutionary fighter to a group of Arabists to approve his dissertation. But his dissertation is actually about Jewish history. It's about the founding of the state of Israel. It's about the Holocaust. It's about World War Two. And what happened to Jews then.

And it's a complete distortion, and it's a distortion that follows directly what Soviet propaganda said about said about all of those issues. So it's, you know, we don't know who actually wrote his dissertation. Uh, some people say he did it himself. If he did it himself. You know, again, it was an amazing act of a replication of what the Soviets said.

You know, you look at his references and it's all of the Soviet anti-Zionist literature, some of which is openly anti-Semitic. I personally don't believe that he wrote it himself. I mean, it was written. You know, it was written in Russian. Originally, it was written in the exact idiom that the Soviet state used a I mean, it could be that that he, um, he probably participated in it, but then he had helpers who helped him frame it in the kind of idiom that would make it acceptable to the Soviet establishment, the Soviet academic establishment.

So, uh, so yeah, it's a really interesting example.

00:34:51.740 — 00:35:34.360 · Ben Chertoff
Yeah, especially with the doublethink because, you know, here's Abbas, whose lineage stretches back to the Mufti and, um, you know, actually who actually had his connections to, well, very close connections to Hitler. And then, you know, Abbas is writing about how Jews are the actual Nazis. A lot of that goes back to the, um, the conspiracy theory involving Eichmann, which is kind of the distortion of desperate Jews trying to get Jews out of Germany that was then turned into this.

What is it an idea that that Jews created the Holocaust or Jews had?

00:35:35.880 — 00:38:19.690 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Well, right. Not Jews, but Zionists. This is what's important to the Zionists, right? The Zionists collaborated with the Nazis in the Holocaust. So this is how the Soviets and also Abbas interpret this whole, um, you know, time period when the Nazis come to power and the Zionists in the, in the Yishuv, essentially the Jews who are in the in pre-state Palestine, the establishment, the institutions are trying to help the German Jews out there negotiating with the Nazi regime for it to release some of the Jews.

And so this gets interpreted as collaboration, right? But but of course, there is a big difference between negotiating for somebody's release and collaborating with them. And his dissertation also retells the story of Kastner, which is in in an extremely distorted way, which, you know, Kastner was just was a Hungarian Jew, a member of the Zionist group in Hungary who was trying to save Jews from the Nazis.

And, you know, it's a very painful and complex story. Obviously, a lot of Hungarian, most Hungarian Jews perished in Auschwitz. So there are a lot of accusations of that. Kastner actually saved his own. And and he could have saved many more. So it's a very painful point for the Jewish people, you know, and the Soviets understood very, very well that you can use this kind of moments of fracture.

Right. This painful points where the truth isn't where things aren't black and white, they can take it and tell the story in a tendentious way. That and then weaponize it against the people themselves. Right. And so so instead of this having been said of this being a tragedy, it's presented as an act of intentional treachery and intentional collaboration with the Nazis, again, in an attempt to show that, and this is really the point of Abbas's dissertation, is that Zionists collaborated with the Nazis, and it's really important for the Soviets to, uh, to they repeat this point again and again and again.

And I think that this is kind of the original and most important libel leveled against Zionism, In my view, because once you prove or if you manage to prove that the Zionists are like Nazis, then everything else becomes possible. Everything flows from there. Because who are Nazis? Nazis are for, you know, it's like the secular devil.

And so if you can prove the Jews are the devil in a secular way, then you can essentially, you know, charge them with anything and people will believe it.

00:38:19.730 — 00:38:29.210 · Ben Chertoff
It also gives you a powerful method to divorce anti-Semitism from anti-Zionism, because you can say, well, look, there are the anti-Semites, which is.

00:38:29.250 — 00:38:29.930 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Exactly.

00:38:30.130 — 00:38:32.050 · Ben Chertoff
Mind warping wild.

00:38:32.050 — 00:40:06.040 · Izabella Tabarovsky
But yes, that's exactly right. And, you know, another really interesting thing in the as I was reading the dissertation, I came across a passage that I also had seen it in other Soviet literature where they would say, uh, so Zionists had a right to go into concentration camps and ghettos and pick out who they could take with them to Palestine.

You know, and I was like, what are they talking about? What is this? And then I understood. I looked at the names that they were referencing and essentially. And basically these were Jews who were part of the Judenrat, you know, the Jewish councils. Why did they call them Zionist? You see, here's another sleight of hand.

Why don't they just call them Jews? They call them Zionists because before the war they participated in the Zionist youth movements. You know, at some point these were very widespread, right? But when they put it this way, that these were Zionists who had access, access to the ghettos and, and you're like, wow, uh, you know, if you if you are not the kind of nerd that wants to go and look at the footnotes, then, uh, you know, then you're like, wow, look at that.

The Zionists really collaborated with the Nazis during the Holocaust. So it's it's like it's, you know, it's these it's this classic propaganda technique when you take, uh, you know, you, you insert a lie into a context that is true and recognizable. And because the context is recognizable, you then think you believe the lie as well.

00:40:06.520 — 00:40:21.200 · Ben Chertoff
It has so much echoes of every other conspiracy theory where you take these little bits of anomaly and then, you know, that's that's all your foundation, and you ignore all the fact and evidence around it.

00:40:21.640 — 00:40:22.080 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Exactly.

00:40:22.120 — 00:40:37.640 · Ben Chertoff
You talk a lot about and we've talked here about the inflection point of 67 and the Six-Day War. Politically, what about 67 really made that change? And was there any of this anti-Zionism present beforehand?

00:40:38.760 — 00:47:35.960 · Izabella Tabarovsky
So so anti-Zionism really was always there. It just changed its colors, you know, so it's um, it changed with times and rulers and, and ideological priorities. So the anti-Zionism of early Stalin and Lenin was different from the anti-Zionism of late Stalin, and it was different from the anti-Zionism of Brezhnev and Andropov, who was the head of the KGB, who became the head of the KGB right after.

I believe right, right — right before the Six-Day War in May of 67. Uh, so, uh, this the Six-Day War becomes this turning point in many ways, because the Soviets by then have already been the allies of the Arab states, uh, for and the benefactor, really of the of the Arab states for, for a very long time from the 50s.

Uh, and they are, um, arming and financing and training, uh, the armies of the Arab states. And so throughout that whole spring of 67, as you know, there are reports of growing, uh, a growing threat of confrontation and growing tensions. Soviet papers are essentially — they're certain that Israel will not withstand an assault because they know how much had been invested.

And when Israel wins. It really creates a crisis in Moscow because they suddenly they can't really understand. How is it that such a small country could win against, you know, these big Arab states, which they know how much they invested in them? Um, and, you know, and then the this the secret services, the KGB, essentially, and all the various intelligence agencies, uh, begin to connect the dots.

You know, and I always say that we have to understand that the Soviet state, the culture of the Soviet state, the political culture was fundamentally prone to conspiracy theories as any kind of totalitarian or highly authoritarian state where citizen citizens are not really part of the political process and the political process is not transparent to you, right?

That already creates preconditions, really favorable conditions for conspiracy theories. Again, this I think the fact that Zionists had always been under suspicion and in the late Stalin period, it was especially become became this. That's when you really start to see conspiracy theories about Zionism forming and becoming a weapon in the that the state wields against the Jews and Jewish intelligentsia.

Um, you know, all of that sort of comes together. So they, they look at Israel and then they look at America and they say, well, surely Israel couldn't have won on its own. America must have helped them because. Which is not true. In 67, America didn't help Israel. But they look at America and they say, look at America.

There are so many Jews there, and there are so many Jews in positions of power there. Look at all the synagogues. And every synagogue has an Israeli flag in it. And look at Jews in the media. Look there. They have Jews in politics and have Jews in the banks. So clearly, you know, Jews have power, but most importantly, Zionists have power.

You know, they don't really. They try to avoid talking about Jews as Jews, uh, because they understand really well that that makes them sound like the Nazis, or it makes them sound like the, you know, the conspiracy theorists of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. So they they're very careful to talk about Zionists.

And so they say, look there, they're Zionists in America. Uh, so clearly they helped, uh, Israeli Zionists win the war. And then there are other things they see. So 67 is a turning point in other ways also. So 67, the Six-Day War becomes an awakening for Soviet Jews. For many Soviet Jews who suddenly awakened to the realization that being Jewish actually means something, right?

It's not just having this nose that identifies you as a Jew immediately. It's not just about being discriminated against as a Jew. You're also you are also associated with the state that's out there somewhere. It calls itself a Jewish state. And it creates kind of this burst of pride for many Jews. You know that Sharansky writes about it very beautifully, but also, you know, all the the people, the Soviet Jews of his generation.

You know, it's basically my parents generation. Everybody I talk to, they all say, yeah, that was a real turning point we all expected. They say that if Israel lost that there would be a massive pogrom, that we would essentially be there would be violence against us. But because Israel won. It was interesting.

It had this like everybody sort of all of the like everybody stood away and suddenly looked at them with respect. they suddenly said, well, you were Jews. You were associated with Israel. Okay, maybe we respect you. And so there is this sudden burst of pride, and the movement for emigration is born and a movement for ultimately, this movement really was about Jewish identity.

When, you know, a group of Soviet Jews decides that they want to recover their the real meaning of their Jewish identity, and as they do that so that that's already very suspicious to Soviet, to the KGB. Uh, but then something else happens. They see that a movement in support of Soviet Jews arises in the United States, in, in the UK, in France, in, in, in Australia.

And this movement for Soviet Jewry gives them a few other points, conspiratorial points to connect your points to connect in a conspiratorial way. They say, look, this is this is what we're seeing internally is clearly being inspired by foreign intelligence services because they are trying to undermine our country from within.

They are trying to undermine the unity of our country. And so this whole movement for Soviet Jewry, there's no such thing as a grassroots movement. It's obviously inspired by Zionists, and it's Zionists trying to undermine our country because Zionism is anti-communist. It's anti-socialist. It's anti Soviet Union.

So this whole, you know, this this is the conspiracy theory that Zionists are everywhere, that they seek to undermine the security of the socialist bloc. They are they walk hand in hand with America. And so this is this becomes kind of the beginning of, of this massive propaganda campaign because they, they think, okay, well, if Zionists are everywhere, then they need to be fought everywhere as well, with all means at our disposal.

00:47:36.000 — 00:47:50.740 · Ben Chertoff
Can you talk about that pipeline? Because as you describe it in your essays, Like there, the Soviet anti-Zionism propaganda machine was so prolific. And how did that get pushed to the U.S.?

00:47:51.340 — 00:49:21.439 · Izabella Tabarovsky
So the Soviet Union financed CPUSA to the tune of millions of dollars. Toward the end of the Cold War, uh, CPUSA published a number of uh journals, magazines. And if you look, for example, at their publication, Political Affairs, you can see it was their theoretical publication. You can see how the tone of their of how they discuss Zionism in Israel changes in 67.

So before 67, the word Zionist, let's be clear about it. But the tone is not hysterical. You know, the tone is kind of normal. It's like, okay, so these people are against Zionism. I understand why there is they have their own logic, you know, it's fine. After 67, it acquires that demonizing tone that the Soviets are now, uh, kind of piping, uh, piping out through every channel that they have.

And, uh, there's a really interesting episode associated with CPUSA. Uh, the in 1973, which which actually brings us to the present moment as well. So in 1973 or even in the early 70s, there is an operative, uh, whose name is Hyman Lumer, uh, who is also who's a very senior party functionary and also an editor of, of Political Affairs.

Uh, writes a memo. He goes to Moscow, uh, to attend a

00:49:23.040 — 00:54:41.220 · Izabella Tabarovsky
congress on Trotskyism, and he writes a memo to his handlers in Moscow and says, I'm coming for this, uh, for this symposium. And I would like to would you facilitate some meetings for me that would help me understand the Soviet position on Zionism, because I would like to write several articles about it for Political Affairs, and I would like to write a book about Zionism as a, as an enemy of socialism, basically.

So it's a memo that's declassified. We have it, it's translated into English. And clearly the answer is yes, because very soon after that, articles do appear in Political Affairs about Zionism, that speak in that Soviet language. And a book does appear about Zionism, I think it appears in 1973, which references some of Soviet literature and speak in that language, that Soviet language expresses the Soviet point of view on Zionism.

Um, on the. In November of 2023, about a month after October 7th, I came across a series of three articles on a website that was clearly some kind of a descendant of that of one of CPUSA's publications, which basically serialized that book that Hyman Lumer wrote in the wake of his visit to the Soviet Union.

And the editors presented, as you know, here's here's a book that was written in the early 70s. Obviously, a lot of things have changed, but we think it's really important for our young readers to understand this view on Zionism. And then they present the kind of the condensed version of that book. So this is a very direct way in which basically the exact Soviet propaganda is now reaching young people, uh, young, young people who may be interested in understanding what's going on.

But in many ways, you know, they so in many ways, look, the influence of the UN, uh, the UN was very much under Soviet influence. Uh, again, that that resolution equating Zionism with racism was incredibly influential. And the Soviets, it took about ten years for the Soviets to bring the UN toward that point to adopt that resolution.

They first introduced this language in 65. So, uh, you know, so to this day, uh, the the left refers to that resolution and says that, look, the UN declared Zionism is racism. Uh, and even though it was repealed when the Soviet Union fell apart, they they discounted they don't think it's important. Uh, they think it's important that it did declare it.

And the whole anti-Israel attitude at the UN that also begins very much under the influence of the Soviets and their Arab allies. Right. Again, it's not just the Soviets, it's that it's the whole geopolitical game. Right? The Arabs, the socialist states and the Soviet Union in the heart of it. And then there are people who were very close to the Soviet Union, like Angela Davis, like people who were around Corbyn in the UK, for example.

Um, you know, they were very much some of his advisers and some of the British, like George Galloway, you know, people who have actually said in the last decade or so that they regret that the Soviet Union fell apart. You know, these people were part of that ecosystem. So the Soviet Union built a leftist ecosystem, um, in support, not just in support of its anti-Zionist propaganda.

Right. They there were bigger goals. There was bigger fish to fry. You know, it was all in support of the Cold War goals, right? anti-American, anti-Western. And so the anti-Zionist part kind of got worked into that propaganda and into that ecosystem, and it became a package. So if you were a leftist already by the early 70s, the the far left in all its diversity, communists, socialists, Trotskyists, the New Left, the Black Panthers, they are all speaking in this specific anti-Zionist language, this demonizing anti-Zionist language and and observers at the time notice it.

And they already say in the early 70s that this whole anti-Zionist language, it's new anti-Semitism already. Then they say it. And so my theory of it is that basically the far left adopts this language back then and it becomes part of its worldview. So if you are a leftist, you, you know, there's a package of causes that you adopt.

So you must declare yourself anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, anti-racist and also anti-Zionist. And so I think essentially from that time on, this this is kind of the creed. It remains that way, you know, and what I often say in my lectures is that, look, the left is very diverse, the far left is very diverse.

And there are some doctrinal points that they disagree on very vehemently. And left wing academia has developed new theories. Right. We now have intersectionality, there's critical theory, there's all kinds of permutations of all of this. But the language of anti-Zionism essentially remains the same.

That's what I find so extraordinary.

00:54:41.260 — 00:55:07.300 · Ben Chertoff
Not just that, but anti-Zionism is the like the unified theory, the unifying cause of everything where you have, you know, as you mentioned, the the left and especially the far left does have, you know, they're trying to build a big tent coalition with different, different points in there and disagreements, except for anti-Zionism.

That's the like. You are you are not. You're off the ticket if you support Israel.

00:55:08.020 — 00:55:09.140 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Yes, exactly.

00:55:09.180 — 00:55:36.550 · Ben Chertoff
And can you talk a little bit about that? The idea, I mean, I think you talked about or quoted Natty can talk about how Zionism plays the bugaboo, um, of, you know, in Africa, it's apartheid. In Latin America, it's imperialism. Can you like. That is such a foundational part of today's anti-Zionism.

00:55:37.470 — 00:57:20.010 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Well, that's exactly right. So as the Soviets develop their anti-Zionist propaganda in the 70s and 80s, they realized, like good marketers, right, that you have to adjust your language to your target audiences. And so if you speak to the leftists in and just broader audiences, you know, which they, interestingly enough, begin to identify at some point as progressive humanity, you know, so so the communists, there's communists, but they understand that they want to be reaching broader people.

So progressive people are the people who, you know, understand the world in their terms, who stand against America and the West and etc.. So they understand that if you equate Zionists with Nazis, it's really understandable in Europe, right? The Europeans immediately get what it means. But if you bring it to Africa, for example, it perhaps touches fewer emotional chords than in Europe.

But what touches stronger emotional chords is if you equate Zionism with racism and apartheid, because they understood that at some point the Palestinian cause is very new and they're trying to make it understandable to different audiences. And so they say, well, look, you know how, um, what's happening in South Africa that's apartheid.

It's terrible. Right? Well, this is what's happening to Palestinians in the in Israel. So they begin to make this equation as a way to make the Palestinian cause understandable. And so some of their early players that they targeted were anti-apartheid activists on the left. So they would make that equation.

So, yeah, so they would adjust the language to uh, to specific groups that they're targeting.

00:57:20.170 — 00:58:09.910 · Ben Chertoff
One of the, one of the things that I find fascinating about your writing, especially when it when it speaks to the modern academy in the US. Like other conversations I've had with guests about anti-Zionism in scholarship, it usually goes back to, well, this is, you know, the anti-colonial theory or it's Foucault and Derrida, but it seems like it's it's I don't want to say sinister, but it's a much more intentional, um, theory, not theory, but it's a much more intentional propaganda that comes from the Soviet Union.

I mean, is that your read, too, or is there some. Is it all mixed up? Is there some of one in the other together?

00:58:10.950 — 00:58:11.830 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Well, look, I think.

00:58:11.830 — 00:58:13.350 · Izabella Tabarovsky
All of it, uh.

00:58:13.390 — 00:58:51.999 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Works together and builds on each other. Again, I don't want to make it sound like the Soviets controlled everything. They didn't, of course, but the influences were there. You know, there were a lot of left wing intellectuals who were part of these kind of pro-Soviet circles. You know, the thing that I find unsatisfactory about the postcolonial theory explanation is that it doesn't explain how it is that the language, the specific language of demonization is, is, is born.

And why does it sound exactly the same way as the Soviet language did? I think that

00:58:53.240 — 00:59:43.620 · Izabella Tabarovsky
what makes sense to me is that the anti-Zionist feeling and anti-Israel feeling was already there, and the language was already there, and when the postcolonial theory comes, it all kind of merges together. You know, the post-colonial theory says what it says. And look here we have this example of a settler colonial entity, Israel, with all of the language that goes with it.

Because if you look at Fanon, for example. You know, everybody says, look, Fanon, that's the beginning of everything. But you look at fanon, you know, The Wretched of the Earth. There is nothing there about, you know, Zionism or Israel demonization of of of these two. It doesn't say anything about that.

So so again, the theory doesn't quite explain, uh, the, uh, the language, the appearance of the specific language of anti-Zionist demonization.

00:59:43.620 — 01:00:09.780 · Ben Chertoff
So in 2023, as, as this anti-Zionism was really exploding into more of the mainstream, um, there was a group called the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, and its advisory board doesn't explode, but its advisory board jumps in numbers. It almost doubles. Judith Butler is now on it. Um, and

01:00:10.940 — 01:01:03.800 · Ben Chertoff
you know it as you explain it. It really goes back to that idea that, um, Zionism is everything kind of thing or and that Guatemala's agriculture and North Korea's policy is all influenced by Zionism. It's it reminds me of, you know, Matti Friedman wrote his essay on cosmology, and there's a book called what Is it like?

Uh, you know, Gaza and the destruction of the Earth. Is there any other philosophy or like, unified theory of everything that is accepted in the modern academic discourse? You know, like, I feel like it's it's so preposterous, it's almost laughable to see, like, we're going to put everything into this one basket like it's our messianic cause.

Um, like, how does that happen?

01:01:04.760 — 01:01:05.920 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Yeah, well.

01:01:05.920 — 01:02:48.230 · Izabella Tabarovsky
That's a very good question. I'm not sure I have an answer to it. I do know I do hear my academic friends grumble that, um, you know, that there is a lot in the academy today, the academic theories that, um, kind of, um, that attempt to say to see, uh, similarity everywhere kind of unify everything into one thing, even when these things are completely different.

Um, so but I'm not sure I know, uh, what else is out there? I'm very tempted to say that it's pretty unique to, um, to to the treatment of, uh, Zionism, Israel and in general, Jewish topics, you know, which is where it's like the conspiracy theories are so readily available and they seem so right. I do think here that some of these tropes and, and understandings are kind of lodged so deeply in our collective unconscious that it's just really easy to reach for them and to see these connections where there actually aren't any.

Where you arrive at the idea that if ultimately the idea there is if you if only we solve, if only we crack the Zionism problem. Basically, if only we do away with Zionism Israel, then everything will magically get solved. All the problems around the globe will find magical solution, and then finally there will be peace on earth.

Um, and it's obviously, uh, illogical thinking. And I think it's really interesting that it's become so dominant today.

01:02:48.270 — 01:03:06.070 · Ben Chertoff
Yeah, especially in academia, where people should theoretically know better. Do you think Judith Butler? Well, I you know, I don't want you to have to speak for Judith Butler, but do you think that group understands where their philosophy comes from, where their talking points originated?

01:03:08.630 — 01:03:54.570 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Well, I really don't think so. I think that they will reject it if they heard it or thought about it. You know, the left is quite, um, resistant to reflecting on its path, on its past. I found it's certainly very resistant to reflecting on its past failures, of which there are many. If it were different, then we wouldn't have this explosion of of socialist and communist politicians because people would look back and say, wow, look, the first time around this was tried.

It created quite a disaster. Um, but yeah, I don't know. Yeah. I don't want to speak for her, but I think I would be surprised if she wanted to acknowledge that.

01:03:54.970 — 01:04:22.020 · Ben Chertoff
How does it feel to you, having grown up in that, in having grown up in a socialist society behind the Iron Curtain to see, uh, somebody like Zoran Mamdani here in New York touting free grocery stores in the same breath that he's saying that he's going to arrest Netanyahu. Two things that are, you know, somewhat preposterous when you think about them from from a rational standpoint.

01:04:23.380 — 01:06:08.820 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Well, you know, when he announced with great fanfare his grocery stores, state-owned grocery stores, I immediately went and looked at their press release. And because, you know, 30% discount, I mean, that's a pretty significant discount. So I thought, okay, well, probably this will be this. This has got to be targeted to New Yorkers who truly can't afford groceries.

So there will be some kind of limitation based on income. And so I look at their press release and I see that they say it will be open to everyone. And so then immediately, you know, it's just like it just takes a split second. You know, my Soviet experience just comes into play. And and I immediately think of all the ways of arbitrage of how this system can be gamed.

You know, I again call my dad and I tell him about it and he is like, well, they they will have empty shelves within five minutes. You know, it's like it's so immediately clear to all of us. And I'm sitting there and I'm like, why is nobody asking him about it? But later on, people began asking him about it.

So and it turned out that there will be some element of control to these stores. Uh, but yeah, it's you know what? What I feel the most is frustration. Frustration that it's like, we've done this before. You know, a different country has done this before. We fled that country. Look at the millions of people from the USSR, from, you know, from Venezuela, from Cuba, who have arrived in America and don't want anything to do with socialism.

Why are we repeating it here in this country? That's really the feeling that I have.

01:06:08.820 — 01:06:45.220 · Ben Chertoff
One of the things that you wrote that I found very illuminating was when you talked about how Soviet or the history of the Soviet Union in the United States now is not really taught anymore that we see it as, you know, communism was the opposition to McCarthyism. And so it's like it's it's very compressed.

It's very like almost marginal, like like this poor, oppressed communist ideology in the US. Like how much of what we're seeing now is a failure of education, do you think? And what what's missing from that?

01:06:46.500 — 01:07:17.710 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Well, I think I think it's a big part of it. You know, look, I think we all look at things from our own kind of angles, and I'm very interested in education. And I think, um, you know, whether education alone would have been enough. I don't know, but I think it's it's it's a big factor. It's it's an important factor that has played into the fact that so many young people apparently think that socialism will be great, and they're ready to try and implement it in America.

01:07:18.990 — 01:09:28.870 · Izabella Tabarovsky
You know, when I come to speak to to young audiences, I can see that they really know nothing. They they have absolute lack of knowledge about the Soviet Union. And sometimes, actually, it's worse. Sometimes they think that the Soviet Union was a force for good. And I think, you know, it's it's a it's a real issue.

You know, it means that they won't actually talk about America as a force for good. Uh, you know, I think look, I think that democratic countries and countries, free societies and America in particular, are very good at criticizing themselves, a self-criticism, and I admire it. You know, I actually remember when I first came to this, to the US, I was astonished at, uh, at the freedom with which people were criticizing their own government and all its failures in newspapers and television.

And it made me think that, wow, this is a country that's really confident of itself. You know, because you really have to be very confident to not be afraid of criticism. And this was a stark contrast for me coming from behind the Iron Curtain. And today, I think that, you know, criticism is important, but I also think you need to to be taught.

And remember, you need to remember the good parts. And my feeling is that people haven't been really people have been brought up in this mode of criticizing their own country and, and kind of challenging Cold War narratives. That's a big thing that's challenged the Cold War narrative during the Cold War.

The Soviet Union was our enemy. The challenge that, you know, let's see if that was really if it was so terrible. So. Okay. So it's it's good to think differently and it's good to challenge. But but is there some stable actually some you need some stable narrative there that tells you what is the basis what is your foundation.

What do you view as as kind of positive a positive force in general and the negative force? And I think that is that kind of balance and standard kind of inner standard is missing and absent.

01:09:28.870 — 01:09:57.670 · Ben Chertoff
So earlier this month you wrote about everybody's favorite streamer. Now, um, Hasan Piker that uh, that socialism. And I'm quoting certainly the Marxist-Leninist variety that he follows makes anti-Semitism inevitable, no matter how much its devotees condemn it. Um, how does that work? What what makes that inevitable?

01:09:59.110 — 01:09:59.910 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Well.

01:10:00.230 — 01:11:02.380 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Look, I was just speaking from my own experience. Because if you if you look, look. He's following Marxism-Leninism, right? Uh, Marx, uh, has that, uh, infamous essay On the Jewish Question where he condemned Jews essentially as this petty bourgeois merchants who are driven by this petty kind of considerations, greed, etc..

So that essay actually had a big influence on on left wing intelligentsia. So that's already there. And then the obsession with, uh, with Zionism that ultimately, uh, has been part of the socialist experience. Uh, look, you look at the experience of Jews under socialism, and you can't come to any other conclusion, but that historically, this is what we have had, that Marxist-Leninist socialism creates and creates anti-Semitism.

Um, so this is why I, you know, certainly for Hasan.

01:11:02.700 — 01:11:03.260 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Piker.

01:11:03.260 — 01:11:12.660 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Who is obsessed with Zionism and Israel and demonization of Zionism and Israel. I mean, that's just the that's just anti-Semitism right there.

01:11:12.700 — 01:11:21.660 · Ben Chertoff
It's funny you mentioned Marx and, uh, his anti-Semitism, which is very rampant. Um, but

01:11:23.140 — 01:11:56.140 · Ben Chertoff
do you like and I think you make this case that that the language that is used the same way that for Marxists historically, you know, capitalist was kind of interchangeable with Jew. Um, that we have these same kind of tropes coming today where you have, like the Epstein class and it's again, that like your landlord, the same way that the DSA platform now puts Gaza in the same paragraph as your rent is too high.

I mean, is this the same thing again?

01:11:58.080 — 01:11:59.280 · Izabella Tabarovsky
I think so.

01:11:59.640 — 01:12:00.280 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Um.

01:12:00.440 — 01:12:04.720 · Izabella Tabarovsky
You know. I mean, the thing about this moment is that we have really the.

01:12:04.720 — 01:12:06.160 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Full, uh.

01:12:06.160 — 01:12:18.320 · Izabella Tabarovsky
bouquet of anti-Semitic, uh, tropes across the aisle, right on the left and on the right. And, you know, in, in my view, and in kind of in my research, I,

01:12:19.360 — 01:12:39.560 · Izabella Tabarovsky
I believe that this, this form of anti-Zionism, uh, is inevitably anti-Semitic because it's grounded essentially in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, in the same tropes that are expressed in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Right. They repeat the tropes that the Soviets land on.

01:12:39.960 — 01:12:40.320 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Uh.

01:12:41.640 — 01:16:20.020 · Izabella Tabarovsky
First, during late Stalin, uh, the anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic campaigns, but also later, after 67, the tropes they land on replicate the tropes of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. They replicate the conspiracy theory, and that's why. So even though the Soviets are using the word, the words Zionist and Zionism and Israel all the time, and only very rarely and mostly by mistake speak about Jews because they are using the same tropes.

They inevitably land in the territory that is recognizable to any anti-Semite on the right as anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. Which is why, you know, we have this strange phenomena, you know, which actually predate October 7th. You know, as soon as Ilhan Omar, for example, was elected, we see David Duke praising her.

Right. We see the British right-wing neo-Nazis essentially praising Corbyn for their anti-Zionist positions. You know, so it's very interesting. And it would be comical if it weren't really tragic, actually, how the left spent so much time trying to prove that it is only anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic, whereas the far right doesn't care.

You know, they're ready to. They're like, oh, sure, Hadamar is a Zionist. Great, because it's the same thing. They get it. They hear the language, they hear the tropes, they hear their motifs. Fine. Use the word Zionism. Avoid the word Jews. We know what you're talking about, you know. And this goes actually to the to the question of why I think that the Marxist-Leninist version of socialism will always produce anti-Semitism.

It's again, it's because of their fixation on Zionism as an enemy, as this comprehensive enemy of everything. And I'll add something else here from history that it's not actually accidental, that Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda replicates the tropes of the protocols of the Elders of Zion. Because if you look at the people who devised it, they, you know, connects to the doublethink that we were talking about earlier.

You know, they spoke. They served, uh, the Soviet establishment. And so overtly they had to speak that Marxist, late Soviet, Marxist-Leninist language, but they themselves actually belonged on the Soviet far right. There was such a thing. There was, you know, Soviet conservative opposition, uh, that very much instead of looking to the West the way liberal opposition did it, they looked to this to the Russian past for inspiration.

So to the Orthodox Church, to the monarchy, they wanted to restore all of that. And and part of all of that was anti-Semitic beliefs. They read all of this anti-Semitic literature that was published before the revolution. And so essentially what they did is they sold the Soviet state anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, which they expressed in the language that was acceptable to the Soviet state and ultimately to the global left.

So the foundation is the same, and it's recognizable to anybody who is familiar or is inclined to anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. And that's why, you know, we have this blossoming of conspiracy tropes on both the left and the right, because once you start infusing, uh, the, the tropes into the system, as the left has now been doing for many, many, many years, it opens all the floodgates.

01:16:20.060 — 01:16:28.220 · Ben Chertoff
Were you surprised when you saw, uh, Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson trafficking in the same language that the left is?

01:16:29.260 — 01:16:30.420 · Izabella Tabarovsky
I have to say.

01:16:30.420 — 01:16:31.460 · Izabella Tabarovsky
I was like.

01:16:32.820 — 01:16:34.980 · Izabella Tabarovsky
That. That was just, you know.

01:16:36.140 — 01:16:37.740 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Yes, the short answer is,

01:16:39.380 — 01:17:10.960 · Izabella Tabarovsky
the short answer is yes. You know, because especially with Candace, I think she began she was the first one. And I could not believe my eyes when I saw a post. This is a few years ago. I think it's before October 7th. I it's hard to say now. Everything is a blur at this point. Maybe not. But anyway, she she posted something about Bolshevik, the Bolshevik conspiracy theory, which is like the most debunked

01:17:12.000 — 01:18:10.620 · Izabella Tabarovsky
anti-Semitic conspiracy theory ever. You know, it's a conspiracy theory that postulates the Jews were behind the revolution, that they wanted, essentially, that this was a genocide of the Russian people. You know, this like the there's the Russian nationalist, right? It's like it's it's favorite theory.

It continues to espouse it to this day. But historians have like looked at it from the factual standpoint and debunked it. And here comes Candace Owens. And in the year of, I don't know, 2000 or whatever, some recent year expounds this theory to her millions of followers. And she adds that Stalin had Jewish wives.

And I am just like, what is this? Why is this happening? This is a nightmare. And and of course, it has continued since then. And yeah, then we have Tucker. Yeah, I mean, I my emotions are hard to really convey in one word.

01:18:10.660 — 01:18:26.980 · Ben Chertoff
Are you worried, seeing that this is coming out of the DSA so strongly where we have, you know, the the far left wing of the Democratic Party seems to be very ascendant. And and the rocket fuel for their ascendancy is,

01:18:28.060 — 01:18:36.660 · Ben Chertoff
uh, you know, anti-Zionist activism and that messaging. How how worried are you about that ascendancy?

01:18:37.980 — 01:18:41.180 · Izabella Tabarovsky
I am extremely worried about it. Um,

01:18:42.620 — 01:20:40.850 · Izabella Tabarovsky
yeah. It's, uh, it's extremely worrying, uh, also because the Democratic Party, such as it is, you know, the mainstream. Let's let's put it, mainstream. Democrats don't seem to be putting up a whole lot of resistance to that, except for a couple of people. And I find it extremely concerning. I think what they're probably thinking to themselves is that they they want to ride this wave, uh, the energy, the enthusiasm that these candidates seem to be generating.

But what they don't understand is that if they're hoping that after the election, once they're in power, they will be able to, to, um, uh, to kind of bring them to heel. I don't think they understand what they're dealing with. Um, and I'm worried also, uh, because again, look, the, uh, once you are in this realm of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, as I, as I was just saying, now, you know, it doesn't just stay on one side of the political spectrum.

It spreads through society. Obviously now we have a chunk of of. A constituency on the right that are very much into anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, which, by the way, they're also often expressed in anti-Zionist terms. Um, and then, you know, you read about anti-Semitic sentiments just spreading like wildfire among young people, among high schoolers.

It's like it's the cool language. You know, it's fashionable, like fashionable language. And it's extremely concerning. Look, it's not only about Jews. You know, if it were like it, it would be enough, uh, if if Jews were the only target here. But, you know, Deborah Lipstadt talks a lot about how anti-Semitism is extremely toxic to democracies.

You know, it undermines democracies. It's, um,

01:20:41.890 — 01:21:38.110 · Izabella Tabarovsky
you know, if you if you believe that Israel controls the electoral process in America, that Israel controls the White House, that Israel has the power to force America into its wars. Well, then why even bother voting? You know, why would you even vote? It's like somebody else is in control. You you know, you are in this territory where you start to lose agency as a citizen of a democratic state.

So, so yeah, it's and it's also a tool of um. Again, Deborah Lipstadt says there's a lot that anti-Semitism is a favorite tool of autocracies that they deploy against democratic states to stir up trouble. Right. To stir up discord, to create divisions between us and, uh. Yeah, it's it's.

01:21:38.150 — 01:22:06.120 · Ben Chertoff
I it's it's funny. Ruth — Ruth Wisse was on Habib's podcast, Rutgers Podcast, recently. Talking about how anti-Semitism is not really has nothing to do with Jews. It is instead a political technology to advance your own agenda. And when and then I'm reading your essays, it just seems like the anti-Zionism piece is is right down that same like theory.

01:22:07.360 — 01:22:42.620 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Well, I agree with that. Certainly to to considerable degree, it can be used as a tool that's completely separate from your own feelings about Jews, which is why when people say that anti-Semitism, when people define anti-Semitism strictly as hate, it's it's a mistake. You know, it's a limited understanding of anti-Semitism.

You, you know, it's extremely tempting for social media entrepreneurs, you know, for budding politicians, for anybody who is looking for big following to just jump on this wave, and then you immediately

01:22:43.780 — 01:23:26.740 · Izabella Tabarovsky
gain so many followers and you probably have money thrown at you. You monetize your accounts. Uh, so yeah, it's a very useful tool. It's a topic that creates, uh, you know, stirs deep and dark emotions. And again, in today's world, there are a lot of states that are trying to undermine the West and the United States, undermine us, kind of demoralize us.

Right? It's the the question of ideological subversion. Uh, and so then they jump on on that as well and start supporting anything you, any anybody says on the topic. So yeah, I can imagine that. It's extremely, um, it's extremely tempting, uh, as a tool.

01:23:26.780 — 01:23:52.840 · Ben Chertoff
So what do we do? You know, Holocaust education was kind of the the main vehicle for education about Jews and anti-Semitism for decades. Now, clearly, as you've written, that doesn't inculcate against anti-Zionism. Um, so what is what is the solution is is there? I mean, I'm sure it's not an easy one, but is there one?

01:23:54.840 — 01:24:12.200 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Well, you know, there isn't a fast solution. That's. I think that there are solutions. Um, and I think we are at a state where at a stage where kind of we're all offering different solutions. We're all looking at things through our own perspectives.

01:24:12.520 — 01:24:13.400 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Um, I.

01:24:14.120 — 01:24:45.370 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Yet again think that education is important. And by the way, the Holocaust education can be useful as well, but not in the form in which we have done it until now. Um, I do think that we should be educating young people about, uh, about anti-Zionism, about Zionism, about Jews. Uh, more broadly, you know, there are whole talks about how we need to be educating people about Jewish civilization.

Um, I think

01:24:46.850 — 01:26:54.530 · Izabella Tabarovsky
there is this term or this idea of prebunking, uh, where you expose people, young people especially to, um, ideological to these toxic ideological ideas. It's like inoculation, you know, before they kind of enter the big wide wild west of, uh, of the internet to show them how propaganda works, how some of the ideas are used to, um, you know, for propagandistic purposes.

I think that that's, uh, that's useful. I know that some people are working on that. Uh, but more than anything, I think it's education. Education about communism, about communist, uh, track record, about the Soviet Union and totalitarianism more broadly. I think all of that is helpful. Again, these are not fast decisions.

These are not fast solutions. But I don't think we can solve this problem through talking points. I think it will take much, much more than that. I think for Jews it will take a deepening of of their identity. And, and I think more broadly for Americans, I think we need to, um, you know, you know, the one silver lining maybe about this very difficult and dark moment is that I think it has the it gives us an opportunity to rethink, as Americans why it is that we appreciate the United States.

What is it that we appreciate about the system, the country, the democracy, the institutions, the free markets? Uh, because I think the radicals are winning because they have, uh, they have high level of conviction. They are coming with a clear cut ideas, and they're expressing them in this, in this way of like that, that inspires other people.

I think we need to remind ourselves, what is it that we really value about our country, and learn to express that in a way that that creates a vision for the future that others want to share as well.

01:26:54.570 — 01:27:07.290 · Ben Chertoff
You wrote in your in your book, which was aimed at young people, um, to be a refusenik, what does that entail? And especially for, you know, a younger generation who has never heard that term?

01:27:08.090 — 01:27:11.050 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Yeah. So can I show.

01:27:11.050 — 01:27:11.930 · Ben Chertoff
Up, please.

01:27:12.650 — 01:28:32.960 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Plug the cover, Be a Refusenik: A Jewish Student Survival Guide with a foreword by Natan Sharansky. So the refuseniks were those Soviet Jews that I mentioned earlier who decided to fight for their Jewish identity. You know, and it was remembered mostly as a fight for immigration. But they they were but they were refused to emigrate.

They were refused the right to emigrate in the Soviet Union. And so they spent years fighting for the right to emigrate. And in the meantime, they really recreated their Jewish and Zionist identity from scratch. And the stories of the refuseniks, I think, were incredibly inspiring. I think that what we're missing today as Jews is stories of Jewish heroism.

And the refuseniks were heroic in ways that are different from the way. For example, Israelis are heroic when they defend their country because for them it was specifically it was nonviolent. Right. And it was really a fight, again, for their identity and to see how important it was for them and what they withstood in that fight, I think, is incredibly important and inspiring and has lessons for this moment.

It's stories of Jewish courage and defiance and and and we need those today.

01:28:33.000 — 01:28:42.720 · Ben Chertoff
How do we be? How do we be? How does one become a refusenik in in our current state? What is that?

01:28:44.000 — 01:31:17.310 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Well, so. So look. So I use the word refusenik a little bit differently from its original meaning. And actually the leaders of the refusenik movement in fact thought of them this way. So the refusenik was a term that the state applied to them essentially that these were people who were refused the exit visas.

But the refuseniks thought of themselves as people who, you know, they said, look, before you refuse us, we refused you. You know, so what is it that they refused? Okay. So they refused the Soviet Union as a whole. But that's not the sense in which I, I use it. They also refused this idea that it's okay for them as Jews to, to, to sort of to, to agree to live in an anti-Semitic environment in which they are treated as second class citizens.

They refuse the idea that they have to separate themselves from the Jewish state, and they refuse the idea that they have to separate themselves from Zionism and from Hebrew. They insisted that all of it was part of their identity, and this is what they fought. And so to me, to be a refusenik today, and I could tell you, it's just it's even you can see it even in the titles of the chapters of my book, the — the first of which is Reclaim Your Zionism.

You know, so that's already a defiant kind of posture, which, you know, it's not just my recipe that I invented out of my head. This is based on interviews with actual refuseniks from that Soviet time and young people today who are also espousing the same idea. So reclaim your Zionism. There's another chapter titled Reject Victimhood.

So reject the idea that, you know, I was. I've been told that this is the most controversial title of all the chapters, which surprised me, but the idea here is, you know, we have been victims in our history. We have been persecuted. But we shouldn't make victimhood part of our identity. We should really be thinking about thinking of ourselves as courageous people who have overcome persecution.

So this is another way, you know, another chapter is Find Your Comrades in Arms. I think it's really important for anybody who rejects, who refuses the status quo to find other people who think like them, you know, find their comrades in arms, find other people, study with them, share you know, share your thoughts and ideas with them.

Start a movement with them. So these are the kind of ideas that I have in the book.

01:31:17.310 — 01:31:50.850 · Ben Chertoff
One last question. Um, to a 19 or 20 year old college student. Jewish college student who is surrounded by the JVP groups. the IfNotNows who are the anti-Zionist Jews who are so loud on campus? What do you say to a young Jew in school who is not, who is now confused about where they are and what they stand for?

01:31:52.890 — 01:34:23.780 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Well, uh, you know, I go back to, uh, to the question of, uh, identity. You know, if they look, if they attempted to join them, then that's that's a separate story. If they're trying to figure out how to, uh, how to behave toward them or how to interact with them, I actually would say that they shouldn't even necessarily interact with them.

You know, there is this I think we spend a lot of time thinking about how do we convince the anti-Zionist Jews to understand how you know the way? All the ways in which they are wrong. And I actually think that it shouldn't be our priority. I think our priority should be, you know, somebody who's already convinced and radicalized to that point.

No, they won't change their mind just from from talking to you. And a lot of times they won't even engage with you. So I think we should be spending more time engaging with people who are open, in fact, to hearing our point of view, who are open to understanding what what is the Jewish perspective, the broader Jewish perspective on Zionism and Israel who aren't just coming at you throwing out this, the label of genocide, and who will be open to hearing the evidence that there isn't there hasn't been a genocide.

I think we should be making more friends among people who I think sometimes today we're taking for granted, you know, people who don't necessarily even live on on those in those radicalized coastal environments, uh, who are maybe in the Midwest, maybe in the South. Um, I think we should be pouring much more energy into that.

And I'm very much also with, uh, Shabbos Kestenbaum, who is one of my protagonists in the book, who says that the Jewish establishment really should stop pouring so much money into fighting anti-Semitism and should be investing much more in Jewish education, Jewish day school so that they can be affordable to everyone.

And obviously, a lot will need to be rethought. You know, people often point out, look, some of these anti-Zionist Jews actually did receive Jewish education. So we need to rethink how we teach Zionism and Israel. But I think making that accessible to more American Jews, I think is absolutely crucial.

01:34:24.140 — 01:34:27.500 · Ben Chertoff
Izabella Tabarovsky, thank you so much for joining us today.

01:34:28.420 — 01:34:29.900 · Izabella Tabarovsky
Thank you for having me, Ben.

01:34:35.380 — 01:37:09.930 · Ben Chertoff
Here's what stayed with me. I came in expecting a story about influence, old ideas leaking forward into new ones. That's not what she describes. She describes a product designed, packaged, exported, and a product that outlives the company that made it. The factory is closed. The merchandise is still on the shelf, but the part I keep turning over is the method.

The genius of it wasn't the accusation, it was the footnote. Take a real wound and retell it as collaboration. Because once Zionists are Nazis, everything else flows from there. Nazis are the secular devil. If you can prove someone is a devil without sounding religious or sounding racist, you can charge them with anything and people will believe it.

Built in the 60s. Still running in your feed tonight. I asked what she'd say to a Jewish kid on campus like that, and her answer surprised me. Stop trying to win that argument. Someone already radicalized isn't going to be talked out of it by you in a hallway with a better fact. Spend it on the people who are actually open, the ones we've been taking for granted and get ahead of it.

She calls that prebunking. Teach the history before the slogan gets there. Less money fighting anti-Semitism after it arrives. More in Jewish education families can afford. Her book is built on the refuseniks who told the Soviet state before you refused us, we refused you. Her first chapter is called Reclaim Your Zionism.

So here's what I'm taking out of this one. When something sounds like it came from nowhere, it didn't. Someone wrote it. Somebody paid for it. Somebody printed the footnotes. So go look them up. You can find Izabella's book, Be a Refusenik, wherever you buy your books. And her writing at Tablet and the Wilson Center.

Links are in the description. If this one changed how a slogan sounds to you, do me a favor. Leave the show a rating and a review on Apple or Spotify or wherever you're listening right now. It's the single biggest thing that helps new people find us. And if you're not already, subscribe, hit the notification bell and follow HonestReporting on Instagram, X, TikTok, and Facebook.

I'm Ben Chertoff. This is The Honest Take and we'll see you next time.