The Russian financial crisis and the Jews

Arutz 7 18/08/1998 / Av 26, 5758 Immigration Minister Yuli Edelstein said today that Israel should prepare for another new wave of immigration from Russia, as a result of the sharp financial crisis there. Edelstein feels that if the crisis continues and worsens, many middle- and upper-class Russian Jews will leave for Israel.

The Jewish Agency directorate will hold an emergency meeting tomorrow, on the ramifications of the Russian financial crisis upon the Jews there. Minister Edelstein told Arutz-7 today that over 10,000 Russians have arrived in Israel over the past year, in addition to 30,000 from the other countries of the former Soviet Union.

Israel to Russia: you're still leaking missile technology

Israel Line 10/08/1998 Israeli intelligence told Russia's visiting national security advisor on Sunday that two of the seven Russian enterprises investigated by Moscow in July are still supplying Iran with missile technology, HA'ARETZ reported.

In a meeting with Gen. Andrei Kokoshin, Russia's point man on United States and Israeli complaints about technology transfers, Israeli officials also named companies they believe to be involved in such transfers that have yet to be blacklisted by Russia.

Minister of Industry and Trade, Natan Sharansky, hosted the meeting, in which Kokoshin disputed some of Israel's charges but did not issue any sweeping denials, in contrast to Russian intelligence head Nikolai Kovolyov during a visit to Israel last month.

Kokoshin said during the meeting that Israel has presented a more comprehensive overview on the matter than the United States. Kokoshin added that Russia was doing everything in its power to limit arms deals between Russian companies and Iran.

Sharansky said Israel "will be satisfied not by the steps that are taken but by the results in the field," adding that if Russian assistance to Iran does not end, Iran could have its own missile in a year.

Romanovs and Antisemitism

"Common guilt, uncommon superstition" by Mona Khalil, Al-Ahram Weekly 23-29 July 1998 (via IMRA)

EXCERPTS:

Russia buried its last tsar, Nicholas II, 80 years to the day after his assassination. Nine coffins containing the bones of Nicholas, his wife the Empress Alexandra, three of their daughters and -- destined for a separate crypt below that of the royal family -- their doctor, their maid, their valet and their cook, were entombed in the 18th-century Cathedral of St Peter and St Paul. . . .

Last September, the Russian state acquired a very important collection of documents -- the so-called 'Sokolov archive'. It was brought to Moscow by Prince Hans Adam II of Liechtenstein, who wished to exchange it for his family archives which had fallen into the hands of the Soviet Union after the second world war.

In the midst of the chaos of post-Revolutionary Russia, Nikolai Sokolov, ... was instructed by Admiral Kolchak, the overall commander of the White Army, to investigate the details of the royal family's murder.

The heads of the patriarchy... have been taking a very cautious position on the authenticity of the bones that were ... reinterred. Though specialists have asserted that they are 99.99 per cent certain the remains are Romanovs’, the church insists on further investigations before it will pronounce.

This state of perpetual doubt is also illustrated by a slightly less savoury episode. Two years ago, the Holy Synod published a list of 10 questions concerning the tragedy which had yet to be answered. They included the question whether it might be true that the royal family had died in 'a ritual murder' organised by a worldwide Judeo-Masonic conspiracy.

Though the question is somewhat strange, to say the least, it now appears on the agenda of the governmental commission charged with investigating the deaths and confirming the identity of the remains.

The idea of Jewish collusion in the misfortunes of Mother Russia has always been a favourite theme here. Anti-Semitic myths alleging that Jews would engage in the secretive 'ritual murder' of Christians, so as to obtain their blood for various evil purposes, date back to at least the 12th century.

Even now, the theory of a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy is a prominent part of the rhetorical arsenal of right-wing nationalists.

According to the Sokolov files, in the cellar of the Ipatiev house where the family was killed a phrase had been written on the wall. It was a quotation from the German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, written in faulty German: 'On this very night, Baltazar was killed by his serfs'.

Another document in the investigator's archive recorded marks on the window sill and the walls. During the Soviet period, one monarchist publication after another interpreted these marks as secret 'Cabalistic' signs, a theory which can still be found today in the books and brochures published by extremist nationalist groups.

Thus Leonid Bolotin, author of The Case of the Tsar, decodes the marks as follows: 'Here, on the orders of secret forces, the Tsar was sacrificed for the destruction of the State. Of this, all the nations are informed'.

The fact that many of the Bolsheviks were of Jewish origin, among them chief executioner Yakov Yurovsky and revolutionary leader Yakov Sverdlov, who reported the executions to Lenin, has long proved fertile soil for such wild speculation.

Russia is a great repository of what some would call supernatural science, and which for others is simply superstition. Eighty years have passed since the bloody days of the revolution, yet through all that time, neither Tsar Nicholas nor his nemesis, Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov (Lenin), were committed to the earth.

Many Russians are convinced that all their country's misfortunes have stemmed from the unsettled spirits of their great unburied leaders. It is widely believed that the train of blood and grief will continue unabated until the remains of these two opposing masters can be laid to rest once and for all.

(For more news on the Romanov story see Newsweek's July 20, 1998 report)