College activists echo Cold-War Soviet propaganda on the Israel-Palestine conflict
A column argues that the language used by students and faculty on Western campuses to condemn Israel is rooted in Soviet disinformation campaigns from the Cold War era.
According to the article, the prevalence of anti-Israel rhetoric on elite campuses stems from a Soviet-originated information operation that began after the Six-Day War, when Moscow replaced overt pan-Arab calls for Israel’s destruction with Marxist liberation language. Declassified Mitrokhin archive documents are said to show that the Palestine Liberation Organization’s leadership, including Yasser Arafat (codenamed AREF) and Mahmoud Abbas (KROTOV), were cultivated by Soviet intelligence and supplied with arms and training.
The author references a 1977 interview with PLO official Zuheir Mohsen, who admitted that a distinct Palestinian identity was a tactical tool. Modern commentators such as EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and libertarian theorist Hans-Hermann Hoppe are criticized for repeating the claim that Israel created Hamas, a narrative the writer calls historically ignorant. The article notes that Israel once allowed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin’s charitable organization to operate before it transformed into Hamas in 1987, after which Israel banned and fought the group. The author concludes that today’s campus activists act as unpaid interns for a defunct Soviet empire, mistaking Cold-War propaganda for genuine moral advocacy.
Why it matters
It shows how historic propaganda can shape contemporary campus activism and public debate on the Middle East.
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