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1981
Czechia
Antisemitism

Anti-Semitic elements in cooperation between State Security and the Palestine Liberation Organization

In June and September 1981, negotiations took place between representatives of the Czechoslovak secret police - the State Security - and the Palestine Liberation Organization. The latter offered to carry out assassinations or kidnappings of exiled opposition figure Jiří Pelikán for their Czechoslovak partners. The StB refused, but it cooperated with the PLO in the preparation and translation of the book "Entdecktes Judenthum", which, according to the StB, revealed the roots of Jewish aggression up to contemporary Zionism.

Source: commons.wikimedia.org

Incitement to hatred

The book was inaccurately listed in the document as “Entdecktes Judentum”, which should correctly be “Entdecktes Judenthum”, translated as “Judaism Unmasked”. Its author is the German orientalist scholar Johann Andreas Eisenmenger (1654-1704). The Czechoslovak secret police obtained facsimiles for printing, to which a Czech preface was written. Everything was to be translated into English and published. The book has also been used in history by various anti-Semites, and it is interesting that the communist State Security also found in it the revelation of “Jewish aggression”. Moreover, this happened in the context of debates about cooperation in the armed struggle against Israel. The victim of the discussed assassination, Jiří Pelikán, was of Jewish origin and was branded a Zionist by his enemies.

Operation Pelikán – opinion of Section 36 of Czechoslovak intelligence on the proposed physical liquidation of Jiří Pelikán with the help of the Palestine Liberation Organization

Morbacher, Lubomír (2019), Minulost.cz

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