Lately, Palestinian media has rediscovered Birobidzhan.
Al Arab today writes, "The Jewish state exists and Zionism has hidden the truth!"
Ahmed Hazem is impressed by Michèle Renouf, an Australian-born British citizen who became famous for speaking at Holocaust denial conferences. She floated the idea of Birobidzhan as a great place for Jews to live instead of Israel.
The Al Arab columnist writes:
Renouf is the first in the world to reveal the existence of a state for the Jews that Zionism and Israel have prevented from addressing. Lady Michele Renouf is well acquainted with the subject of Judaism in the world. The world does not know if its existence because Israel has worked to conceal this fact and prevent the media from addressing it.History says that the Jews used to immigrate to this republic in the past because it was their homeland, that is, the first homeland for the Jews in the world. But after the Hungarian Jew, Theodor Herzl, established the Zionist movement, he worked to change the direction of Jewish immigration and focused on the idea of settling Jews in Palestine. Unfortunately, the Zionists succeeded in keeping the media away from the first Jewish republic in Birobidzhan.
Since the Zionists did (and still) control most of the media in the West they have worked to prevent mentioning the name of the Russian-Jewish Birobidzhan republic.
Of course, no one has been hiding the existence of the joke known as Birobidzhan. I've found articles about Birobidzhan in newspapers since the 1930s. A fawning 1934 article by Frederic J. Haskin that was widely published falsely claimed that the area was wholly Jewish, but in fact Jews were never more than a minority there.
This 1975 UPI article shows how even then, Russia was pushing Birobidzhan as if it was a real homeland for Jews.
