“In 1948, Stalin planned to use Israel as a key Soviet stronghold in the Middle East. He knew that many Israeli leaders, such as President Golda Meir, were former socialists born or educated in Russia. He believed that world Jewry would be grateful to the Soviet Union for its major contribution to defeating the Nazis. On Stalin’s orders, Soviet intelligence secretly supported the Jews in Palestine in their struggle against the British. The Soviet Union was one of the first to vote in the United Nations for the creation of a Jewish state.”