Serbon
Well-known member
Vladimír "Vlado" Clementis was a minister, politician, lawyer, publicist, literary critic, author, and a prominent member of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. He married Lída Pátková, the daughter of a branch director of the Czech Mortgage Bank in Bratislava, in March 1933. He became a Communist MP in 1935. in 1945, he became Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs under the first post-war government. After a coup d'état, which he helped organize, he succeeded Jan Masaryk as Foreign Minister. In 1948, in his new role, he played a decisive role in organizing Czechoslovakia's part in Operation Balak by assisting the newly founded Israeli Air Force.
The first contract was signed on January 14, 1948, by Jan Masaryk, the Czech foreign minister. The contract included 200 MG 34 machine guns, 4,500 P 18 rifles, and 50,400,000 rounds of ammunition. As well as aircraft such as 25 Avia S-199 fighters and 61 Supermarine Spitfire Mk. IX fighters. After the Communist coup d'état in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, military support for the nascent state of Israel increased greatly.
Although the balance of arms at the war's outset was decisively in favor of the Arab states, the leadership of the newly established state of Israel managed to close this gap. Czechoslovakia, which had only then begun its transformation into a Soviet satellite state, was the chief arms supplier of the IDF during Israel's War of Independence and without its help, it's unlikely Israel would have won the war.
The Soviet Union and its satellite states voted in November 1947 for the UN Partition Plan for Palestine, which paved the way for the creation of the State of Israel. On 17 May 1948, three days after Israel declared its independence, the Soviets officially recognized Israel.
“In the U.S.S.R anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.”
-Joseph Stalin (collected works)
This punishment against "antisemites" remained law well after his death.
"At the time of Stalin's death and before the Soviet media avoided overt antisemitism and continued to report the punishment of officials for antisemitic behavior"
Sheila Fitzpatrick (2015). On Stalin's Team. Carlton: Melbourne University Press. p. 217