YASHA LEVINE—As Decter explained, Elie Wiesel went to the Soviet Union and wrote the book only because Decter and two of his Nativ handlers from the Israeli consulate in New York pushed and persuaded him to do it. And Wiesel confirmed another aspect of the op over forty years later in a new 2011 introduction to the book: Another top Nativ secret agent — David Bartov, who then worked out of the Israeli embassy in Moscow — helped organize and supervise the Soviet part of his trip. Bartov would become the head of Nativ in the 1980s, during the most important time for the Israel’s population transfer plans — when hundreds of thousands of Jews were leaving the Soviet Union. Wiesel would describe Bartov as my “faithful friend.”
In short, The Jews of Silence was a full on propaganda op. And it came at the most perfect time, following the Six Day War, when Jews in both the Soviet Union and America were quickly being radicalized and turned to Jewish nationalism.