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FOR THE KREMLIN, UKRAINIAN ANTI-SEMITISM IS A TOOL FOR SCARING RUSSIANS IN CRIMEA
The Tablet
March 7 2014
But now the country's Jewish community is divided between those lining
up with Moscow and those joining the revolution in Kiev
By Hannah Thoburn
You know the joke: Ask two Jews a question, get three opinions. It's an
old saw, but it describes fairly accurately the response of Ukraine's
Jewish community to the collapse of the country's government last
month. And understandably so: Life for the country's Jews, and everyone
else, is increasingly complicated.
The new government in Kiev, backed by the Maidan movement, is full
of promise and riding a wave of popular momentum--but some, both in
Ukraine and beyond its borders, insist that the conglomerate of groups
that overthrew President Viktor Yanukovych and now rule the country
are Ukrainian ethnic supremacists and anti-Semites. Russia's President
Vladimir Putin has seized upon worries of possible violence toward
Ukrainian Jews as a kind of stand-in for the message that he seeks to
deliver: This Ukrainian revolution represents a danger to order and
the lives of all minorities. Russian state media, widely watched by
Russian-speaking Ukrainians, has made much of that new government's
ties to historical currents of extremism and nationalism. So, people
wonder: Should they trust their experiences on the streets, the rumors
they hear, or what they see on television? What to believe and whom?
The accusations of rampant anti-Semitism have divided the country's
Jewish community, which is estimated at a little over a 100,000. In
the past two weeks, rabbis and community leaders have begun to choose
sides in the growing conflict--perhaps adding to the confusion,
rather than alleviating it.
The day Ukraine's pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted,
Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman--Chabad's chief rabbi in Kiev--told his
congregants to leave the city because of "constant warnings concerning
intentions to attack Jewish institutions." His warning seems to have
been borne out by the recent attack on a synagogue in the southeastern
city of Zaporizhiya and the graffiti sprayed on the Reform synagogue
in the Crimean city of Simferopol. But the Kremlin has been known to
employ accusations of anti-Semitism for its own political purposes,
and many in Ukraine suspect Azman is simply following the Russian
line because of the close relationship between Russia's Chief Rabbi
Berel Lazar--a Chabad emissary--and Putin.
That includes Ukraine's chief Orthodox rabbi, Yaakov Dov Bleich,
who referred to the attacks on Ukrainian Jews this week as
"provocations"--not by neo-Nazis, but by Russian partisans. "We expect
that the Russians would like to justify their invasion of Ukraine,"
Bleich told reporters on Tuesday. He noted that Russian state media
broadcasts had included numerous reports of banderovtsi--followers
of the Ukrainian nationalist hero Stepan Bandera, who collaborated
with the Nazis in WWII--attacking synagogues. "There is nothing of
the sort," Bleich insisted. "Anyone can change into the outfit of a
Ukrainian nationalist and start beating Jews."
This week, leading members of Ukraine's Jewish community countered
with an open letter to Vladimir Putin that dismissed the accusations
of violence against Jews and minorities: "Yes, we are well aware that
the political opposition and the forces of social protests who have
secured changes for the better are made up of different groups. They
include nationalistic groups, but even the most marginal do not dare
show anti-Semitism or other xenophobic behavior. And we certainly know
that our very few nationalists are well-controlled by civil society
and the new Ukrainian government--which is more than can be said for
the Russian neo-Nazis, who are encouraged by your security services."
And Jews and other minorities feature prominently in the new regime.
Oligarch Ihor Kolomoiskyi is one of the best-known members of
Ukraine's Jewish community and was just named as the governor
of the Dniepropetrovsk region in south-central Ukraine. Vladimir
Groisman, a young, promising politician with family ties to Israel,
was promoted from his position as the very successful mayor of the
city of Vinnytsaa to that of first deputy prime minister in charge
of regional development. The acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov,
is a Baptist pastor in a largely Orthodox and Catholic country,
and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov is of Armenian origin. The new
Cabinet even includes several Russian-born members. Perhaps tellingly,
their religious and ethnic histories are barely mentioned in the
Ukrainian press.
But Ukraine's ethnic minorities were highly visible in the protests in
Kiev's Independence Square--which, as Timothy Snyder has pointed out,
were sparked by a Muslim journalist born in Afghanistan. Protesters
in the Maidan created a "Jewish Division" of the self-defense forces.
Among the dead were an Armenian, Georgians, a Belarusian, and Jews.
***
The promotion and constant talk of ethnic, linguistic, and cultural
divisions, writes Ukrainian photojournalist Maia Mikhaluk, "is to
convince Ukrainians that we are divided, not one country, and that the
safest course of action for Russian-speaking areas is to break away and
join Russia." Of course, that's not necessarily true for non-Russians
living in Russian-speaking parts of the country: In Crimea, currently
occupied by Russian forces, the native Turkic-speaking Muslim Crimean
Tatars have taken the side of the Ukrainian authorities in Kiev,
worried that if they fall under Russian control they will be persecuted
as they were during Soviet times.
And while many in Ukraine do believe that the animosity from
Ukrainian speakers toward Russian speakers (or Jews or Armenians,
for that matter) is real, others have taken a stand against what
they see as a massive Russian disinformation campaign. A group of
Ukrainian journalists and journalism students recently launched the
Russian-language website stopfake.org in an effort to push back against
some of those divisive accusations and the force of statements like
this from the Russian president: "We see the rampage of reactionary
forces, nationalist and anti-Semitic forces going on in certain parts
of Ukraine, including Kiev."
Those forces do exist, and the rhetoric spewed by members of right-wing
nationalist groups like Praviy Sektor (Right Sektor) and the political
party Svoboda (Freedom) is immensely worrisome. But while Svoboda has
over the past years gained in popularity, the number of anti-Semitic
vandalism incidents in Ukraine has simultaneously fallen. When asked
about the Russian focus on anti-Semitic incidents in Ukraine, Josef
Zissels, the president of the Ukrainian Vaad, told the Daily Beast's
Eli Lake, "There are more neo-Nazi groups in Russia than there are
in Ukraine."
Yet Crimea's Russians, who consume primarily Russian mass media,
are terrified of the kind of disorder that they saw in Kiev during
the months of protests and are sure that Ukrainian nationalists hold
only ill will toward them. They believe that Kiev is controlled by
radical fascist forces. And they are thankful for the "self-defense"
forces that have come from the Kremlin to protect them--a mobilization
that itself is part of an information war--because they have come to
believe that western Ukrainians want to force them to speak Ukrainian
rather than Russian.
Ordinarily, it might be a good thing to have one minority group
identify with the experience of another. But uniting such a fractured
country, much less Ukraine's competing Jewish factions, is a tall
order, particularly in the face of external meddling. How Ukrainians
respond, and whether they can overcome their divisions--real and
imagined--will determine how, and whether, Ukraine survives.
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/165263/ukraines-wedge-issue
From: Baghdasarian
The Tablet
March 7 2014
But now the country's Jewish community is divided between those lining
up with Moscow and those joining the revolution in Kiev
By Hannah Thoburn
You know the joke: Ask two Jews a question, get three opinions. It's an
old saw, but it describes fairly accurately the response of Ukraine's
Jewish community to the collapse of the country's government last
month. And understandably so: Life for the country's Jews, and everyone
else, is increasingly complicated.
The new government in Kiev, backed by the Maidan movement, is full
of promise and riding a wave of popular momentum--but some, both in
Ukraine and beyond its borders, insist that the conglomerate of groups
that overthrew President Viktor Yanukovych and now rule the country
are Ukrainian ethnic supremacists and anti-Semites. Russia's President
Vladimir Putin has seized upon worries of possible violence toward
Ukrainian Jews as a kind of stand-in for the message that he seeks to
deliver: This Ukrainian revolution represents a danger to order and
the lives of all minorities. Russian state media, widely watched by
Russian-speaking Ukrainians, has made much of that new government's
ties to historical currents of extremism and nationalism. So, people
wonder: Should they trust their experiences on the streets, the rumors
they hear, or what they see on television? What to believe and whom?
The accusations of rampant anti-Semitism have divided the country's
Jewish community, which is estimated at a little over a 100,000. In
the past two weeks, rabbis and community leaders have begun to choose
sides in the growing conflict--perhaps adding to the confusion,
rather than alleviating it.
The day Ukraine's pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted,
Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman--Chabad's chief rabbi in Kiev--told his
congregants to leave the city because of "constant warnings concerning
intentions to attack Jewish institutions." His warning seems to have
been borne out by the recent attack on a synagogue in the southeastern
city of Zaporizhiya and the graffiti sprayed on the Reform synagogue
in the Crimean city of Simferopol. But the Kremlin has been known to
employ accusations of anti-Semitism for its own political purposes,
and many in Ukraine suspect Azman is simply following the Russian
line because of the close relationship between Russia's Chief Rabbi
Berel Lazar--a Chabad emissary--and Putin.
That includes Ukraine's chief Orthodox rabbi, Yaakov Dov Bleich,
who referred to the attacks on Ukrainian Jews this week as
"provocations"--not by neo-Nazis, but by Russian partisans. "We expect
that the Russians would like to justify their invasion of Ukraine,"
Bleich told reporters on Tuesday. He noted that Russian state media
broadcasts had included numerous reports of banderovtsi--followers
of the Ukrainian nationalist hero Stepan Bandera, who collaborated
with the Nazis in WWII--attacking synagogues. "There is nothing of
the sort," Bleich insisted. "Anyone can change into the outfit of a
Ukrainian nationalist and start beating Jews."
This week, leading members of Ukraine's Jewish community countered
with an open letter to Vladimir Putin that dismissed the accusations
of violence against Jews and minorities: "Yes, we are well aware that
the political opposition and the forces of social protests who have
secured changes for the better are made up of different groups. They
include nationalistic groups, but even the most marginal do not dare
show anti-Semitism or other xenophobic behavior. And we certainly know
that our very few nationalists are well-controlled by civil society
and the new Ukrainian government--which is more than can be said for
the Russian neo-Nazis, who are encouraged by your security services."
And Jews and other minorities feature prominently in the new regime.
Oligarch Ihor Kolomoiskyi is one of the best-known members of
Ukraine's Jewish community and was just named as the governor
of the Dniepropetrovsk region in south-central Ukraine. Vladimir
Groisman, a young, promising politician with family ties to Israel,
was promoted from his position as the very successful mayor of the
city of Vinnytsaa to that of first deputy prime minister in charge
of regional development. The acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov,
is a Baptist pastor in a largely Orthodox and Catholic country,
and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov is of Armenian origin. The new
Cabinet even includes several Russian-born members. Perhaps tellingly,
their religious and ethnic histories are barely mentioned in the
Ukrainian press.
But Ukraine's ethnic minorities were highly visible in the protests in
Kiev's Independence Square--which, as Timothy Snyder has pointed out,
were sparked by a Muslim journalist born in Afghanistan. Protesters
in the Maidan created a "Jewish Division" of the self-defense forces.
Among the dead were an Armenian, Georgians, a Belarusian, and Jews.
***
The promotion and constant talk of ethnic, linguistic, and cultural
divisions, writes Ukrainian photojournalist Maia Mikhaluk, "is to
convince Ukrainians that we are divided, not one country, and that the
safest course of action for Russian-speaking areas is to break away and
join Russia." Of course, that's not necessarily true for non-Russians
living in Russian-speaking parts of the country: In Crimea, currently
occupied by Russian forces, the native Turkic-speaking Muslim Crimean
Tatars have taken the side of the Ukrainian authorities in Kiev,
worried that if they fall under Russian control they will be persecuted
as they were during Soviet times.
And while many in Ukraine do believe that the animosity from
Ukrainian speakers toward Russian speakers (or Jews or Armenians,
for that matter) is real, others have taken a stand against what
they see as a massive Russian disinformation campaign. A group of
Ukrainian journalists and journalism students recently launched the
Russian-language website stopfake.org in an effort to push back against
some of those divisive accusations and the force of statements like
this from the Russian president: "We see the rampage of reactionary
forces, nationalist and anti-Semitic forces going on in certain parts
of Ukraine, including Kiev."
Those forces do exist, and the rhetoric spewed by members of right-wing
nationalist groups like Praviy Sektor (Right Sektor) and the political
party Svoboda (Freedom) is immensely worrisome. But while Svoboda has
over the past years gained in popularity, the number of anti-Semitic
vandalism incidents in Ukraine has simultaneously fallen. When asked
about the Russian focus on anti-Semitic incidents in Ukraine, Josef
Zissels, the president of the Ukrainian Vaad, told the Daily Beast's
Eli Lake, "There are more neo-Nazi groups in Russia than there are
in Ukraine."
Yet Crimea's Russians, who consume primarily Russian mass media,
are terrified of the kind of disorder that they saw in Kiev during
the months of protests and are sure that Ukrainian nationalists hold
only ill will toward them. They believe that Kiev is controlled by
radical fascist forces. And they are thankful for the "self-defense"
forces that have come from the Kremlin to protect them--a mobilization
that itself is part of an information war--because they have come to
believe that western Ukrainians want to force them to speak Ukrainian
rather than Russian.
Ordinarily, it might be a good thing to have one minority group
identify with the experience of another. But uniting such a fractured
country, much less Ukraine's competing Jewish factions, is a tall
order, particularly in the face of external meddling. How Ukrainians
respond, and whether they can overcome their divisions--real and
imagined--will determine how, and whether, Ukraine survives.
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/165263/ukraines-wedge-issue
From: Baghdasarian