Ultranationalist neo-Nazi parties on the march in Ukraine

Threat of anti-Semitic violence should cause international alarm

Wearing the uniform of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, nationalists in the western city of Lviv march with their red and black flag and Ukraine’s yellow and blue one in 2010 to commemorate anti-Soviet fighters.Yuriy Dyachyshyn/AFP/Getty Images

President Viktor Yanukovich’s sudden, surprise departure from Kiev is the beginning of a long ordeal for Ukrainians. It’s also the start of a major threat to the several hundred thousand Ukrainian Jews.

Anti-Semitic violence in Ukraine may come as a surprise to an American audience accustomed to optimistic portrayals of the swiftly changing events in U.S. media. The last weeks have been dominated by talk of vigils for democracy, for the EU, for Western ways, played out for the cameras in the bonfire-lit Independence Square.

The Russian media, by contrast, have devoted time, since autumn, to explicating the virulent history of the ultranationalist neo-Nazi parties from western Ukraine that rally under the black and red flag of the grandfather of Ukrainian fascist parties, the 85-year-old Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Its flag can be seen in pictures of the parliament building surrounded by masked and helmeted protesters.

In her Sunday appearance to discuss the crisis on “Meet the Press,” National Security Adviser Susan Rice was not asked about the fears of the Jews of Ukraine. Nor has the White House mentioned Jews or anti-Semitism during the several remarks directed at Moscow advising Russian President Vladimir Putin not to intervene in the Ukrainian chaos.

Ukrainian Jews, on the other hand, are speaking out loudly now that Kiev is descending into anarchy.

A grave threat

The transition agreement toward elections that was brokered on Friday between European Union ministers and Yanukovich was immediately broken by the Ukrainian fascists, according to my sources. Yanukovich then fled the capital, and law and order in the streets left with him. So did the safety of Ukraine’s Jews.

Rabbis in Kiev and across Ukraine spoke out, warning their congregations to stay off the streets and remain in their homes. The Jewish Agency in Jerusalem has moved swiftly to offer aid to elderly Jews living in greater Kiev. Food-delivery men are braving gunshots and Molotov cocktails to help them. Reports from Kiev say the police have been replaced by roving bands of undetermined loyalty.

Jewish organizations worldwide and the state of Israel regard the appeals from Ukraine as grave and immediate.

The fresh report of the firebombing of a new synagogue in Zaporizhia, 250 miles southeast of Kiev, increased the alarm in Israel and accelerated planning for all contingencies, including evacuations.

The Kremlin will act to protect the millions of Ukrainians and Russian citizens who are at risk from the fascists and anarchists in general.

In the coming days, either Yanukovich will choose to stay in Ukraine and contest the coup in Kiev or he will abdicate and pass the mess into the hands of the EU and Russia. Early indications from Moscow point to the likelihood that Yanukovich is unreliable.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was on the telephone to German Chancellor Angela Merkel to sort out the failure of the EU to live up to the promises it made to Yanukovich and Moscow. Berlin insists that a solution for the disorder in Kiev not only includes a legitimate leadership with police power but also involves finding up to $27 billion to keep Ukraine solvent in its obligations.

My sources point to a calm, adamant, confident Kremlin that will act to protect the millions of Ukrainians and Russian citizens who are at risk from the fascists and anarchists in general. The Jews are part of the population that Moscow will move to protect. My sources indicate that Russia will move to reinforce the military installations in Crimea and then prepare adequate means to help other regions where Russian citizens are concentrated, like Odessa.

As for the U.S., it finds itself in a position of supporting chaos in Kiev with Rice’s unfocused remark that “the United States is on the side of the Ukrainian people.”

The view from Moscow

I wrote recently of the Kremlin’s opinion that Barack Obama’s administration has interfered in Ukrainian affairs. My sources have told me that the Kremlin holds that Rice has been in contact with the investor George Soros, who has used his wealth and influence openly to unsettle affairs in Ukraine at least since the Orange Revolution of 2005. The Kremlin maintains that the Obama administration has led the protesters to understand that Washington supports their demands to join with the EU and not with the Russian Federation.

Read on at Source

Is the US backing neo-Nazis in Ukraine?

Alarming trend in Ukraine: Historic monuments toppled, Nazi symbols spread

The Ukraine: Neo-Nazi criminal state looming in the centre of Europe

Favorite

2 members favorited this

Comment

You need to be a member of 12160 Social Network to add comments!

Join 12160 Social Network

Comment by Ron Anderson on February 28, 2014 at 2:35am: I have a hard time believing these propaganda pieces designed to justify the U.S./EU sponsored "regime change™". In reality this is exactly what the New Order Bolshevik Elite Zionist Jew Banker Pigs, (or whatever the Marxist P.C. term is for them this month) wanted.

from Haaretz:

Interim Ukrainian President Oleksander Tuchynov pledged Wednesday that he would do everything in his power to protect the country’s Jewish community, Israel Radio reported.

Tuchynov met with the country’s chief rabbi, Yaakov Dov Bleich, after former President Viktor Yanukovych was deposed last week following three months of unrest by protesters in Kiev.

The new Ukrainian acting President Oleksander Tuchynov has vowed to protect Jews in the Ukraine at any cost. Although it doesn’t seem like the Jews need protection over there. Having just successfully overthrown the government and all.

The Jewish Daily Forward claims that the Jewish community there, as a whole, is now better off than they were before this bloody revolution.

Other Jewish leaders, such as Vadim Rabinovich, president of the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress, didn’t take sides and issued pleas for reconciliation. Rabinovich is an interesting case. An oligarch with close ties to Russia, who made his millions under the previous regime, he gradually inched toward the opposition, and then toward acceptance of the new regime.

    This Monday, with the revolutionaries in power, he issued a statement that “even in this complicated time of civil conflict, there is no basis for saying that there have been serious cases of anti-Semitism in Ukraine. I categorically reject the statements in the foreign press that there has been massive anti-Semitism and xenophobia in Ukraine.”

    ...Younger Jews are more integrated into Ukrainian life and culture. They yearn to see the country become a modern European democracy, and many of them participated in the demonstrations at Independence Square. One Jewish newspaper in Kiev published an interview with a young Modern Orthodox man who joined the opposition’s paramilitary organization. He considered his activity in defense of the demonstrators a sanctification of God’s name. The young man reported that his unit had four other Jews in it, all with Israeli military training, and that he had experienced no anti-Semitism in his dealings with fellow fighters.

    The most ardent Jewish supporter of Maidan has been Joseph Zissels, chairman of the Va’ad—Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities in Ukraine. Since his days as a young dissident in the 1960s, Zissels has worked to bring together the Ukrainian and Jewish movements. He spent six years in the Soviet Gulag, and went on to found the Va’ad in 1989. Zissels argues that Jews and Ukrainians need to turn a new page in their relations, and overcome old grudges, suspicions, and stereotypes. Maidan represents integration with Europe, he says. That is good for Ukraine, and is especially good for its Jews.

Comment by Not mainstreamer on February 27, 2014 at 3:48pm: “There weren’t even any Communists, that was just an insult.”

"Communist" = contemptuous term in Ukraine

Comment by Not mainstreamer on February 27, 2014 at 3:45pm: Max Blumenthal

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37752.htm

White supremacist banners and Confederate flags were draped inside Kiev’s occupied City Hall, and demonstrators have hoisted Nazi SS and white power symbols over a toppled memorial to V.I. Lenin.

After Yanukovich fled his palatial estate by helicopter, EuroMaidan protesters destroyed a memorial to Ukrainians who died battling German occupation during World War II. Sieg heil salutes and the Nazi Wolfsangel symbol have become an increasingly common site in Maidan Square, and neo-Nazi forces have established “autonomous zones” in and around Kiev.

There are a lot of Ukranians who don't like the Red Army. They were fighting Red Army themselves till they lost some times after WWII

An Anarchist group called AntiFascist Union Ukraine attempted to join the Euromaidan demonstrations but found it difficult to avoid threats of violence and imprecations from the gangs of neo-Nazis roving the square. “They called the Anarchists things like Jews, blacks, Communists,” one of its members said. “There weren’t even any Communists, that was just an insult.”

“There are lots of Nationalists here, including Nazis,” the anti-fascist continued. “They came from all over Ukraine, and they make up about 30% of protesters.”

"Anti-fascist" = allied to Stalin or the party mostly

Assuming Max Blumenthal is Jewish himself we may suspect Zionists don't like everything about what's happening, not in their control

Comment by Maria De Wind on February 26, 2014 at 9:11am: on-air/crimea-protest-russian-support/

Comment by Not mainstreamer on February 26, 2014 at 2:47am: My previous perception of who-is-who in Ukraine was wrong. The $5 billion program went to anything anti-government in Ukraine. Now we have a MESS.

Comment by Not mainstreamer on February 26, 2014 at 2:43am: http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/jewish-agency-offers-...

There are about 200,000 Jews living in Ukraine, most in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, according to the Jewish Agency.