Articles
Anti-Semitism or corruption?
By Eliahu Salpeter
Haaretz
Thu., December 16, 2004
The Ukrainian presidential election marred by fraud and canceled by the
Ukrainian Supreme Court some two weeks ago and the new election scheduled
for December 26 posed and will pose a difficult dilemma for the country's
Jews: should they choose the pro-Russian candidate accused of corruption,
or the pro-Western opposition candidate whose surroundings are tainted
with the smell of anti-Semitism.
Both the camp of the ruling party candidate, outgoing Prime Minister
Viktor Yanukovich, who is supported by the outgoing president, Leonid
Kuchma and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and that of his rival,
Viktor Yushchenko, have Jews in important positions who say their candidate
has a favorable attitude to Jews and even to Israel.
Thus for example, the widely circulated opposition paper Silski Visti,
of which 800,000 copies are printed daily, was temporarily closed in the
past due to racial incitement. Among other things, the paper published
articles accusing the Jews of being responsible for Stalin's terror and
the great famine that struck in the 1930s.
This was not the first time anti-Semitic articles appeared in the paper,
and in others that support Yushchenko. On the other hand, Yushchenko expelled
parliament member Oleg Tyaknibok from his movement, Nassa Ukraina, because
the latter claimed in his speeches that the Jews "collaborated with
the Germans in the killing of Ukrainian patriots."
There has been a Jewish presence in Ukraine since the 10th century, even
before a Ukrainian national identity crystallized. For most of the time
since then, the Jewish communities were concentrated more in western Ukraine
than in the east. For many years the western part of the country was under
the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and suffered less from anti-Semitism
than those communities in the east, which were under the rule of the Russian
czar.
Today, however, more than 60 percent of the Jews living in the country
live in the east, for two main reasons: the expedited industrialization
in the eastern part of the country during the Soviet era create more jobs
in that area, and larges waves of immigrants left from western Ukraine
for Israel starting in the 1970s. After the demise of the Soviet Union
there was also immigration to Germany, and many cities and towns in the
west were left without a Jewish population. Jews from eastern Ukraine
claim that there is more anti-Semitism disseminated in the west today
than there is in the east.
According to official statistics, there are currently some 120,000 Jews
living in Ukraine. A decade ago there were 600,000 Jews there, with many
having since immigrated to Israel or Germany. But even then it was estimated
that the number 600,000 was several hundred thousand less than the actual
number. According to the chief rabbi of Ukraine, Rabbi Yaakov David Bleich,
there are today 400,000 people "of Jewish origin" living in
the country.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency correspondent in Kiev estimated after the
first round that Jewish voters split their vote, more or less equally
between the two candidates. Nevertheless, many observers believe that
most young voters and most voters with a higher education voted for Yushchenko.
Therefore they figure that the voting pattern was the same among Jewish
voters, whose average level of education is higher than the average in
the general population.
On the other hand, Jewish voters know that the wealthy members of the
community, whose contributions finance most of their activities, are supporters
of President Kuchma and the pro-Russian candidate Yanukovich, and this
apparently affects their voting patterns.
One of the prominent people in Yanukovich's camp is Jewish businessman
Viktor Pinchuk, who is married to Kuchma's daughter. Pinchuk, a parliament
member from the ruling Trodovia Ukraina party, is considered a liberal
with good ties to the United States. According to some reports, Pinchuk
worked during the height of the crisis that followed the election to achieve
a compromise between the two camps, in order to prevent a splitting of
Ukraine. Jewish papers in Europe predict that he will be given an important
position in the government if Yanukovich is elected president in the next
round.
Notable among Yushchenko's supporters is Jewish parliament member Eduard
Gurevich, a former mayor of Odessa. The Ukrainian parliament has 12 Jewish
members, who are equally divided between the two camps.
The impression in Ukraine is that most Jews - in both camps - are interested
in closer ties with the West, in order to halt the anti-Semitic trends
in the country. However, there is a certain contradiction in this because
Yushchenko actually supports closer ties with the West, and he has some
prominent anti-Semitic figures among his supporters.
Yushchenko supporters, on the other hand, argue that the greater danger
is closer ties to Russia, where there is more evidence of anti-Semitism
than in all of the Ukraine.
Ukraine has a long history of bloody pogroms and persecution of Jews.
In 1648, the nationalist forces of Bogdan Chmielnicki slaughtered some
100,000 Jews and destroyed around 300 communities. The pogroms recurred
in every political and social crisis of the 18th century, in 1734, 1750
and 1768; at the end of 1919-1920 Civil War some 100,000 Jews were murdered;
and during World War II the Nazis killed some 600,000 Jews, approximately
half of Ukrainian Jewry, with active collaboration on the part of the
locals. Survivors returning from Russia after the war were given a hostile
welcome by their Ukrainian neighbors, and Kiev remained even after the
war a hotbed for anti-Semitic publications.
This past September, a series of incidents in Ukraine started: in Lviv,
swastikas were drawn on a monument marking the place where a synagogue
destroyed by the Nazis had stood, and slogans appeared on city walls calling
for the killing of Russians and Jews; the trial of a drunken security
agent who broke into a Jewish soup kitchen and attacked workers there
has already been postponed three times, and there are some who see this
as an indication of the government's anti-Semitic tendencies; in addition,
the trial of the editor of the anti-Semitic journal Idealist has been
twice postponed; in December, the windows of Kiev's Brodsky Street Synagogue
were shattered, the same synagogue where hot meals are distributed and
which provided refuge from the severe cold to dozens of Yushchenko supporters
protesting against the results of the first round of elections.
"Across Ukraine there exists, below the surface, a deep fear of
anti-Semitism," says Bleich. "When a Jew sees a street that
has now been renamed after Stefan Bandera (a Ukrainian nationalist whose
forces fought against the Russians during World War II and at the same
time slaughtered Jews), he is gripped with fear. He would have prefered
the street be named again after Lenin."
At the same time, no one is accusing Yushchenko of anti-Semitic tendencies.
At the rally held at the beginning of the month in Kiev's main square,
he even announced that his father was a prisoner of war in Auschwitz and
noted that a number had been tattooed on his arm.
Several Jewish organizations have halted their activities until the clashes
between the two camps stops. The same is true of Beit Hillel, whose club
and main office is located in Kiev's main square. Its director issued
a call for Jewish students to "stay at home" and not participate
in the demonstrations, but he also acknowledges that his call has not
been particularly well received.
"Most demonstrators are young people and they enjoy participating
in the revolution," he said.
© Reprinted
with permission from Haaretz Daily
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