Ukraine: Israeli Flag Burning

Israeli flag burned at Kiev Holocaust memorial on Yom Hashoah May 5, 2016 5:44pm   (JTA) — A group of young people burned an Israeli flag outside a Ukraine Holocaust memorial in Kiev on Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, on Thursday. The flag burning near the Babi Yar ravine, where 30,000 Jews were murdered over the course of two days in September 1941, was captured on surveillance video, Interfax-Ukraine reported. Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko condemned the incident, referring to the flag burners as “young vandals.” He called on law enforcement authorities to investigate. “This happened on the national Holocaust Remembrance Day, when the Jewish people all over the world remember the 6 million victims who perished during World War II,” the press service of Kiev City State Administration quoted Klitscho saying, according to Interfax. “It is intolerable to brutalize the memory of the victims, especially at the place which is globally known as one of the symbols of a terrible crime of fascism, at the [Babi Yar], where dozens of thousands of people of different nationalities, the majority of them, Jewish, had been destroyed,” he said. The flag burning is the latest in a string of anti-Semitic incidents at the memorial, according to the Times of Israel. Klitschko appealed to law enforcement agencies for help in strengthening security measures at the site. Last year, the monument was vandalized with swastikas on five separate occasions, according to the Times of Israel. Earlier this year, the Ukrainian government announced it would allocate approximately $1 million to upgrade the memorial. http://www.jta.org/2016/05/05/news-opinion/world/israeli-flag-burned-at-kiev-holocaust-memorial-on-yom-hashoah http://www.alternet.org/world/how-israel-lobby-protected-ukrainian-neo-nazis World How the Israel Lobby Protected Ukrainian Neo-Nazis   Rep. John Conyers wanted to block U.S. funding to neo-Nazis in Ukraine. But the ADL and Simon Wiesenthal Center refused to help. By Max Blumenthal / AlterNet November 18, 2014 AlterNet has learned that an amendment to the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would have forbidden US assistance, training and weapons to neo-Nazis and other extremists in Ukraine was kept out of the final bill by the Republican-led House Rules Committee. Introduced by Democratic Representative John Conyers, the amendment was intended to help tamp down on violent confrontations between Ukrainian forces and Russian separatists. (Full text of the amendment embedded at the end of this article). A USA Today/Pew poll conducted in April while the NDAA was being debated found that Americans opposed by more than 2 to 1 providing the Ukrainian government with arms or other forms of military assistance. If passed, Conyers' amendment would have explicitly barred those found to have offered “praise or glorification of Nazism or its collaborators, including through the use of white supremacist, neo-Nazi, or other similar symbols” from receiving any form of support from the US Department of Defense. The amendment was presented by congressional staffers to lobbyists from Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, two of the country’s largest established Jewish pressure groups. Despite their stated mission to combat anti-Semitism and violent extremism, the ADL and Wiesenthal Center refused to support Jeffries and Conyers’ proposal. According to Democratic sources in Congress, staffers from the ADL’s Washington office and the Simon Wiesenthal Center rejected the amendment on the grounds that right-wing Ukrainian parties like Svoboda with documented records of racist extremism had “moderated their rhetoric.” An ADL lobbyist insisted that “the focus should be on Russia,” while the Wiesenthal Center pointed to meetings between far-right political leaders in Ukraine and the Israeli embassy as evidence that groups like Svoboda and Right Sector had shed their extremism. The ADL’s Washington office and the Simon Wiesenthal Center did not respond to numerous requests by email and telephone for comment. Earlier this year, the ADL’s outgoing National Director Abraham Foxman noted Svoboda’s “history of anti-Semitism and platform of ethnic nationalism” in a press release demanding the party renounce its past glorification of Stepan Bandera, a World War Two-era Nazi collaborator who has become a symbol of Ukrainian nationalism. When the Ukrainian parliament failed to pass a bill this October honoring Bandera’s Ukrainian Rebel Army, about 8000 supporters of Svoboda and the extremist Right Sector marched on the building, attacking riot police with homemade weapons while waving Banderist flags and Svoboda banners. The violent backlash was a reminder that the legend of Bandera would not die any time soon, and that Foxman’s admonitions had fallen on deaf ears. Svobodoa’s leader, Oleh Tyahnybok, once called for the liberation of his country from the “Muscovite-Jewish mafia.” In 2010, following the conviction of the Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk for his supporting role in the death of nearly 30,000 people at the Sobibor camp, Tyahnybok flew to Germany to praise him as a hero who was “fighting for truth.” Since the Euromaidan revolution, however, Svoboda has fought to rehabilitate its image. This has meant meeting with Israeli Ambassador to Ukraine Reuven Din El and appealing to shared national values. “I would like to ask Israelis to also respect our patriotic feelings,” Tyahnybok has remarked. “Probably each party in the [Israeli] Knesset is nationalist. With God’s help, let it be this way for us too.” Right Sector, the radical right-wing movement that battled riot police during the latter stages of the Euromaidan uprising, earned plaudits from the ADL’s Foxman when its leader arranged his own meeting with Din El. “[Right Sector leader] Dmitry Yarosh stressed that Right Sector will oppose all [racist] phenomena, especially anti-Semitism, with all legitimate means,” the Israeli embassy declared. [SKIP] Azov fighters are united by their nostalgia for Nazi Germany and embrace of open fascism. Sporting swastika tattoos, the battalion “flies a neo-Nazi symbol resembling a Swastika as its flag,” the New York Times’ Andrew Kramer recently reported. [SKIP] Azov is precisely the sort of neo-Nazi organization that Conyers’ NDAA amendment would have deprived of US assistance. But when the congressman sought help from the ADL and the Wiesenthal Center in moving the proposal forward, he was rebuked. The amendment died a quiet death and Azov’s American supply line remains intact. ARTICLE CONTINUES http://www.alternet.org/world/how-israel-lobby-protected-ukrainian-neo-nazis COMMENT Guess this is an example of a realpolitik decision.