An amendment to the 2015 National Defence Authorisation Act that would have forbidden US assistance, training & weapons to neo-Nazis and other extremists in Ukraine was dropped at the request of two of the largest Jewish pressure groups in the United States.
Introduced by Democratic Representative John Conyers, the amendment would have explicitly barred those who 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 Defence.
But the amendment was dumped after the Congress faced pressure from the Anti-Defamation League (‘ADL’) and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, two of the loudest pro-Israel groups in the US.
Despite their stated mission to combat anti-Semitism and violent extremism, the ADL and Wiesenthal Centre refused to support Conyer’s proposal on the ground that right-wing Ukrainian parties with documented records of racist extremism had “moderated their rhetoric.”
But this is not supported by facts on the ground in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s US supported President, Petro Poroshenko, is leading the nationalists’ dream with a war in the east and Ukraine’s leading party, The People’s Front, is pocked with far-right militants, including Andrei Parubiy, the co-founder of the neo-Nazi inspired Social National Party.
Besides Parubiy, The People’s Front included Andrei Biletsky, leader of the Azov military, an overtly neo-Nazi fighting force that has been on the frontlines of the battle on eastern Ukraine. Unlike the Svoboda party, the Azov militia does not even feign moderation.
“The historic mission of our nation, in this critical moment, is to lead the white races of the world in a final crusade for their survival,” Biletsky recently wrote.
“A crusade against the Semite-led untermenschen,” an infamous phrase used in Nazi Germany to describe Jews, gypsies and communists.
Azov fighters are united in 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,” according to Andrew Kramer of the New York Times.
Azov is precisely the sort of neo-Nazi organisation that Conyers’ NDAA amendment would have deprived of US assistance.
But when the Congressman sought support from the ADL and the Weisanthal Centre in moving forward, he was rebuked.
The amendment died a quiet death and Azov’s American supply line remained intact.
ADL’s current posture is in stark contrast to its stance early this year when its outgoing leader, Abraham Foxman noted the Svoboda party’s “history of anti-Semitism and platform of ethnic nationalism” and demanded the party renounce its past glorification of Stepan Bandera a WWII era Nazi collaborator, who has become a symbol of Ukrainian nationalsm.
So one minute the ADL is rightfully admonishing the Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups, and the next minute it’s clamouring to give them heavy weaponry?
An ADL lobbyist shed light on this paradox by stating:
“the focus should be on Russia,”
making it clear that the ADL’s position is based on geopolitics; not to fight “anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry,” as their mission statement claims.
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