Ukraine’s Jewish Problem

This past week Iran, and most assuredly, Ukraine, dominated the headlines and the Situation Room inside the White House. And, as it happens, both have a sordid history when it comes to Jews.

Iran’s ayatollahs continue to threaten Israel with erasure from world maps. The Biden foreign policy team—smug bottom feeders from Foggy Bottom—continue to return to Vienna in hopes of reviving the 2015 Iran Deal. Iran is always thrilled to see Americans returning to the suk where they pay retail and negotiate with as much discipline as a Kardashian.

During his presidency, Donald Trump decertified the Deal, but there were reports all throughout of Iran spinning its centrifuges to achieve 60% purity. The agreement contemplated that its nuclear facilities would never exceed 4%. Why an oil-producing country like Iran needs uranium for civilian purposes was never explained in the first instance.

Last week, Iran’s chief nuclear scientist announced that negotiators will never agree to modest enrichment levels. Meanwhile, inspection cameras that were supposed to monitor the facilities have malfunctioned. And an entirely new, previously undisclosed facility has been identified.

The 2015 Iran Deal epitomized the Obama administration’s feebleness on the world stage. Remember the red-line in Syria, the no-show in Libya, the genocide in Darfur, China’s South China Sea land-grabs, Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and those knives in Israel’s back. The Iran Deal was a Hail Mary to Muslims, praying against hope that Iran would discontinue enriching weapons-grade uranium. President Obama’s love affair with Persian mullahs predisposed him to sign almost anything. He even handed over a cash payment of 1.8 billion, which helped finance Iran’s terrorism and proxy wars in the Middle East.

The very same players in that bargain now have elevated positions in the Biden administration, and the new occupant of the Oval Office has his pen ready in hand.

Israel, and the entire Western World, has some serious thinking to do.

Now to Ukraine, where Biden is offering nominal support. Ukraine presents a very different and far more delicate matter.

Its longstanding history with antisemitism and participation in the Holocaust should not overshadow the heroism that is taking place in Ukraine right now. The Ukrainian people’s efforts to repel the Russian invasion of their country is nothing short of inspiring. Their desire to live as a free people under the principles and promises of liberal democracy is a lesson that Americans themselves should take to heart. After all, progressives within the Democratic Party have introduced an increasingly illiberal strain into our political culture these past several years, a bitterly censorious spirit and cancellation ethic that is wholly antithetical to liberal values.

Its longstanding history with antisemitism and participation in the Holocaust should not overshadow the heroism that is taking place in Ukraine right now.

Naturally, America should rally on behalf of Ukraine. Imposing economic sanctions against Russia is insufficient for a nation that regards itself as the leader of the free world and oldest democracy. Whether military forces should be deployed to defend Kyiv is premature. Polling shows Americans solidly against it. But surely the United States can fortify Ukraine with anti-tank and anti-missile defense systems to help even what is a vastly imbalanced fight.

NATO’s territorial sovereignty has been breached even though Ukraine is not a NATO state. But Ukraine is, nonetheless, a large land mass in Europe, and NATO is taking Russia’s belligerence personally.

However this conflict may end—and hopefully it results in an unoccupied, democratically governed Ukraine—the dark side of Ukraine’s antisemitic history should not be overlooked. Today we see them as freedom fighters, but they have also been persecutors of their Jewish population—going as far back as the Middle Ages.

Today we see them as freedom fighters, but they have also been persecutors of their Jewish population—going as far back as the Middle Ages.

Yes, I know, paradoxically, today, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, the face of the nation’s resistance against Russia, is himself of Jewish background. It’s a fun fact, but hard to reconcile given how Jews have typically been treated in Ukraine. Zelensky was a popular comedic leading man on both Russian and Ukrainian TV and in movies before he entered politics.

The United States once elected as its president a former Hollywood actor and years later, a reality TV star. There is nothing wrong with Ukraine being led by a Jewish comedian who has proven himself to be a quite serious and defiant leader of his people. If anything, there’s poetic justice in his presidency.

Will that eventually lead Ukrainians to reckon with their deplorable antisemitic history? In 2016, my friend, French public intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy, spoke at the 75th anniversary of the massacre at the Babi Yar, where, in 1941, 34,000 Jews—men, women and children—were stripped naked and machine-gunned into a ravine. Other killing-field mass murders were committed throughout the Holocaust, often aided by willing or indifferent Ukrainian accomplices. It is estimated that over one million Ukrainian Jews—out of the total six million European Jews—were killed during the Holocaust.

This does not account for the ceaseless cycle of pogroms by Ukrainians against their Jewish neighbors, beginning in the mid-17th century with the Cossack uprisings, continuing on with the anti-Jewish riots in Odessa in 1821, the murder of 50,000 by the Ukrainian People’s Republic in Kyiv and Kishinev shortly after World War I, and a wave of blood libel trials against Jews from 1911-1913, the most notorious of which was against Menahem Mendel Beilis.

Does this lamentable history mean that today’s Ukrainian people are deserving of less sympathy? Of course not. During the Bosnian genocide in the 1990s, Serbian perpetrators, ironically, had been among the few rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. And their victims were often complicit in the killing of Balkan Jews. That didn’t grant Serbia a genocidal pass, and it doesn’t mean that, “what goes around comes around,” either.

Such attitudes are inhumane, and not Jewish.

Over the past week of Russian hostilities, many Jews have taken to social media to proclaim proudly that, “My family is from Ukraine!” It was their way of saying: “This could have happened to me.”

But it already had. That’s why they’re here, in the United States, or Israel. They were never welcome in Ukraine. And there are millions of unmarked Jewish graves to prove it.

Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro College, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is the legal analyst for CBS News Radio. His most recent book is titled “Saving Free Speech … From Itself.”