Maxim D. Shrayer found this dearth of Ukrainian solidarity with Israel both bewildering and disheartening, especially so because Israeli volunteers have been fighting for Ukraine’s freedom.
David H. Wells/Getty Images; alexis84/Getty Images
Editors’ Note:
In the weeks following the Hamas attack on Israel, Ukrainian artists and intellectuals as well as members of the Ukrainian diaspora in North America have voiced support for “the people of Palestine,” condemned Israel, and even drawn pernicious parallels between Russia’s war against Ukraine and Israel’s military operations in Gaza. Maxim D. Shrayer, author and Boston College professor who has deep roots in Ukraine, found this dearth of Ukrainian solidarity with Israel both bewildering and disheartening, especially so because Israeli volunteers have been fighting for Ukraine’s freedom. This poem is Shrayer’s way of expressing his dismay.
Just like any emotion or any label, hate can be denied. What is much harder to deny is one set of rules for the world and another for the Jews. That’s not an emotion. It’s an action.
“Citizen Vigilante” serves as a warning to governments that if they don’t secure their borders, enforce laws, and protect their most vulnerable, ordinary people will resort to self-help.
The only hope for a better future is to turn the Palestinians away from Hamas and back on the path of building their economy and a democratic society that conceivably could regain the trust of Israelis.
Israel, and everything it has accomplished, has given Judaism a spine. After two millennia of insecurity and persecution, Israel shows us a way of being Jewish that is the opposite of weakness.
Israel Bonds, the organization that has mobilized diaspora investment in the State of Israel for 75 years, is building a community among a new generation of pro-Israel professionals in Los Angeles.
Arab citizens are an integral part of Israeli society. They serve as physicians, nurses, lawyers, engineers, pharmacists, entrepreneurs, professors and judges.
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More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.
Israeli Soldiers in Ukraine
Maxim D. Shrayer
Editors’ Note:
In the weeks following the Hamas attack on Israel, Ukrainian artists and intellectuals as well as members of the Ukrainian diaspora in North America have voiced support for “the people of Palestine,” condemned Israel, and even drawn pernicious parallels between Russia’s war against Ukraine and Israel’s military operations in Gaza. Maxim D. Shrayer, author and Boston College professor who has deep roots in Ukraine, found this dearth of Ukrainian solidarity with Israel both bewildering and disheartening, especially so because Israeli volunteers have been fighting for Ukraine’s freedom. This poem is Shrayer’s way of expressing his dismay.
Israeli Soldiers in Ukraine
Israeli soldiers volunteering in Ukraine,
your Ukrainian accents audible in Russian
but not in Hebrew. Your faces Levantine,
your Stars of David like insignia of pain.
Israeli soldiers fighting in Ukraine,
at Soledar and Bakhmut, Kharkiv and Kherson,
in fields of ripening wheat, in valleys of stone,
in seething trenches and open terrain.
Israeli soldiers dying for Ukraine,
where your ancestors had been killed before,
could you ever imagine a Ukrainian bard
or poet crying not for Israel but for Gaza?
Maxim D. Shrayer is the author of the memoir “Immigrant Baggage” and the collection “Of Politics and Pandemics.” He teaches at Boston College.
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