UKRAINE 2001-2

 

While the number of violent antisemitic incidents in 2001 remained almost on the same level as in the previous year, there was a steep rise in the first half of 2002. Skinheads were responsible for a number of the attacks.

 

the JEWISH community

Some 260 Jewish organizations and religious communities are active in about 120 cities, 44 of them in Kiev. They are gathered under a large number of umbrella organizations, principally the Union of Jewish Communities, led by Vadim Rabinovich; the Associated Jewish Organizations and Communities, led by Iosif Zisels; and the Jewish Confederation, led by Ilia Levitas. Frictions based on personalities and economics which have characterized the Ukrainian Jewish communities in recent years account for the multiplicity of groups and organizations. Moreover, there is intense rivalry over which organization should represent the community to the local authorities, to Jewish organizations abroad and to the State of Israel.

            As in the Russian Federation, Jewish organizations in Ukraine are involved in Jewish education, maintaining Jewish traditions and the memory of the Holocaust, and caring for the aging population.

 

extremist organizations

Ultra-Nationalist Groups

In contrast to Russia, antisemitism has played almost no role in political and economic rivalries in Ukraine in the last decade. The image of deeply rooted antisemitism as characteristic of the sovereign state of Ukraine was reinforced by the immediate emigration of Jews, who feared widespread xenophobia, especially in the provinces. Blaming Russia rather than the Jews for the worsening economic and social situation is evidence of a change in attitude toward the latter, who play a much more modest role in the political, public and economic life of Ukraine than they do in Russia. Ukrainian antisemitism is also moderated by Ukrainian aspirations to be accepted into NATO and to shake off Russian political pressure. Accepting European values implies curbing extreme nationalist and antisemitic organizations, even to the point of taking legal action against them.

            However, on the political fringe, particularly in the western provinces, antisemitism is integral to the ideologies of a number of small ultra-nationalist groups, whose influence, it should be noted, has been waning. They include State Independence of Ukraine (DSU), Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUND), Ukrainian Idealist, Congress of Ukrainian Intelligentsia (KUI) and Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (KUN). These groups publish a number of periodicals and newspapers, some of which have been decreasing rapidly in circulation in recent years. The most radical amongst them are Nezborim Natzia (The Unconquered Nation), published by the DSU, Neskorena Natzia (The Invincible Nation), Idealist; Za Vilnu Ukrainu (For a Free Ukraine) and Samostina Ukraina (Sovereign Ukraine). Antisemitic content has decreased, perhaps in response to an order of the Kharkhov court to the intellectual, government-funded association PROSVIT to cease publication of their antisemitic youth journal Djereltze, on 8 December 2000 (see ASW 2000/1).

 

Islamist Groups

Although Ukraine is a Slavic country, it has a sizable, mainly Tartar, Muslim population (especially in the Crimean peninsula), which has achieved a considerable degree of national autonomy. Since the 1990s there have been many Islamist organizations active among the Muslims (Ahrar, al-Fajr, Shafakat, Arghad, Isra’), which are connected to the international al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya, whose Ukrainian base is Simferopol. These organizations maintain a wide network of religious, educational and propaganda activities, aided by the mass communication means they own (newspapers and radio stations), and even have a military base where they train Tartars to join Chechen rebels fighting the Russian army in the northern Caucasus. It should be noted that members of the Ukrainian nationalist and antisemitic UNA UNSO also fight in Chechnya against the Russian army. As in Russia, Ukrainian Islamists and Slav nationalists have formed an alliance based partly on their common hatred of Jews.

 

ANTISEMITIC ACTIVITES

There were three violent incidents in 2001, compared to four in 2000: two cemetery desecrations (in Berdichev in July 2001, and in Shepetovka in August), and a shooting at a synagogue in Harson on 25 May. A police investigation of the last incident is continuing. The number of incidents rose sharply in the first half of 2002; 13 antisemitic acts were recorded until 30 June, largely in the provinces. There were attacks on Jewish sites, antisemitic slogans on walls and windows smashed in Nikoaev, Slaviansk, Kremenehug, Dnepropetrovsk, Vinogrodovo and Kiev. Two Jordanian students assaulted a woman who wore a Star of David in a Dnepropetrovsk restaurant. Skinheads, who are beginning to organize in Ukraine, as they are in Russia, were responsible for a number of the attacks, mainly in Kiev and Dnepropetrovsk.

The local population took very little part in the anti-Israel demonstrations organized by Arab students in Kiev, on 4 and 11 April 2002, and in Kharkhov on 19 April. As in Russia, the Ukrainians’ disinterest stems from their generally anti-Muslim attitude, clearly manifested in the conflict between the Slavic population and the Tartars in Crimea.