Ukrainian Jewish leaders, academics and activists are protesting a gathering of
the Jewish Agency’s board of governors that is slated to take place in Kiev in
June.
Josef Zissels, chairman of the Vaad of Ukraine and of the General
Council of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, sent a letter protesting against the
conference to the agency’s chairman Natan Sharansky and members of its board
stating that his opposition was due to the unmistakable “assault on political
and social rights and freedoms of Ukrainian citizens.”
“We, the
representatives of the Jewish community and the leaders of a number of Ukrainian
Jewish organizations, scholars and former Soviet political prisoners are
concerned” over the announcement of the July gathering, the letter obtained by
The Jerusalem Post stated.
It cited “the loss of freedom for key leaders
of the opposition” and allegations of electoral fraud.
Expressing
concerns over the rise of the anti-Semitic, far-right Svoboda party, the
signatories asserted that “democratization” can only occur “if serious pressure
is applied.”
“As things now stand,” the letter continued, “the very fact
of holding a largescale international forum such as the JAFI [Jewish Agency for
Israel] board of governors visiting sessions will harm the informal
international isolation that the Ukrainian authorities are currently facing, and
thus will certainly be in great use by the authorities as
propaganda.”
Moreover, Zissels and his colleagues believe, this will
“doubtlessly provoke an increase in anti-Semitic attitudes” and, therefore, the
decision to hold the meeting is “untimely.”
Among the signatories to the
letter are Vadim Shulman, the president of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress,
Anatoly Podolsky, the director of the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies,
Igor Kuperberg, the chairman of the Zionist Federation of Ukraine, and Prof.
Alexey Khamray, the leader of the Conservative Jewish community in
Kiev.
Other signatories include former political prisoner and vice rector
of the Ukrainian Catholic University, Miroslav Marinovich, and Vitaly Portnikov,
the president of the TVi television company.
In an email to members of
the board of governors, Zissel asked that they “consider our
arguments.”
“We see all the positive and negative aspects of holding the
next session of the board of the Jewish Agency in Ukraine and consider that the
negative ones far outweigh the positive ones,” he wrote.
One person
familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named, said that “at a time that
the Ukrainian government is being accused of serious human rights violations, it
is very strange that the Jewish Agency is to hold its summer board of governors
in Kiev.”
Saying that anti-Semitism is “rife” in Ukraine, he asserted
that “the Ukrainian government will use the fact that the Jewish Agency, headed
by former Soviet human rights activist and Prisoner of Zion Natan Sharansky, is
holding its board of governors in Kiev to show that it [Ukraine] is being
wrongly accused of human rights violations and not doing enough to fight
anti-Semitism.”
Not all Ukrainian Jewish leaders agreed with Zissels,
however.
In an email to the Post on Thursday, MP Oleksandr Feldman, a
Jewish member of parliament and the president of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee,
said that he “strongly opposes the call to cancel JAFI board meeting in
Ukraine.”
Feldman said that Zissels’ letter was a “miserable attempt to
pull JAFI and especially Ukrainian Jews into political games.”
Feldman
said that most of the letter’s signatories were “not Jews, but active Ukrainian
opposition [politicians] and that following their logic, JAFI and the Jewish
community should stop its all activities in Ukraine.”
He said that he was
looking forward to the upcoming board of governors meeting and that Zissels and
his colleagues “in no way represent the Jewish community of
Ukraine.”
There will soon be a meeting of the Jewish Community
Coordination Council to react to this “provocation,” Feldman told the Post. “I,
myself and all my colleagues are looking forward to JAFI board meeting in Kiev
which we believe will strengthen the bonds between Israel and the Diaspora [and]
will help in the revival of the Jewish community of Ukraine.”
Ukrainian
Jewish tycoon Vadim Rabinovich also weighed in against Zissels, telling the Post
that the leaders of the Jewish community were “surprised by the fact that only
one person has taken the responsibility to speak on behalf of the whole
community of Ukraine.”
“Today a refusal to hold a meeting of the board
will hit the Jewish community of Ukraine. The Jewish community has always been,
is and will be out of politics. That is why we hope that a right decision will
be taken and the meeting will be held successfully in Kiev in 2013,” Rabinovich
said.
Zissels and Shulman’s claims have also been disputed by Sharansky
and Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich, a chief rabbi of Ukraine and president of the
Jewish Confederation of Ukraine, an organization that, along with Zissels’s
Vaad, is an affiliate of European Jewish Congress.
“We believe it to be
both wrong and irresponsible to politicize the upcoming meeting by relating it
to issues of Ukrainian political discourse,” Bleich said.
Sharansky and
board of governors chairman James Tisch replied to Zissels in a letter of their
own to board members.
“In response to concerns raised by board members
and partners, we have consulted with numerous community leaders and held
discussions with a great many representatives of Ukraine’s Jewish community,”
they wrote.
Sharansky and Tisch urged board members to not cancel their
travel plans, saying that “it is extremely important for us and for the local
community that there is a strong showing at this summer’s board of governors
meeting.”
JTA contributed to this report.
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