A violent attack against a Ukrainian Rabbi over the weekend was a provocation, intended as a “justification for the continuation of Russian aggression” in the Crimea, one local Jewish leader asserted on Saturday.
Josef Zissels, the Chairman of the Vaad of Ukraine and a Vice-President of the World Jewish Congress, told The Jerusalem Post that such violence serves to “discredit the new government of Ukraine.”
Hillel Cohen, the director of the Hatzalah Ukraine organization, was stabbed on Friday night in Kiev, making him the third Jew to be physically assaulted, and the second to be stabbed, in the capital since January.
Russia has branded Ukraine's new authorities as "fascists" backed by anti-Jewish militants in justifying its takeover of Crimea and hostility to those who overthrew the Moscow-backed Ukrainian president last month.
During a press conference in Moscow earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned against the “rampage of reactionary forces, nationalist and anti-Semitic forces going on in certain parts of Ukraine, including Kiev.”
“if we see such uncontrolled crime spreading to the eastern regions of the country, and if the people ask us for help, while we already have the official request from the legitimate President, we retain the right to use all available means to protect those people,” he said.
However, Jewish leaders, including Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich, head of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine, and Eduard Dolinksy of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, have downplayed such statements.
In a press conference of his own in New York, Bleich said that “things may be done by Russians dressing up as Ukrainian nationalists” in the “same way the Nazis did when they wanted to go into Austria and created provocations.”
Bleich is also a Vice President of the WJC.
In an email to the Post, Zissels wrote that he had looked into several attacks against Jewish targets that have occurred since the beginning of Ukraine’s civil unrest last November.
The manner in which several of the attacks were carried out and similarities between the incidents indicated a high degree of professionalism, he alleged.
“I have never claimed that the Russian government or Yanukovych administration were anti-Semitic,” he added. “It is much worse - they are cynically willing to play the ‘Jewish card’ in the implementation of its objectives, and are therefore [shown to be] willing to sacrifice Jews.”
“Neither in Simferopol, nor in Zaporozhye [in the Crimea] I have not seen before anti-Semitic graffiti - in these cities there are no nationalist groups.”
While widespread anti-Semitism has not been reported in the Crimea since the invasion, there has been at least one incident in which the Jewish community was targeted.
Graffiti calling for “Death to the Jews” was found on a synagogue in the Crimea’s Ner Tamid Reform synagogue last week, prompting Anatoly Gendin, head of the Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities of Crimea, to assert that “Jews are [being] held responsible” and are being “blamed” for the “disasters” facing those living in the Crimea.
The World Forum for Russian Speaking Jews last week held a self-defense course in Kiev at the urging of the organization’s President and Kiev resident Alexander Levin.
“Now we see that our concern unfortunately was justified,” WFRSJ CEO Alex Selsky told the Post. “. We call for all the political movements not to redirect the tension and anxiety toward Jews.”