The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said it was deeply troubled by a thinly veiled anti-Semitic appeal made by the leadership of the Donetsk and Lugansk pro-Russian “People’s Republics,” who referred to the government in Kiev as “pathetic representatives of the great Jewish people.”
During a press conference on February 2 captured on YouTube, Alexander Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky - respectively of Donetsk and Lugansk - asked how “Cossacks could be ruled by the not quite right kind of people.”
After several minutes of calling on Ukrainian citizens to disobey and reject Ukrainian President Poroshenko and his government, Zakharenko, leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, claimed that Kiev's pro-Western leaders were "miserable representatives of the great Jewish people".
Plotnitsky immediately attempted to provide cover against accusations of anti-Semitism by referring to a YouTube video about ‘Jewish Cossacks.’
“Those watching understood very well that this was an anti-Semitic appeal,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director.
“Their body language clearly gave them away as Plotnitsky began to smirk at the beginning of the performance, knowing what was coming, and Zakharenko, who tried not to laugh as he was speaking, said ‘Jews’ very subtly, before Plotnitsky tried to inoculate them from the anti-Semitism accusation with his comments, which came so quickly they were clearly pre-planned.”
Foxman added, “Anti-Semitism has no place in political speech, and any attempt to espouse anti-Jewish hatred within any political arena is simply unacceptable.”
According to the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, Efraim Zuroff, Zakharchenko was trying to “sow internal ethnic discord in Ukraine and weaken the regime that the Russian insurgents are fighting.” “That appears to be the motivation, which is based on the Russians’ assumption that anti-Semitism continues to be deeply entrenched in Ukrainian society,” Zuroff said.
In April 2014, ADL condemned the appearance of anti-Semitic fliers in Donetsk, which were handed out on the first night of Passover instructing Jews to register with the government or face deportation and confiscation of their property.
Fighting between Ukrainian forces and the pro-Russian rebels, which has claimed 5,100 lives since April, has surged in recent weeks after the collapse of a tenuous ceasefire deal.