The Jewish people are in, as usual, a precarious place with respect to the present Ukrainian discord. The ideological left historically paid lip service to helping all oppressed. Marxism in its 19th century birth and early 20th century practice in Russia gave hope to the Jew. The reality is over time, understatedly, it did not help. Jews were continually threatened and often killed no matter the political slant of power. Leftist Russia, like Czarist Russia before it, discriminated, oppressed, attacked and killed Jews but the extreme right was and is certainly no Utopia for the Jew either.
Presently the Jewish people in Ukraine are between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Crimea now, soon to be under Russian aegis, certainly threatens Jews but the neo fascist right of greater Ukraine is no panacea for the Jew either. In truth, the Jew is threatened by both culturally leftist Russian Crimea and western Ukraine if a neo fascist right wing assumes power there. Western Ukraine to be sure, like its Crimean counterpart, is saturated with anti-Semites as it always has been.
This is why the Israeli Jewish state is important. The Israeli government should monitor closely what happens to the Jews of Ukraine both in the soon-to-be Russian dominated Crimea under the eye of the strong arm Putin and in the larger western-oriented Ukraine if it tips extremist neo-fascist right. Both are toxic for the Jew.
My Jewish grandparents had the prescience to leave the pogroms of Ukraine in the early 20th century as the great Jewish migration to the US began. I urge the Jewish people of both east and west Ukraine to GET OUT while you can. What more perfect time than the upcoming Passover for the Jewish people to get out and breathe the air of freedom’s safety.
The Jews of 1933 Ukraine and the Jews of Europe then waited too long to leave. Get out now before, God forbid, history repeats itself with a world and religions of all stripes poisoned by their 2000 year old toxic anti-Semitic brew that dictates they simply do not know how to leave the Jewish people alone!
