As Breitbart News reported earlier this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s op-ed in the New York Times ripping into the current Ukrainian administration and siding with its opposition raises serious questions about anti-Semitism in Obama administration foreign policy. That’s because according to Ukrainian reports, the opposition party, led by imprisoned former Prime Minister and Russian ally Yulia Tymoshenko, has signed a coalition deal with the Svoboda All-Ukrainian Union. The head of Svoboda All-Ukrainian Union has claimed in the past that “Ukraine was occupied by the Jews, rather than the Germans.” The party itself is reportedly named after the Nazi Party.
“I and my colleagues in Israel are concerned that for the first time, a similar party, which openly defends far-right chauvinistic positions, might not only be represented in parliament, but also join the government of a country friendly to us,” said Alex Miler, head of the Israel-Ukraine inter-parliamentary association and a member of Israel’s Israel is Our Home Party.
Now the American Jewish community is speaking out about this disturbing situation. “It appears to be a move that would inject into the mainstream what seems to be a so-far marginalized party that clearly is just anti-Semitic,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a global Jewish human rights organization. “That is extremely disturbing. And looking across Europe, you see the Golden Dawn situation in Greece, in Hungary with Jobbik — although each country has its own set of circumstances, we’re seeing the re-emergence of groups that belong in the gutter. You have democracy and the right to speak, of course, but to mainstream this into the body politic against the backdrop of hundreds of years of history is really disturbing.”
David Suissa, president of the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, explained, “Russian Israelis have a deep understanding of the dark arts of Russian politics, and that includes Ukraine. It’s not surprising that they would jump on this shift and see the potential harm for Israel-Ukraine relations.”
“This is an unacceptable development in Ukrainian politics,” said Marc Brown, trustee of Agudath Israel. “And for Secretary of State Clinton to essentially endorse a Ukrainian opposition that includes a neo-Nazi party is deeply troubling.”