JTA: Global Jewish News - 12.18.2006

Jews attacked in Ukraine

(JTA) -- Three Orthodox Jews were attacked in Ukraine’s capital.

Elhanan Shershevsky, an Israeli teacher at a Kiev synagogue, and two other Orthodox Jews, all in traditional Orthodox garb, were attacked Dec. 10 not far from Kiev’s main synagogue.

The incident was not reported to the media for a week.

According to witnesses, 10 young men hit the three Jews and a passer-by who tried to stop the attackers.

Shershevsky suffered injuries and a concussion.

The two other Jews were able to escape and call police.

Police are investigating but no arrests have been reported.

Yaakov Dov Bleich, chief rabbi of Kiev and Ukraine, told JTA he has no doubt that the attack was motivated by anti-Semitism.

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Kyiv Post - 11.16.2006

Kyiv Post

David Duke makes repeat visit to controversial Kyiv university

By Elisabeth Sewall

In a move that some critics say could fan the flames of creeping racial intolerance and xenophobia in the country, one of Ukraine’s largest higher educational institutes has again invited reputed White supremacist, American David Duke, to lecture on its campus.

Duke’s Oct. 19 appearance at the Interregional Academy of Personnel Management, better known as MAUP, dealt with alleged Zionist influence over the United States government and mass media, according to an Oct. 20 news release posted on MAUP’s website, which has since been removed.

MAUP’s press service refused to provide the Post with comments regarding Duke’s visit.

MAUP, which has hosted Duke on several occasions in recent years, awarding him with a doctorate in history in 2005, has denied claims that it is propagating anti-Semitic rhetoric with Duke’s appearances.

According to the New York-based Anti-Defamation League [ADL], Duke subscribes to the ideologies of White supremacism, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. The ADL claims that Duke spent much of 2001-2002 in Russia and Ukraine promoting anti-Semitism.

In the United States, Duke is best known for his role in the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s as the White supremacist group’s Imperial Wizard, and his one-time stint as a member of the Louisiana State House of Representatives from 1989 to 1992.

Duke has recently been gaining attention by lecturing abroad and promoting his controversial book, “Jewish Supremacism: The Jewish Question from the Eye of an American,” the Russian-language version of which has enjoyed a wide readership in Russia and Ukraine, according to Duke.

“I am not in any way an anti-Semite,” Duke said in a phone interview with the Post.

“I am not a White supremacist in any way whatsoever. I do believe that every people has a right to defend their heritage and preserve their heritage,” he added.

Maksym Butkevych, an activist with No Borders–Kyiv Initiative, a Kyiv-based organization monitoring racism in Ukraine, said the fact that an educational institution such as MAUP would allocate funds to invite a person of Duke’s repute and help him disseminate his views, which are “racist by nature,” poses a potential danger of exacerbating worsening racial problems in the country.

“Duke’s visit is another detail in the overall panorama of the racist tensions in Ukraine, which already looks pretty grim,” Butkevych said.

“Duke lecturing at MAUP is one of those events that looks decent enough, but sends mixed and controversial messages,” he said.

“Criticizing Israel’s foreign policy, they end up talking about the threat of global Zionism, which is used as a label for a worldwide conspiracy orchestrated by people of one ethnic origin,” Butkevych added. 

Duke’s repeat visit to Ukraine has also caused concern among members of Ukraine’s government.

According to an Oct. 31 article posted by Mosnews.com, an English-language website based in Russia, Oleksandr Feldman, a Ukrainian lawmaker with the opposition Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, criticized Ukraine’s government for allowing Duke to enter the country, calling him a “White supremacist.”

Lawmaker Refat Chubarov, a member of the pro-presidential Our Ukraine faction and parliament’s committee on human rights, ethnic minorities and interethnic relations, said that any educational institution that invites a guest speaker must evaluate his theories and the potential impact it might have on society.

Chubarov, who is also an active member of Ukraine’s Crimean Tatar community, said that it is the responsibility of the state to interfere in any actions that might stir up interethnic tensions.

Butkevych disagrees. He believes that the state should not get involved, and that public protests, which never took place in response to Duke’s visits and lectures, would be more appropriate in such cases. 

Duke said that he came to Ukraine as part of a larger tour of Europe and the Middle East, where he will be promoting new translations of his book, “Jewish Supremacism.”

“My book’s coming out in about five countries over the next two or three months … I’m quite busy with all this stuff,” he said.

Duke estimated that the book’s Russian translation, which has been available since 2000, has sold nearly 650,000 copies in Russia alone. He said he didn’t know how many copies had sold in Ukraine but that the book had already been published in this country.

“I think the publisher sold the rights and I don’t know the numbers, but I know it’s been a lot. When I did my lecture, many individuals brought their books to have them signed,” Duke said.

Duke denied that MAUP paid him for taking part in the conference.

“No, they didn’t pay for me to come. No, I was traveling through the area, I had some other things … they wanted to do this press conference and academic lecture as well, so I came and did it,” Duke said, adding that he has already been to Ukraine on several occasions at MAUP’s bequest.

“I’ve lectured a number of times [at MAUP]. They also have had a series of anti-Zionist conferences, which have been well attended around the world, including many diplomats and many government officials,” he said.

After receiving an honorary degree from MAUP a few years earlier, Duke obtained a PhD in history from the university in September 2005 for his doctoral thesis entitled “Zionism as a Form of Ethnic Supremacism.”

Butkevych said there is an alarming tendency emerging in Ukraine of “ideological” racism and xenophobia, which is growing more popular among marginal youth groups and political parties.

However, according to him, the main sources exporting racist ideology to Ukraine have been Russian, with ultra-right-wing ideas disseminated via Russian nationalist websites and music.

Butkevych said that the slaying of a Nigerian citizen in a metro station on Kyiv’s left bank Oct. 25, allegedly by a group of five skinheads who have not been detained, appeared to closely resemble the numerous killings of racial minorities by neo-Nazi youth groups in Russia.

Ukrainian daily Kommersant reported Nov. 1 that the assailants who killed the 44-year-old Nigerian, Godknows Mievi, allegedly shouted in Russian and Ukrainian, “We will save Ukraine from these freaks!”

Duke, and other sources of racist ideology, such as France’s right-wing Front National, the party headed by Jean-Marie Le Pen, have been less instrumental in stoking racial intolerance in Ukraine, Butkevych said.

According to him, Le Pen has consulted Ukrainian right-wing groups in the past.

The Ukrainian newspaper Zerkalo Nedeli reported in May 2000 that Le Pen had visited Ukraine to speak at a congress of the ultra-right-wing All-Ukrainian Union Svoboda, also known as the Social-Nationalist Party, headquartered in the Ukrainian nationalist stronghold of Lviv in the country’s west.

According to the Ukrainian Central Election Committee’s website, the party ran for parliament with Oleh Tiahnybok at its head in 1998.

Tiahnybok made it into parliament in 2002 on the ticket of Our Ukraine, the party led by current President Viktor Yushchenko.

Yushchenko announced Tiahnybok’s expulsion from the party for making racist and anti-Semitic statements amid Our Ukraine’s politicking during Yushchenko’s presidential campaign in the summer of 2004.

“A Ukrainian patriot is not synonymous with a xenophobe,” Yushchenko said at the time.

Tiahnybok ran for parliament in 2006, again as the head of the All-Ukrainian Union Svoboda, which dropped the Social-Nationalist Party moniker in 2004 due to the negative image associated with the name. The party received 0.36 percent of the vote in the 2006 elections, well below the 3 percent barrier needed to make it into parliament.

According to a November 3 report prepared by London-based Amnesty International for the United Nations, despite appeals to the Ukrainian government to take steps to prevent and punish racist and anti-Semitic tendencies, made back in 2001, such attacks are currently continuing, and the government “unwillingly admits they are racially motivated.” The report mentions “at least” eight attacks against Jews that took place in Ukraine in 2005, noting that they have been qualified by the police as “hooliganism.” 

Natalia Prokopchuk, Regional Public Information Officer of UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, said that in 2006 her agency registered approximately 50 complaints from refugees and asylym seekers staying in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa and Vinnytsia, primarily of African and Asian origin. She says in addition to racist attacks and battery, this number also includes extortion and other harassments.

Prokopchuk notes, however, that only a small percentage of refugees in Ukraine approaches police or makes public complaints about racist attacks or other mistreatment, due to the fear of possible retaliation by the assailants.

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Forward - 11.03.2006

Forward

David Duke Offers ‘Antisemitism 101’ at a Ukrainian University

By Nathaniel Popper

Ex-Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke visited Ukraine’s largest university last week to give a stump speech on what he calls “radical Jewish extremists” — his phrase for the Israeli and American government.

Duke has become a regular at the university, the Inter-Regional Academy of Personnel Management, which is known by its Ukrainian acronym, MAUP. Last year, Duke was a featured speaker at the university’s conference, “Zionism: Threat to World Peace,” and he has received both a doctorate and an honorary doctorate from the Ukrainian school. This time around, Duke’s talk in front of university administrators drew particular attention to MAUP’s legal battles with its Jewish critics.

“The Jewish extremists — the Zionists — they don’t want there to be academic freedom in this country, or political freedom in this country,” Duke said in a speech that was also broadcast on his personal Web site. “This university and your students and faculty are resisting this attack.”

Duke was referring to what has become an intense legal tug of war between MAUP on one side and Jewish activists and western governments on the other. The United States State Department has labeled MAUP the leading purveyor of antisemitic material in Ukraine. The American and Israeli embassies in Kiev, along with Jewish organizations, have lobbied the Ukrainian government to take a number of steps to force out the school’s current leadership.

MAUP’s leaders have struck back in force. In the past year alone, the university has launched dozens of lawsuits against Ukrainian journalists, rabbis, politicians and academics — anyone who suggests that the university is antisemitic.

A number of possible reasons have been given for MAUP’s anti-Jewish efforts. The State Department alleged in an official report that Middle Eastern governments funded the school. Whatever the explanation, the resulting confrontation has international consequences and is drawing in many of the most significant players in the Ukrainian political community.

Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko resigned from his place on MAUP’s board last December. Members of the United States Congress debated the situation during negotiations over a American-Ukrainian trade bill. And Vadim Rabinovich, a media magnate and a leader of the Jewish community in Ukraine, has been the target of repeated lawsuits.

One of the newest suits arose out of an effort to show just how excessive the legal battles have become. In September, a leading rabbi in Kiev, Yaakov Bleich, went on television. When asked during a television interview what problems Ukraine was facing, Bleich brought up MAUP.

“For instance,’” Bleich said he told the interviewer, “right now, I’ll say on television that MAUP is antisemitic and the guy who runs it is antisemitic. I can expect to be sued by them very shortly.”

“Sure enough” Bleich added, “two weeks later, they announced the suit. Now they are just attacking anything that moves. They feel the pressure.”

A spokeswoman for the university declined to comment on the court cases.

Little of the enmity and courtroom machinations is evident on a visit to MAUP’s campus in suburban Kiev.

The school was founded in 1989 as a private alternative to Ukraine’s public university. It now has about 57,000 students. Courses on business and agriculture are taught on a leafy campus that is decked with only a slight overdose of blue and yellow Ukrainian flags.

In general Ukrainian society, criticism of the school tends to focus on its low academic standards — the State Department described MAUP as a “diploma mill,” and the Ukrainian ministry of education revoked thousands of diplomas that were improperly distributed.

But students coming down the main walkway — through a gate that reads “Vivat Academia” — said they had heard little about MAUP’s problems with the Jews. Nastia Gukin, a 17-year-old banking student, said that “the students have their own lives. Whatever goes on in the publishing house is separate from us.”

It is at the upper echelons where the university is becoming consumed by the ever-widening campaign to expose the perceived misdeeds of the Jews. Last year, the president of the university, Geogy Schokin, founded a political party, the Ukrainian Conservative Party, which had an election list stacked with MAUP professors. While the Ukrainian officials rejected a request from the Israeli government to ban Schokin from the elections, the party garnered only .09% of the vote, far from the minimum needed for a seat.

Schokin laid out his philosophy in a lecture titled “Dialogue of Civilizations,” which he presented at a 2002 conference. In bombastic academic language, Schokin explained that Jews around the world are aiming for the “creation, above all, of an extensive and multi-branch network of secret societies coordinated from a single center and based on man-hating principles, ‘consecrated’ by appropriate religious and historical legends and traditions, the core and pivot of which reside in the doctrine of racial ‘selectness,’ and a maniacal dedication to and enthusiasm for the ‘super-idea’ of world supremacy.”

For critics, Schokin’s influence is felt most widely in MAUP’s publishing houses, which publish 400 books, including the works of Schokin and David Duke. Another title is “Sioniski Protocols: Sources and Documents,” which had a print run of 5,000. In the book, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” an antisemitic hoax created by the tsarist secret police, is treated as a genuine document from Jewish hands.

The English summary at the back explains that “Talmud ideology creates some tragic actions in human history, compares Hebrews to the world, and proclaims them as a ‘selected nation.’ This book is intended for researchers of said issue and for global audience.”

The MAUP presses also put out a magazine and a newspaper. One copy of the newspaper, “Personal Plus,” in late September included a piece about a Holocaust memorial service (“Tragedy is good for making money”), a book review (“Greedy American and Jewish corpocrats think that they can steal from other people”) and an article about an award for an Israeli poet at a recent book fair, where MAUP’s display booth was put next to the toilet (“The organizers showed where the place is for the opponents of the Zionists”).

It is these publications that have sparked a number of the lawsuits. A Ukrainian Jewish journalist, Eduard Doks, was sued after making comments at a press conference about the kiosks where MAUP sells its publications. That suit was dropped earlier this week, Doks said, after a judge found that MAUP did not follow “proper legal procedure.” MAUP has had more success in its lawsuits against Jewish tycoon and media owner Vadim Rabinovich, who is president of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine. MAUP has launched numerous lawsuits against Rabinovich’s Capitol News, and two months ago it celebrated a victory with a special posting on its Web site. The judge had ordered Rabinovich to pay the university $9,000.

The legal framework of these cases has not always been clear. Doks says that the Jewish critics have lost the court cases “because national legislation does not have a definition of antisemitism.”

But Bleich, the chief rabbi, says the reason for the court victories is easier to understand: MAUP has been willing to bribe judges. “They are paying off judges; there is no question about it,” Bleich said.

MAUP’s spokespeople did not return phone calls for comment. When a Forward reporter visited the administrative offices, a spokeswoman shut the door after saying, “You can see everything on the Web site.”

The pressure on MAUP has been increasing during the past year. The school was drawn into negotiations earlier this year in the United States over the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, a piece of legislation that restricted America’s trade relations with Ukraine. According to Jewish activists, when Congress was deciding whether to end these restrictions on Ukraine, the decision became linked to the Ukrainian government’s promise to rein in MAUP.

“We’ve been pressing the government on this for a long time,” said Mark Levin, executive director of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry.

The Ukrainian government has not ignored these requests. The government’s ministry of education has shut down a number of MAUP’s regional branches over the past few months. In the Ukrainian parliament, a Jewish member, Alexander Feldman, has pushed the president and prosecutors to do more; however, even if he succeeds with this, Feldman told the Forward he is not sure what silencing effect it will have.

“They enjoy lawsuits,” said Feldman, who is initiating his own suit against the university. “The more they get sued, the more P.R. they have. It supports their image of victims.”

Nathaniel Popper traveled to Ukraine on a World Affairs Journalism Fellowship administered by the International Center for Journalists. The fellowship is funded by the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.

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Ukraine Ministry of Foreign Affairs- 10.04.2006

Ministry of Education and Sciences of Ukraine Cracks Down on MAUP

The Ministry of Education and Sciences of Ukraine decided to deny the notorious MAUP University official recognition of 4655 diplomas issued to MAUP graduates in 2006. The ministry based this decision on blatant violations of the license agreement on the part of MAUP. 

According to reports from Kyiv, 30 regional MAUP offices are to be closed within next months. 

The MAUP leadership declared its intentions to sue the Government of Ukraine for “political prosecution, inspired by Zionist forces.” 

Anti-Semitic statements of MAUP leaders were on many occasions condemned by President Yuschenko and representatives of the Government, including Foreign Minister Borys Tarasiuk. 


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Jewish Telegraphic Agency - 06.28.2006

Ukraine cracks down on controversial university

(JTA) -- Ukraine’s Education Ministry called for seven branches of a Ukrainian university known for supporting anti-Semitism to be disbanded. 

The move is seen as a blow against MAUP, a Kiev-based private university that has printed anti-Semitic articles in school publications and supported conferences with anti-Semitic speakers. 

“This is an important step forward, and we hope that this is the beginning of appropriate action taken against the leading purveyor of anti-Semitic activity in Ukraine,” said Mark Levin, executive director of NCSJ: Advocates on Behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States and Eurasia.


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Jewish Telegraphic Agency - 05.31.2006

U.S. lawmakers talk anti-Semitism with Ukrainian leader

(JTA) -- U.S. lawmakers discussed xenophobia and anti-Semitism in meetings with Ukrainian leaders. U.S. Reps. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) met Monday with Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko in Kiev.

In their meeting, Blunt, the House of Representatives’ majority whip, and Hoyer, the House’s Democratic whip, expressed concern over the activities of the Interregional Academy of Personnel Management, or MAUP, a Kiev private university with a long history of anti-Semitism.



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Jewish Telegraphic Agency - 05.19.2006

Kiev mayor blasts anti-Semites

(JTA) -- Kiev’s new mayor said he would combat anti-Semitism in the Ukrainian capital. 

Leonid Chernovetsky made the statement at an Israeli Independence Day reception before members of the Jewish community and diplomats. The new mayor said “everybody who offends Jews” should be prosecuted. “All those who hurt Jews are doomed,” the mayor said, adding that those who refer to Jews in derogatory terms are “the rubbish of the Ukrainian people.”

Kiev has seen a number of attacks against Jewish individuals and institutions in recent years, and a private university in the city, MAUP, has become a center of xenophobia and anti-Semitic propaganda.


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Jewish Telegraphic Agency - 03.01.2006

Ukrainian school raises ritual murder charge

(JTA) -- A Ukrainian university known for its anti-Semitic activities commemorated a Christian boy whose death triggered a ritual murder trial. 

Last week, leaders of the Interregional Academy of Personnel Management, or MAUP, visited the grave of Andrei Yuschinsky and commemorated him,“who was murdered by Jews with ritual purpose,” the school’s magazine wrote. 

The 1911 murder of the 13-year-old boy in Kiev resulted in the trial of Mendel Beilis, a Jewish man who was accused of ritual murder. After two years in prison, the jury acquitted Beilis of all charges. “The boy Yuschinsky was sacrificed to dedicate the Chasidic Lubavitch central synagogue,” read an article in the Personnel Plus magazine last week. 

Georgy Schokin, leader of MAUP and head of the Conservative Party that will run in next month’s parliamentary election in Ukraine, said he would spearhead the canonization process for Yuschinsky by the Orthodox Church. Church officials have not reacted to the idea. 

Last year, MAUP was responsible for more than 80 percent of all anti-Semitic articles that appeared in the Ukrainian newspapers, a recent audit by the Va’ad of Ukraine, a Jewish group, revealed.

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Jamestown Foundation - 01.09.2006

Xenophobes to contest seats in Ukrainian Parliament

By Oleg Varfolomeyev 

Ukraine's parliamentary election campaign is in full swing. In accordance with political reform approved in December 2004 (see EDM, January 3), the election scheduled for March 26 will be contested exclusively by parties and blocs of parties, without any first-past-the-post constituencies for individual candidates. By January 6, the Central Election Commission (CEC) had received 53 applications and registered 42 parties and blocs to participate in the election, denying registration to the rest on formal grounds, such as improperly completed forms or failure to comply with deadlines. They can appeal until January 13.

A race among more than 40 parties will be a record for Ukraine. Opinion polls show, however, that only six or seven parties are likely to clear the 3% vote threshold. For most of the small parties running, this election will be nothing more than a good opportunity to air their views. Some of those views advocate ethnic intolerance and even racism at the expense of the taxpayers -- as the state, according to the election law, has to partially cover party expenses for political advertisements. 

One of these parties registered by the CEC is the Ukrainian Conservative Party (UCP) of Professor Georgy Shchokin, the rector of the Interregional Academy of Personnel Management (MAUP). MAUP is known for its repeated calls for the UN to withdraw its 1947 resolution on the establishment of the state of Israel. Shchokin's anti-Semitic leaflet, "Personal-Plus," which is distributed freely across Ukraine, openly backed recent anti-Israel statements by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Shchokin believes that all Ukrainian bodies of power should consist of at least 80% ethnic Ukrainians, that Jews should be barred from top positions, and that only ethnic Ukrainians should be eligible to be elected head of state.

Several CEC members voted against the UCP's registration, but the majority of the body decided that the party should be allowed to run in the election. The CEC took a more radical decision on a party professing a similar ideology -- the Freedom party (formerly the Social-Nationalist Party). The CEC suspended Freedom's registration and suggested that the Justice Ministry turn to the Supreme Court in order to forbid Freedom from running for parliament. 

According to the CEC, several points in Freedom's program contradict the constitution, particularly, the provisions calling for a ban on communist ideology, for approving a new law on citizenship that would prohibit people who are not Ukrainian-born and not ethnic Ukrainian from obtaining citizenship, and for restoring the Soviet practice of marking ethnic background in passports (incidentally, the UCP backs Freedom on this issue). The Justice Ministry, however, decided that there was nothing wrong with Freedom's documents and requested that the CEC register Freedom. 

The presence of xenophobic parties in the elections may taint the parties that are part of the government coalition, notably President Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine bloc, because of past association. The UCP is not linked to Our Ukraine, but Yushchenko once sat on MAUP's board, and Foreign Minister Borys Tarasyuk -- one of Our Ukraine's leaders -- was honorary director of one of MAUP's subdivisions until last year. Yushchenko resigned from MAUP several years ago, following MAUP's criticism by Jewish organizations. This past December, Yushchenko condemned MAUP for the anti-Semitic content of its publications. 

Unlike the UCP, Freedom used to be part of Our Ukraine, and Freedom leader Oleh Tyahnybok positions himself as a pro-Yushchenko member of parliament. A TV channel hostile to Yushchenko highlighted this connection at the height of the presidential election campaign in mid-2004, featuring Tyahnybok delivering a fiery anti-Russian and anti-Jewish speech in western Ukraine. Yushchenko publicly reprimanded Tyahnybok for that outburst and expelled him from Our Ukraine. Still, Tyahnybok refused to repent. 

Several radical initiatives put forward by Tyahnybok after his expulsion from Our Ukraine found support in parliament, such as a non-binding petition asking Yushchenko to drop Russian liberal politician Boris Nemtsov from his pool of advisers, and the recommendation issued to the Lviv city council in June last year to cancel the opening of a Polish war memorial because inscriptions on the graves were in Polish, rather than Ukrainian. 

Yushchenko did not sack Nemtsov, and the Polish memorial opened, so the influence of radical xenophobes in Ukrainian politics should not be overestimated. But their participation in the election campaign is potentially harmful to Ukraine's international prestige. Israeli diplomats have on several occasions expressed their dismay over Shchokin's activities. Shchokin's anti-Semitic diatribes also were reportedly among the reasons behind the U.S. reluctance to cancel the Jackson-Vanik amendment in relation to Ukraine. The U.S. Congress approved the amendment restricting trade in 1975 to punish the USSR for discrimination against Jews.

(Inter TV, July 19, 2004; Interfax-Ukraine, June 3; Kommersant-Ukraina, December 8; Maidan.org.ua, December 25; Dengi-info.com, January 3; Fakty i Kommentarii, January 5; Channel 5, June 23, December 26, January 6)