Friday, March 18, 2022

03/18 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: Ukraine's lessons for Israel; Volodymyr Zelensky, the making of a modern Winston Churchill; 13 Holocaust survivors, wounded Ukrainians rescued and airlifted to Israel

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Ukraine's lessons for Israel
The situation with the Palestinians is also disturbing, and speaks clearly to the destructive implications of Bennett's decision to play mediator between Russia and Ukraine.

Last week, Congress passed an omnibus spending bill which Biden signed. With AIPAC's support, the bill contained a section on Israel that significantly downgraded the US commitment to the Jewish state.

The section on Israel was an amended version of a law that passed initially in 2012. The 2012 law required the US to "assist" and "support the Government of Israel" in its ongoing talks with the Palestinians. The new law deleted the part about supporting Israel. Under the new law, the US is obligated to "a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resulting in two states living side by side in peace, security, and mutual recognition."

In other words, under the amended law, the US is committed to supporting the establishment of a Palestinian state, whether Israel supports it or not.

Sen. Ted Cruz has fought since last July to block the passage of this amendment because he recognized the damage it was liable to do both to US-Israel ties and to Israel's national security. The Israeli Embassy, on the other hand, was less concerned.

Senate sources explain that Israel's diplomats were nowhere to be found as Cruz fought adoption of the amendment.

The worst aspect of the amended law is that it wasn't initiated by the usual anti-Israel forces in the so-called "Squad." AIPAC supported the amendment and so did mainstream Republican senators, like the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, James Risch, and Sen. Rob Portman, who is Jewish.

The implications are clear. When Israel opts to remain silent as its interests and position are undermined, not only does it strengthen its enemies, it loses its friends.

After Russia invaded Ukraine, many Ukrainians told Israeli reporters on the scene that they were inspired by Israel, which has always fought its own battles and survived even in the face of global indifference and hostility. Today, the opposite should be the case.

Israel's government must learn from the Ukrainians. The West will not fight for a threatened democracy. States that wait for green lights from the West to defend themselves will not survive. But states that defend themselves will see sufficient forces rally to their side to enable them to persevere and survive.
Douglas Murray: Zelensky hails Founding Fathers and cultural heroes just as America rejects them
Poor President Zelensky. Not only must he risk constant assassination attempts and an effort by the Russian military to take over his entire country. On top of that, when he appeals to his friends and allies he seems to imagine that we are something we are not.

On Wednesday morning, when the Ukrainian president addressed the US Congress he tried to appeal to Americans. He spoke of the attacks on Pearl Harbor and 9/11. And he tried to summon up the foundational ideals of this country.

He said that “Just like anyone else in the United States I remember your national memorial in Rushmore, the faces of your prominent presidents, those who laid the foundation of the United States of America as it is today.”

The reference was touching, but wildly outdated. Clearly President Zelensky does not realize that in the last few years America has been trying to rid itself of these foundational figures. Statues of Jefferson, Washington and Lincoln have been pulled down across this country. Only last November Thomas Jefferson was crated up and humiliatingly wheeled out the back door of New York’s Council chamber.

Sticking with this city, only the other week the statue of Theodore Roosevelt was hauled away in the dead of night from its position in front of the American Museum of Natural History. And who can forget how CNN’s correspondent described Mount Rushmore just a couple of Independence Day weekends ago. According to CNN, Mount Rushmore is “a monument of two slave owners” positioned on “land wrestled away from Native Americans.”

It is wonderful that Zelensky admires the foundations of America. But the country, and politicians, he was addressing seem not to share that admiration. In fact they seem to be actively trying to shrug off the history that Zelensky was appealing to.

The Ukrainian also referenced Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream speech” without seeming to realize that this generation of Americans have been busily inverting King’s dream. So much so that today we live in a society which is not color-blind, as Dr. King hoped, but color hyper-aware.
Volodymyr Zelensky, the making of a modern Winston Churchill - opinion
Just after the start of the Russian invasion, Zelensky set the rhetorical pace. On national television, he said he had a message for Russian forces: “If you attack, you will see our faces, not our backs!”

While Russian tanks and armored vehicles clogged Ukraine’s highway, Russian cruise missiles rained death and destruction on his capital of Kyiv, Zelensky knew his own life was in danger. Still, he radiated calm, absolute coolness, distinct courage and, above all, inspiring determination.

No Hollywood producer could have made a war epic to top Zelensky’s selfie video from the heart of Kyiv. “We are here,” he said. “We are in Kyiv. We protect Ukraine.”

“Our army is here. Our civil society is there. We are all here.”

Riveting words of simple power. He speaks to his nation not from a television studio, nor from a government office, but from the streets: Streets they know and recognize, streets for which he clearly says that he will shed his own blood.

Zelensky remained in Ukraine. As did his architect wife, his teenage daughter and nine-year-old son. With this decision, he reiterates the promise: “We are here.”

Vladimir Putin, through his megalomania, made a hero out of Zelensky and villain out of himself.

Wars are not movies, of course. The brave and the good do not automatically win in the end. Consider the brave premiers of Czechoslovakia in 1938 or Poland in 1939. Zelensky may still die for beliefs, alongside many thousands of his countrymen, but he has laid down a marker for the ages, a defiant voice for freedom that will sound down through the generations.

Through his brave words and braver actions, he set the stage for a triumphant outcome. He could still save his country and his young family. Certainly, the whole world is cheering for him.


Mark Regev: Israel and the Ukraine crisis: A false choice between Russia, the West - opinion
For Israel’s national security, developments in Syria are of core interest. The IAF routinely attacks Iranian and Hezbollah targets, and sometimes those of the Assad regime. Although they are all allied to the Russians in the internal Syrian conflict, Moscow has chosen not to intervene. Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin reached understandings that maintain Israel’s freedom of action, and Naftali Bennett is eager to retain those arrangements.

Nonetheless Jerusalem’s dialogue with Moscow also contains advantages for the West. On occasion, countries without Kremlin entry have approached Jerusalem to convey a discrete message on their behalf.

And in times of crisis, like the present situation, Israel’s avenue with Russia has magnified significance. It was reported that during Olaf Scholz’s recent visit to Jerusalem, the German chancellor urged Bennett “to use Israel’s special access to Russia and the Ukraine” to help end the war. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed Israeli mediation, as did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who mentioned Jerusalem as a possible location for Moscow-Kyiv talks.

Despite the commentary to the contrary, the Ukraine crisis does not present Israel with a cataclysmic East-West dilemma, the Jewish state unequivocally bound to the United States. But membership in the Western camp does not negate Israel’s ability to conduct a calibrated approach toward Russia, and although the Jerusalem-Moscow channel is first and foremost designed to advance Israeli goals, it undoubtedly serves wider Western interests too. Is there a Hebrew word for Ostpolitik?
Ukraine: Russia targeting Jewish sites, what else must happen for Israel to help?
The Ukrainian Embassy in Israel claimed Friday that Russia is deliberately targeting synagogues and Jewish centers in Ukraine as it implored Jerusalem to provide defense aid.

“Nazi Russians continue to intentionally destroy synagogues and centers of Jewish culture throughout Ukraine. What else needs to happen for the Israeli government to help Ukraine in self-defense?” the embassy wrote in a Facebook post.

The statement was accompanied by a number of photos, apparently of Jewish sites damaged in the fighting, but no further evidence was provided to confirm deliberate targeting.

They included a picture of the Hillel in Kharkiv before it was destroyed, as well as what appeared to be the site of the Babyn Yar Memorial, where thousands of Jews were massacred during the Holocaust. The memorial itself was not hit when Russia struck a nearby communications antenna in the first days of the war, but the surrounding area was.

Ukraine’s Ambassador to Israel Yevgen Korniychuk has repeatedly slammed Israel for its refusal to provide military aid to Ukraine, including defensive equipment such as helmets and flak jackets.

Jerusalem has sought to walk a tightrope to maintain good relations with both Ukraine and Russia, the latter of which controls the airspace over Syria and has given Israel a green-light to operate against Iranian proxies there.


US adds $800m in military aid to Ukraine, including drones, anti-tank weapons
The US will send an additional $800 million in military aid to Ukraine after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pleaded for Washington’s further help in staving off the Russian invasion in an address to a joint session of Congress.

The latest installment came days after US President Joe Biden transferred another $200 million in weapons to Kyiv. He has sent a total of $2 billion in arms since taking office.

The newest batch includes 800 Stinger anti-aircraft systems, thousands of anti-tank weapons including 2,000 of the now-famously deadly Javelins, 100 “tactical” drones, 20 million rounds of small arms ammunition, and 25,000 sets of helmets and body armor.

Ukraine has already been given hundreds of Stingers, which can shoot down relatively low flying aircraft.

But Biden said that “at the request of President Zelensky, we have identified and are helping Ukraine acquire additional longer-range anti-aircraft systems.”

A US military source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the weapons system under discussion was the S-300, a sophisticated missile that is of Russian design, but owned by some European NATO members and seen as easy to integrate into Ukraine’s military.

The drones mentioned by Biden are a US weapon called Switchblade, which has the ability to loiter over a target, before plunging down like a bomb, the military source said.
Which weapons were in US arms transfer to Ukraine? - explainer
Anti-air systems
800 American-made FIM-92 Stinger surface-to-air missiles will be sent to Ukraine. With a range of up to 4.8 kilometers, Stingers are man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS) that can be individually carried by soldiers, in contrast to static or vehicle-based missile emplacements. This allows for a mobile force that can engage enemy aircraft while not presenting as much of a target to the opposing military.

Ukrainian forces have employed MANPADS with great effect to down Russian helicopters. The Ukrainian military claims to have shot down 86 Russian warplanes and 108 helicopters, many of these kills attributed to SAMs. A senior US official told CNN on March 7 that NATO has provided Ukraine with 2000 Stinger missiles since the war began.

Intelligence estimates by the UK and US have assessed that the skies of Ukraine remain contested, Russia struggling to achieve the air superiority many analysts assumed they would achieve early in the war.

While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials have repeatedly asked for a no-fly zone and additional jets, anti-air systems have been seen as a middle measure to prevent Russia from achieving control of Ukraine's airspace.

"As we’ve said before, a no-fly zone would require implementation, it would require us potentially shooting down Russian planes, NATO shooting down Russian planes. And we are not interested in getting into World War Three," Psaki said in response to questions about establishing a no-fly zone.

There were plans proposed to supplement Poland's air force with new American warplanes, who would then transfer their Soviet-made MiGs to Ukraine.

Zelensky has also called for S-300 SAMs, which are Soviet anti-air systems.

"While I’m not going to get into specifics for security reasons, we are continuing to work with our Allies and key partners to surge new assistance, including Soviet or Russian-origin anti-aircraft systems, which is exactly what that is," Psaki said when asked about S-300s.


Russia-Ukraine war: Russian casualties near 14,200 - Ukraine
Casualties
The UN rights office (OHCHR) said on Friday that at least 816 civilians had been killed and 1,333 wounded in Ukraine through to March 17.

Most of the casualties were from explosive weapons such as shelling from heavy artillery and multiple-launch rocket systems, and missile and air strikes, OHCHR said.

The real toll is thought to be considerably higher since OHCHR, which has a large monitoring team in the country, has not yet been able to verify casualty reports from badly-hit cities like Mariupol.

According to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, Russia has so far suffered over 14,200 casualties.

Ukrainian troops have also reportedly taken out 450 tanks, 1,448 armored personnel vehicles, 205 artillery systems, 72 MLRS, 43 anti-aircraft defense systems, 93 aircraft, 112 helicopters, 12 drones, 60 fuel tanks, three boats, 879 other vehicles and 11 special equipment.

Ukraine's human rights ombudswoman said on Friday 130 people had been rescued so far from a bombed theater in Mariupol but that there was still no information on more than 1,000 other people officials believe were sheltering there when the bomb fell.

Ombudswoman Lyudmyla Denisova said rescue work was ongoing at the site, which Ukraine says was hit by a powerful Russian air strike on Wednesday. Russia has denied bombing the theater or targeting civilians. Read full story

"Rescuers are working. There is only this information: 130 people are alive and have been taken out. The rest are waiting for help," she said on national television.

This is the first time Ukrainian authorities have shared an estimate of the number of survivors of the attack. There has been no confirmation of the number of possible casualties.

"According to our data there are still more than 1,300 people there who are in these basements, in that bomb shelter," Denisova said, referring to underground shelters below the theater.

Reuters was not able to independently verify the figures.

Mariupol city council has previously said there were more than 1,000 people sheltering under the theater.
130 rescued from Mariupol theater but 1,300 remain trapped, says Ukrainian official
Some 130 people have been rescued so far from the rubble of a theater that was being used as a shelter in the besieged city of Mariupol when it was destroyed in a Russian strike, a Ukrainian official said Friday.

Ukraine’s human rights commissioner Lyudmyla Denisova said in a Facebook post that rescue work at the Mariupol Drama Theatre is ongoing as some 1,300 people are believed to still be trapped.

However, rescue efforts have been hampered by continued fighting.

There have not yet been any reports of deaths in the wake of the Wednesday strike on the building in the besieged city.

Hundreds of civilians had been taking shelter in the grand, columned theater in central Mariupol after their homes were destroyed in three weeks of fighting in the southern port city of 430,000.

Video and photos circulating on social media showed that the building had been reduced to a roofless shell, with some exterior walls collapsed.


Lviv mayor speaks to i24NEWS as Russian invasion continues

Ukraine War: 'Go and fight', says foreign fighter who joined the war in Ukraine
A foreign fighter who has gone to Ukraine to join the war is calling for others with combat experience to 'go and fight'.

Speaking to Sky's Anna Botting, Daniel Lupshaitz warned that 'ignorance' was killing the Ukrainian people and encouraged people to help against 'evil' Russian aggression instead of ‘sitting on couches’.


UN Says Ukraine Food Supply ‘Falling Apart’; Biden to Push Xi to Abandon Moscow
Ukraine’s food supply system is falling apart under Russia’s invasion, with infrastructure destroyed and shops and warehouses growing empty, the United Nations said on Friday.

With Moscow trying to regain the initiative in a stalled campaign, Russia fired missiles at an airport near Lviv, a city where hundreds of thousands found refuge far from Ukraine’s battlefields.

US President Joe Biden was due to talk with Chinese president Xi Jinping, in an attempt to starve Russia’s war machine by isolating Moscow from the one big power that has yet to condemn its assault.

More than three weeks since President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion to subdue what he calls an artificial state undeserving of nationhood, Ukraine’s elected government is still standing and Russian forces have not captured a single big city.

Russian troops have taken heavy losses while blasting residential areas to rubble, sending more than 3 million refugees fleeing. Moscow denies it is targeting civilians in what it calls a “special operation” to disarm its neighbor.

“Russian forces have made minimal progress this week,” Britain’s defense ministry said in a daily military intelligence update. “Ukrainian forces around Kyiv and Mykolaiv continue to frustrate Russian attempts to encircle the cities.”


British regulator revokes UK license of Russian state-funded broadcaster RT
Britain’s communications regulator on Friday revoked the license of the state-funded Russian broadcaster Russia Today amid concern that its coverage of the war in Ukraine was biased.

The decision comes as the regulator, Ofcom, conducts 29 investigations into the impartiality of RT’s coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The volume and nature of the issues raised by these inquiries are of “great concern,” the regulator said, particularly because RT had been fined 200,000 pounds for previous violations of impartiality standards.

RT’s funding from the Russian state, as well as the fact that Russia invaded its smaller neighbor, were also part of the decision, Ofcom said.

As a result, Ofcom ruled that RT’s parent company, ANO TV Novosti, isn’t “fit and proper to hold a UK broadcast license.”

The move is largely symbolic, as the broadcaster is already off the air due to sanctions imposed by the European Union.

“We also note new laws in Russia which effectively criminalize any independent journalism that departs from the Russian state’s own news narrative, in particular in relation to the invasion of Ukraine,” the regulator said in a statement. “We consider that given these constraints it appears impossible for RT to comply with the due impartiality rules of our Broadcasting Code in the circumstances.”


13 Holocaust survivors, wounded Ukrainians rescued and airlifted to Israel
Three Israeli rescue organizations joined forces to rescue Ukrainian Holocaust survivors and other civilians wounded amid Russia’s invasion and bring them to Israel for treatment.

Zaka, Hatzolah Air, and Magen David Adom raised some US$ 70,000 to charter a private jet with medical equipment to treat and evacuate the wounded waiting in Moldova, Channel 13 News reported Thursday.

The flight had been due to leave early Wednesday but was delayed for seven hours as they awaited permission to land in Chișinău. They finally received permission and made it back to Israel with the 13 patients early Thursday morning.

“It’s a crazy paradox, we are going there with a luxury jet to find people who have lost everything, that we are taking from destroyed homes,” Haim Otomazgin, head of special operations at Zaka, told Channel 13.

Many of those evacuated were Holocaust survivors who needed medical treatment that was no longer available in Ukraine, including a woman with dementia, and another who had previously lost both of her legs.

Among them was 85-year-old Maya Zernova.

“I was 5 years old when the (Second World) War started, all I can remember is pain,” she said.

“They want to free us in Ukraine from the Nazis, but that’s how you liberate? By murdering people? Making them homeless?” Zernova said, referring to the Russian claim that they invaded to “denazify” Ukraine.

“What else can I say,” she added. “Murderers.”


All proceeds of Israeli heavy metal festival to benefit Ukraine
The Israeli heavy metal festival "Metal 4 Peace," the revenues of which will be donated to the victims of the war in Ukraine, will be held on Saturday, April 2, at Gagarin club TLV (Kibbutz Galuyot Rd. 13, Tel Aviv), from 11 a.m. until 1 a.m. on Sunday.

The festival will consist of 20 local metal bands that will deliver 14 hours of live music, headlined by some of the leading bands in the Israeli metal scene.

The organizers of the event include Tomer Mussman, the founder of the Facebook/Instagram page "Metal Militia," whose goal is to promote and support the local metal scene; Vladislav Mazourenko, the lead singer of Deface, which will also perform at the festival; and long-time metal DJ Tal Nissan.

As stated, all of the proceeds from the event will be donated to the Israeli Friends of Ukraine non-profit organization. The event will also have a drop-off area for donations of medical equipment and other goods for people in need.

The cost of a ticket is NIS 80 and attendees will be welcome to add any amount they see fit and even donate without needing to purchase a ticket.


In a Romanian resort town, Jewish children from Odessa celebrate Purim as refugees
Hundreds of Jewish children from Odessa shook the Romanian Black Sea resort of Neptun out of its winter lethargy with a Purim party that, at least for a little while, usurped the tragic reality in their homeland.

“It is not easy knowing what’s going on at home, but it is a mitzvah to be happy for Purim; they’ve been through a lot and deserve to have a great time this evening,” said Alina Feoktistova, one of the organizers, before the start of the event on Wednesday.

Like nearly everyone else among the 800 people celebrating Purim in Neptun this week, Feoktistova is associated with Tikva, an Orthodox Jewish aid organization based in Odessa that serves vulnerable Jewish children.

Tikva drew international attention in the days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine February 24 for its efforts to evacuate the children in its care, frequently identified in news coverage as orphans. In fact, Tikva largely serves a wide range of families, including those who cannot care for their children because of finances or dysfunction.

In addition to providing food, shelter and education, the group also seeks to help the children and young adults in its care embrace Judaism, after decades of covert and official antisemitism under communism alienated their parents and grandparents from their roots.

Feoktistova joined Tikva when she turned 16. Her family had no money to keep paying for her studies, so she finished high school at one of the organization’s centers, then earned a degree in English and foreign literature from its university program. Feoktistova started a family within Odessa’s Orthodox community, of which she has since become a pillar.
The Book of Esther is read, against the odds, in the ruins of oldest Lviv synagogue
Meylakh Sheykhet, lay leader of the Turei Zehav community, opened a heavy wooden door and beckoned me inside. He was rushing, because although the Book of Esther — or megila — should be read at sundown, his community moved its reading to the late afternoon, “because everyone wants to get home before curfew” at 10 p.m., he said.

Without a rabbi and a proper building, Turei Zahav is not considered one of the two operating synagogues in a city that was home to over 100 sanctuary buildings before World War II.

Rather, housed in the ruins of Golden Rose, a Renaissance-era synagogue that used to be Lviv’s oldest until it was desecrated and destroyed by the Nazis during the Holocaust, the community has been creative with preserving its heritage.

The few congregants’ current sanctuary is the former entryway of the synagogue, to which they affixed a wall to create a sealed space. It’s now stuffed with prayer books and Judaica, as well as mattresses and boxes of clothing donated for Ukrainian refugees, about a dozen of whom sleep in the prayer space every evening.

Sheykhet grew up in Lviv and, after a brief stint in the US, is now the Ukraine Director for the Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union. Among his responsibilities, he lobbies the Ukrainian government to restore Jewish historical sites, including Golden Rose.

On Wednesday evening, his community boasted five members, who were guarded by two security staff. “We’re here all the time,” one said.






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