Milshtein's analysis on: [1] Ukraine's Nazi past, Khmelnytskyi etc. & VS its current Jewish prez., [2] Putin's war

Submitted by Rafi (United States), Mar 20, 2022 at 09:26

https://twitter.com/michael_mils/status/1505091956657082371

מיכאל Michael Milshtein/ميخائيل ميلشطاين

@michael_mils

Head of the Palestinian Studies Forum - Dayan Center/Tel Aviv University

Mar 19, 2022:

To imagine the integration of Jews into Ukrainian national action, the one that was tightly connected to religious and ethnic foundations and mostly saturated with anti-Semitism. Indeed, all of Ukraine's struggles for independence over the past 350 years have been accompanied by massacres of Jews [falsely] "identified" with Kyiv's enemies and oppressors, particularly Russia and Poland.

The last and most horrific expression was the widespread (and enthusiastic) involvement in the Nazi extermination effort accompanied by independent pogroms by Ukrainians, participation in mass killings and guarding of extermination camps (along with heavy massacres carried out in two Soviet wars and in the Polish population).

Ukraine in the fight against a bitter historical enemy with no antisemitic voices in the background is not self-evident and testifies to how far Kyiv has gone in shaping its new identity trying to connect with the West and move away from the East.

The war seized Ukraine in the midst of a re-formation of identity, a process that still contains many contradictions. On a tour of Lvov you can move within minutes from monuments to national leaders who fought for independence but their hands are dipped in Jewish blood (Khmelnytskyi and Petliura) to monuments in memory of the Holocaust or to commemorate mostly Jewish artists, such as Shalom Aleichem.

Like many Eastern European countries, Ukraine has yet to perform a poignant introspection of its past and preferred the narrative that it was a victim of the Nazis over engaging in mass cooperation with them. In Ukraine this is more relevant than in Lithuania, Croatia or Slovakia as it still has a large Jewish community integrated and influential in the country.

Borrowing from Ben-Gurion's statement about Germany, it can be argued that "there is another Ukraine", but not completely, that is, not one that has advanced a sincere discussion of its past and thus reminds Poland of a clash against the past which has recently led to a sharp crisis in relations with Israel. A blatant expression of this was given in the words of the Ukrainian ambassador to Israel two weeks ago, in which he mentioned the "historic debt of rescuing masses of Jews by Ukrainians in World War II,"[sic] [supposedly] - a statement that of course highlights points from the past but pushes large dark spaces... It is impossible to understand the struggle between the two nations without a deep acquaintance with their near and distant common past. It is an open story of closeness and a lot of hatred and blood in which the past is constantly ... for the needs of the present.

An interesting expression of this is embodied in the memory of World War II mobilized by both sides: Moscow calls the regime in Kyiv fascist or "Bandera's gangs" (named after the nationalist leader who collaborated with the Nazis) and on Russian military vehicles hung the Soviet flag 75 years ago, and the Ukrainians for their part present Putin as a successor to Hitler and echo the narrative that they were the victims of both the Nazis and the Soviets.

And a tone of (cautious) optimism to finish. Today's discouraging war may be an event during which nations and national identities are formed. The very act of resisting an external enemy may reinforce an identity that was loose or create an identity that did not exist at all between individuals and groups of the same entity.

This is the model that developed during the American Revolutionary War, in the campaigns that Turkey conducted in its early days, and less successfully in Tito's partisan war in Yugoslavia. The buds of the same trend have also been seen in Ukraine over the past month and may be considered at the end of the campaign a strategic achievement that could balance - even slightly - the heavy price of mass killing, destruction and territorial erosion that this country has experienced since February 24th.

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