President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the
Bad Ass Ukrainian Army
“I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them,” he said, “For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.”
It is time for me to admit my ambivalence toward Ukraine. Hostility would be more accurate. My grandparents escaped what is now Ukraine in 1900. Then it was part of Tsarist Russia. They were born in Odessa. The pogroms that killed a million Jews before and after their escape were carried out by the Tsar's army with willing help from local people.
Neither my father, nor my grandmother (who lived to be 100) nor any of the my father's extended family of five brothers and their wives and families ever mentioned Ukraine or Russia. That was the "Old Country" if mentioned at all. The one time my grandfather returned to Odessa led to the worst year of his life. The story is here.
In my barely Jewish childhood, I knew the Holocaust happened, but knew almost nothing about it. I lived in Germany for three years in the 1970s and never visited a death camp or memorial or museum. In fact, it was 2017 before I visited my first Holocaust site: Auschwitz.
After Trump was elected and made a Nazi-website host his chief of staff, I suddenly became interested in the Holocaust and where my grandparents escaped from. The following year, 2017, I rode from Belgrade to Lviv, Ukraine. I had read a lot about the Holocaust in the previous year. The ride began in Belgrade, where a century of Jew hating by Nazis, Soviets and the disintegration of Yugoslavia had wiped out a Jewish community that had been vibrant in the 19th Century.
Then I rode to Auschwitz, the worst single site of the Holocaust. I continued to Lviv where the Jews were dispossessed, raped, and murdered by their neighbors. Auschwitz and Lviv were the worst sites of the Holocaust in their own tragic ways.
But in March of 2019, Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected President of Ukraine in a landslide repudiation of Victor Poroshenko. The country I had looked at only through the lens of its bad history, looked very different. Zelenskyy, a Jew, won with 73% of the vote. He was asking for weapons to fight the Russian invasion of 2014 that continued in the eastern regions of Ukraine.
Then the Jewish President of Ukraine stood up to Putin's Puppet in the White House! Our mobster President tried to trade missiles for help with his own re-election and Zelenskyy wouldn't play. Trump was impeached, but not convicted--that would have required Republican senators with spines.
Then on February 24 Putin invaded Ukraine. The experts gave Ukraine a week. They offered Zelenskyy a way out. Zelenskyy said, "I don't need a ride, I need ammo." Ukrainian Marines were told to surrender or die by the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. They answered, "Russian Warship! Go Fuck Yourself!"
In March I started volunteering with Ukrainians making medical kits for Ukrainian soldiers. Ukraine is now the center of the fight to maintain democracy in the world. Russia and China are ruled dictators. Turkey and Hungary, both members of NATO are ruled by authoritarians who will be full on dictators soon.
In the case of Hungary, Republicans cheer President Viktor Orban to the rafters when he talks about the Great Replacement Theory to justify his racism, and their racism. The most vile Christian-labelled tyrant worshippers like Tucker Carlson, Eric Metaxas and Rod Dreher see Hungary and Russia as the real Christian west. Which is true if the Crusades, the Inquisition and the wars of religion are your idea of true Christianity.
Ukraine suffered nearly a century of Soviet oppression. In the middle of Soviet horror, Ukraine was conquered by the Nazis. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom guaranteed the borders of Ukraine.
With all of that, Ukraine is now the front line of democracy. Ukraine is fighting for all of the free world right now. In every government and every organization Personnel is Policy. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a brave man leading a free nation in a fight against tyranny.
My previous view of Ukraine was of a nation oppressed and conquered. As a free nation, Ukraine is a light to the world.
And of all nations in the world, Israel should be offering whole-hearted support to Ukraine, and yet they are not. A Jewish state could and should do a lot more to help a Jewish head of state under attack by one of the worst tyrants in the world.
