Episode 77: Israel and Ukraine

First aired on 15 July 2023

Zionism has deep roots in Ukraine. Jews were a significant element in the settler colony of Odessa.

Along with a range of non-Jewish colonizers, they settled on land from which Muslims and others had been expelled in the settlement around Khadjibey in 1794.

Ukraine, especially Odessa, was a key locus of the rise of the Zionist movement in the twentieth century.

The Revisionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky hailed from Odessa.

Zionist ambivalence about Ukrainian nationalism continues to this day.

A few Ukrainian Zionists have warned of the rise of Nazi movements in Ukraine. But more generally, in the Zionist movement today, there has been a concerted attempt to minimize the presence and political influence of Nazis in Ukraine.

Zionists are engaging, in other words, in Nazi apologizm. The much-vaunted Ukrainian “counter-offensive” first mooted for the spring of 2023 has thrown up many and varied images and videos of wrecked Western military equipment.

The Russian military has made short shrift of even the supposed superior German Leopard tanks.

Western military stocks are running perilously low - even Jens Stoltenberg of NATO has sounded the alarm, saying that “our weapons and ammunition stocks are depleted and need to be replenished, not just in Germany but in many countries across NATO.”