Israeli support for anti-Ukrainian separatists of "Novorussia"
by Sean Jobst
14 July 2018
Eurasianists and Nazbols link Ukraine with Israel, ignoring Putin's close alliance with Israel and the central involvement of hardcore Zionists like Avigdor Eskin in Dugin's networks. They rewrite this narrative to deceive Western dissidents opposed to Zionism and Jewish power, into signing off on their own anti-Ukrainian subversion. Their efforts to enlist support for separatists who openly proclaim themselves a Communist "People's Republic", include bizarre claims that have been refuted by no less a figure as Donetsk leader Denis Pushilin, who openly touts himself as "Chairman of the Soviet" while his fighters brandish Soviet flags and include many foreign Communists.
A broader objective is to enlist Assad supporters and assorted anti-Zionist activists to suspend their disbelief into cheerleading the Kremlin's separatists against Ukraine, which is seen as reciprocal for their own apparent support for the "Axis of Resistance" despite Putin's double game in Syria. One recent example is the sloppy screed by leftist Asa Winstanley on the "Electronic Intifada" website, filled with standard Kremlin talking-points about Maidan and slanders of Ukrainian nationalists as "neo-Nazis", desperately linking Israel with his own pet cause even while denouncing an ill-defined "anti-Semitism" in the same manner as Zionists. The entire narrative ignores the intricate connections between the "Novorussian" Donetsk separatists and Israelis.
An official statement on the Novorussian "government" website in 2015 declared its "voice of goodness and honor" to Israel, which it congratulated for memorializing the "Nazi atrocities" and linked "anti-Semitism" with "Russophobia". It noted the common enemy both have in the "Banderist" Ukrainian nationalists, praising how "the majority of Israeli people condemn attempts of restoring Nazi[sic] in Ukraine." Openly expressing their own allegiance for Russia over Ukraine, the statement also proclaimed (in broken English):
"Israel as a state was an answer for world community on the Nazi's attempt to completely annihilate Jewish people. This state was and remains a symbol of victory over Nazism. That is why we find a special attitude to Russia and the USSR among those who still remembers [sic] and knows [sic]....Israel has fertile ground for Novorussia support, heroically standing for its freedom...Let this voice be heard on the Holy Land and from it in the whole world."
Eskin's Anti-Ukrainian subversion
Avigdor Eskin is a hardcore Jewish supremacist Zionist who is often given a platform by pro-Kremlin media to accuse entire European nations and peoples of "anti-Semitism". This includes his presentation of Ukraine as a "wild west" unsafe for Jews. The "Ministry of Foreign Affairs" for the alleged "Donetsk People's Republic" touts on its own website their links with Eskin. Alarmed by the growth of consistent anti-Zionist and anti-Kremlin nationalists in Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states, he has called for an Israeli-Russian strategic alliance against the "neo-Nazi international" he claims has overtaken those countries.
To resist this Zionist-Putinist-Duginite subversion and support a Third Position against the dialectic of Jewish oligarchic-dominated governments in the West and Russia, I propose that we principled nationalists of Western Europe and North America support the geopolitical ideal of an Intermarium as the first line of defense for Europa, which means standing in solidarity with Baltic, Ukrainian and Polish nationalists against such slanders by Eskin, as well as by exposing the efforts of co-opted figures and movements within our own midst who subvert Western interests to Israel and Russia.
Israeli connections of Yanukovych government
One desperate attempt of these subversives, ironically even while providing a platform for hardcore Zionists such as Eskin, is to present the Maidan Revolution that overthrew Yanukovych as somehow linked to Jewish Neocons such as Victoria Nuland. The notion is that the anti-Kremlin government in Ukraine can be slandered by linking it to Israel, but the truth is although the Maidan was hijacked by certain forces that are not nationalist, there are blatant Israeli links not to Maidan but rather to the toppled Yanukovych government.
After Maidan, at least two of Yanukovych's ministers fled to Israel, Education Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk and Energy and Coal Industy Minister Eduard Stavytskyi. The latter is an Israeli citizen who is now living securely in Israel under the name Nathan Rosenberg, having fled due to his connections to exiled oil and natural gas oligarch Serhiy Kurchenko's VETEK holding company known for its close links with the Kremlin.
A member of the pro-Russian Party of Regions and of Jewish ancestry, under his tenure Tabachnyk revived the old Soviet indoctrination that denied Ukrainian distinctiveness from Russia and slandered its nationalists as "Fascists". His 2010 appointment was vigorously opposed by Soviet dissidents due to his apologia for Stalinism that included denial of the Holodomor genocide that primarily targeted the historic peasant and intellectual classes that were natural barriers to the Soviet destruction of Ukrainian nationhood.
While the separatists claim the post-Maidan Ukraine is oriented towards west Ukraine, under Yanukovych the traditionally Russian-speaking east held favored position. In a 2009 article for the Russian newspaper Izvestia, Tabachnyk derided west Ukrainians as "halychany" who were completely different from the "people of Great Ukraine" whom he identified with the east, such that "our allies and even brothers are their enemies, and their 'heroes' (Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych) for us are killers, traitors and abetters of Hitler's executioners." Under his leadership in 2013, the Education Ministry removed Bandera and Shukhevych from the list of "minimum necessary knowledge of graduates" and replaced them with Soviet military leaders and Communist Party activists.
Israel and Putin's Annexation of Crimea
Despite the disinfo that attempts to "link" Israel with Ukraine, the Israeli government has been notably silent about Russian activities against Ukraine. Israel "abstained" from voting on a UN resolution condemning the Russian annexation of Crimea on March 27, 2014. Within diplomatic circles, an "abstain" vote is understood as synonymous with voting against a specific resolution. The Israeli abstention caught the U.S. government off guard, expecting that with the billions of dollars in aid and slavish support it gives to Israel, it could at least receive a "yes" vote on the resolution.
They were confronted with the cold reality of the burgeoning alliance between Israel and Russia, such that Israel is more than willing to defy American wishes to not antagonize Putin, who has been described as "the closest thing to a friend Israel has ever had in Moscow". The backdoor deals that led to this vote were described by Israel Shamir, providing another example that Putin's Russia will always treat Israel as an equal partner better than how it treats its "allies" who are client dependencies:
"We learned from our Israeli colleagues the details of the Putin-Netanyahu phone conversation, which elaborated the reasons for Israeli neutrality. Israel is worried that as an asymmetric response to the US sanctions, Russia would deliver its potent air defence systems to Iran and Syria. Iran and Russia had signed a weapons supply contract a few years ago, Iran duly paid; then the shipment was suspended. Iran went to court demanding a massive compensation for the breach of contract. Likewise, the Syrians were supposed to get the S-300 surface-to-air missile system, able to protect its skies from Israeli raids. The deliveries commenced; PM Netanyahu beseeched Putin to put it on hold. Initially Putin objected, stressing the defensive nature of the system. Netanyahu told the Russian president that the S-300 would allow the Syrians to cover the whole North of Israel, at least all the way to Haifa, rendering important airfields unusuable and endangering civil aviation as well. Putin agreed to stop the deliveries."
Israelis fighting alongside the separatists
While the likes of Winstanley and other pro-Putin shills engage in desperate verbal gymnastics to link Israel with the notoriously anti-Zionist Azov Battalion specifically or the Ukrainian cause in general, a steady flow of Israeli citizens are actively fighting on the ground with the very same Donetsk and Luhansk rebels the phony "anti-Zionist" talking-heads idolize. In a story picked up by the Jerusalem Post, Alexander Kofman, the Jewish Foreign Minister of the "Donetsk People's Republic", confided to the Russian media in late 2014 that there were then dozens of former Israeli soldiers fighting for the Donetsk rebels.
The other rebel group, the Luhansk separatists, included an Israeli communist mercenary named Inna Levitan, an Azerbaijan-born Israeli who left her family life to take up arms against Ukraine, as she also told the Jerusalem Post: "As an Israeli, I personally viscerally hate fascists." In an open letter on the website of the Israeli Communist Party, she defined her goal as to "fight against the fascist, pro-Nazi and oligarchs." In a characteristic example of the Zionist-Communist nexus, she claimed the Western media was distorting both Israel's war against the Palestinians and the Novorussia separatists' fight against Ukraine: "Every Israeli can easily understand that a similar situation occurs in the area of Novorossia."
A Russian media source published photos of an Israeli fighter with the Donetsk separatists meeting with Netanyahu. At the least, we can say that the same Netanyahu who has been so close with Putin that one Israeli commentator titled it a "love affair", does not look unfavorably upon the rebel cause and consents to armed Israeli fighters to freely go to and from Ukraine. Certainly his own nostalgia for the Red Army is shared by the separatists. Its far more real and verifiable than any of the absurd pseudo-analyses of useful idiots eager to have an audience with RT, adept at playing all sides of the narrative.
One of the main conduits for the Israeli fighters is the Aliya Battalion, an outfit of Russian-speaking Israelis who are veterans of the Red Army and later Russian conflicts. They were profiled in a joint Israeli-Russian documentary that also showed their warm reception among old Red Army veterans in Israel, many wearing medals and Communist symbols alongside their yarmulkes. The Aliya Battalion served as irregulars along the Israeli Army in West Bank, with close links to the Jewish settlements. A PressTV documentary named the Aliya Battalion as involved in crimes against Palestinians, even while PressTV parrots the Kremlin's line about Ukraine despite that same Battalion's active role among the pro-Russian separatists.
Aliya was officially disbanded in 2006, but soon reconstituted by its commander, Roman Ratner, seeing action alongside Russian forces against the Republic of Georgia in 2008. Just as the Aliya Battalion was close with Kahanist settlers on the West Bank, now its activities are welcomed by Eskin, who is both a hardcore Kahanist Zionist and a Eurasianist, who extolled their objective as against the "Banderovtsy" of the "fascist junta" in Kiev. This nexus of hardcore Zionists, Eurasianists and Communists doesn't fit the narrative of the various co-opted "alt" media darlings, who prefer to distract from the Israeli-Russian alliance to fit their own pet causes.
Ratner boasted in an interview with the Russian Izvestia in May 2014: "There are a couple dozen people who are ready to go right now, but in a month or two we can mobilize some 200 military with a unique experience." Their existence among the rebels was also confirmed by Donetsk deputy people' governor Pavel Gubarev: "Today a group from Israel joined with our militia. It's called the Alyia battalion which was formed in 2002 from immigrants to Israel from veterans from the Red Army and CIS countries. They protect settlements in the occupied territories and promptly sent 20 highly trained fighters to Slavyansk with experience in the Soviet and Israeli armies, and in two weeks are ready to bring 200 soldiers to fight the Nazis."
One blogger openly calling themselves "The Daily Stalin" and proclaiming "Stalin Lives" praised the Battalion's "fight against the spread of Ukrainian Fascism". Also known as the Vanguard of the Ben Mahager Battalion, it included Israeli officers who had fought in Lebanon in 2006 and allegedly "protected" Jewish sites in the West Bank, just as they were now in Ukraine to protect "sacred sites" from alleged destruction by the Right Sector and National Guard. "They stated to the Donetsk Republic news service that they were expecting at least 200 to 500 other members to arrive in Donetsk within a week or so."
by Sean Jobst
14 July 2018
Eurasianists and Nazbols link Ukraine with Israel, ignoring Putin's close alliance with Israel and the central involvement of hardcore Zionists like Avigdor Eskin in Dugin's networks. They rewrite this narrative to deceive Western dissidents opposed to Zionism and Jewish power, into signing off on their own anti-Ukrainian subversion. Their efforts to enlist support for separatists who openly proclaim themselves a Communist "People's Republic", include bizarre claims that have been refuted by no less a figure as Donetsk leader Denis Pushilin, who openly touts himself as "Chairman of the Soviet" while his fighters brandish Soviet flags and include many foreign Communists.
A broader objective is to enlist Assad supporters and assorted anti-Zionist activists to suspend their disbelief into cheerleading the Kremlin's separatists against Ukraine, which is seen as reciprocal for their own apparent support for the "Axis of Resistance" despite Putin's double game in Syria. One recent example is the sloppy screed by leftist Asa Winstanley on the "Electronic Intifada" website, filled with standard Kremlin talking-points about Maidan and slanders of Ukrainian nationalists as "neo-Nazis", desperately linking Israel with his own pet cause even while denouncing an ill-defined "anti-Semitism" in the same manner as Zionists. The entire narrative ignores the intricate connections between the "Novorussian" Donetsk separatists and Israelis.
An official statement on the Novorussian "government" website in 2015 declared its "voice of goodness and honor" to Israel, which it congratulated for memorializing the "Nazi atrocities" and linked "anti-Semitism" with "Russophobia". It noted the common enemy both have in the "Banderist" Ukrainian nationalists, praising how "the majority of Israeli people condemn attempts of restoring Nazi[sic] in Ukraine." Openly expressing their own allegiance for Russia over Ukraine, the statement also proclaimed (in broken English):
"Israel as a state was an answer for world community on the Nazi's attempt to completely annihilate Jewish people. This state was and remains a symbol of victory over Nazism. That is why we find a special attitude to Russia and the USSR among those who still remembers [sic] and knows [sic]....Israel has fertile ground for Novorussia support, heroically standing for its freedom...Let this voice be heard on the Holy Land and from it in the whole world."
 |
| Member of Israeli branch of Dugin's Eurasian Youth Movement desecrates Ukrainian flag |
Eskin's Anti-Ukrainian subversion
Avigdor Eskin is a hardcore Jewish supremacist Zionist who is often given a platform by pro-Kremlin media to accuse entire European nations and peoples of "anti-Semitism". This includes his presentation of Ukraine as a "wild west" unsafe for Jews. The "Ministry of Foreign Affairs" for the alleged "Donetsk People's Republic" touts on its own website their links with Eskin. Alarmed by the growth of consistent anti-Zionist and anti-Kremlin nationalists in Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states, he has called for an Israeli-Russian strategic alliance against the "neo-Nazi international" he claims has overtaken those countries.
To resist this Zionist-Putinist-Duginite subversion and support a Third Position against the dialectic of Jewish oligarchic-dominated governments in the West and Russia, I propose that we principled nationalists of Western Europe and North America support the geopolitical ideal of an Intermarium as the first line of defense for Europa, which means standing in solidarity with Baltic, Ukrainian and Polish nationalists against such slanders by Eskin, as well as by exposing the efforts of co-opted figures and movements within our own midst who subvert Western interests to Israel and Russia.
 |
| Shimon Peres with Viktor Yanukovych |
Israeli connections of Yanukovych government
One desperate attempt of these subversives, ironically even while providing a platform for hardcore Zionists such as Eskin, is to present the Maidan Revolution that overthrew Yanukovych as somehow linked to Jewish Neocons such as Victoria Nuland. The notion is that the anti-Kremlin government in Ukraine can be slandered by linking it to Israel, but the truth is although the Maidan was hijacked by certain forces that are not nationalist, there are blatant Israeli links not to Maidan but rather to the toppled Yanukovych government.
After Maidan, at least two of Yanukovych's ministers fled to Israel, Education Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk and Energy and Coal Industy Minister Eduard Stavytskyi. The latter is an Israeli citizen who is now living securely in Israel under the name Nathan Rosenberg, having fled due to his connections to exiled oil and natural gas oligarch Serhiy Kurchenko's VETEK holding company known for its close links with the Kremlin.
A member of the pro-Russian Party of Regions and of Jewish ancestry, under his tenure Tabachnyk revived the old Soviet indoctrination that denied Ukrainian distinctiveness from Russia and slandered its nationalists as "Fascists". His 2010 appointment was vigorously opposed by Soviet dissidents due to his apologia for Stalinism that included denial of the Holodomor genocide that primarily targeted the historic peasant and intellectual classes that were natural barriers to the Soviet destruction of Ukrainian nationhood.
While the separatists claim the post-Maidan Ukraine is oriented towards west Ukraine, under Yanukovych the traditionally Russian-speaking east held favored position. In a 2009 article for the Russian newspaper Izvestia, Tabachnyk derided west Ukrainians as "halychany" who were completely different from the "people of Great Ukraine" whom he identified with the east, such that "our allies and even brothers are their enemies, and their 'heroes' (Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych) for us are killers, traitors and abetters of Hitler's executioners." Under his leadership in 2013, the Education Ministry removed Bandera and Shukhevych from the list of "minimum necessary knowledge of graduates" and replaced them with Soviet military leaders and Communist Party activists.
 |
| Laughing at the useful idiots? |
Israel and Putin's Annexation of Crimea
Despite the disinfo that attempts to "link" Israel with Ukraine, the Israeli government has been notably silent about Russian activities against Ukraine. Israel "abstained" from voting on a UN resolution condemning the Russian annexation of Crimea on March 27, 2014. Within diplomatic circles, an "abstain" vote is understood as synonymous with voting against a specific resolution. The Israeli abstention caught the U.S. government off guard, expecting that with the billions of dollars in aid and slavish support it gives to Israel, it could at least receive a "yes" vote on the resolution.
They were confronted with the cold reality of the burgeoning alliance between Israel and Russia, such that Israel is more than willing to defy American wishes to not antagonize Putin, who has been described as "the closest thing to a friend Israel has ever had in Moscow". The backdoor deals that led to this vote were described by Israel Shamir, providing another example that Putin's Russia will always treat Israel as an equal partner better than how it treats its "allies" who are client dependencies:
"We learned from our Israeli colleagues the details of the Putin-Netanyahu phone conversation, which elaborated the reasons for Israeli neutrality. Israel is worried that as an asymmetric response to the US sanctions, Russia would deliver its potent air defence systems to Iran and Syria. Iran and Russia had signed a weapons supply contract a few years ago, Iran duly paid; then the shipment was suspended. Iran went to court demanding a massive compensation for the breach of contract. Likewise, the Syrians were supposed to get the S-300 surface-to-air missile system, able to protect its skies from Israeli raids. The deliveries commenced; PM Netanyahu beseeched Putin to put it on hold. Initially Putin objected, stressing the defensive nature of the system. Netanyahu told the Russian president that the S-300 would allow the Syrians to cover the whole North of Israel, at least all the way to Haifa, rendering important airfields unusuable and endangering civil aviation as well. Putin agreed to stop the deliveries."
 |
| Photo published by the Jerusalem Post, showing Israeli Communist volunteers with the Donetsk rebels |
Israelis fighting alongside the separatists
While the likes of Winstanley and other pro-Putin shills engage in desperate verbal gymnastics to link Israel with the notoriously anti-Zionist Azov Battalion specifically or the Ukrainian cause in general, a steady flow of Israeli citizens are actively fighting on the ground with the very same Donetsk and Luhansk rebels the phony "anti-Zionist" talking-heads idolize. In a story picked up by the Jerusalem Post, Alexander Kofman, the Jewish Foreign Minister of the "Donetsk People's Republic", confided to the Russian media in late 2014 that there were then dozens of former Israeli soldiers fighting for the Donetsk rebels.
The other rebel group, the Luhansk separatists, included an Israeli communist mercenary named Inna Levitan, an Azerbaijan-born Israeli who left her family life to take up arms against Ukraine, as she also told the Jerusalem Post: "As an Israeli, I personally viscerally hate fascists." In an open letter on the website of the Israeli Communist Party, she defined her goal as to "fight against the fascist, pro-Nazi and oligarchs." In a characteristic example of the Zionist-Communist nexus, she claimed the Western media was distorting both Israel's war against the Palestinians and the Novorussia separatists' fight against Ukraine: "Every Israeli can easily understand that a similar situation occurs in the area of Novorossia."
A Russian media source published photos of an Israeli fighter with the Donetsk separatists meeting with Netanyahu. At the least, we can say that the same Netanyahu who has been so close with Putin that one Israeli commentator titled it a "love affair", does not look unfavorably upon the rebel cause and consents to armed Israeli fighters to freely go to and from Ukraine. Certainly his own nostalgia for the Red Army is shared by the separatists. Its far more real and verifiable than any of the absurd pseudo-analyses of useful idiots eager to have an audience with RT, adept at playing all sides of the narrative.
One of the main conduits for the Israeli fighters is the Aliya Battalion, an outfit of Russian-speaking Israelis who are veterans of the Red Army and later Russian conflicts. They were profiled in a joint Israeli-Russian documentary that also showed their warm reception among old Red Army veterans in Israel, many wearing medals and Communist symbols alongside their yarmulkes. The Aliya Battalion served as irregulars along the Israeli Army in West Bank, with close links to the Jewish settlements. A PressTV documentary named the Aliya Battalion as involved in crimes against Palestinians, even while PressTV parrots the Kremlin's line about Ukraine despite that same Battalion's active role among the pro-Russian separatists.
Aliya was officially disbanded in 2006, but soon reconstituted by its commander, Roman Ratner, seeing action alongside Russian forces against the Republic of Georgia in 2008. Just as the Aliya Battalion was close with Kahanist settlers on the West Bank, now its activities are welcomed by Eskin, who is both a hardcore Kahanist Zionist and a Eurasianist, who extolled their objective as against the "Banderovtsy" of the "fascist junta" in Kiev. This nexus of hardcore Zionists, Eurasianists and Communists doesn't fit the narrative of the various co-opted "alt" media darlings, who prefer to distract from the Israeli-Russian alliance to fit their own pet causes.
 |
| Aliya Battalion on the ground in east Ukraine |
Ratner boasted in an interview with the Russian Izvestia in May 2014: "There are a couple dozen people who are ready to go right now, but in a month or two we can mobilize some 200 military with a unique experience." Their existence among the rebels was also confirmed by Donetsk deputy people' governor Pavel Gubarev: "Today a group from Israel joined with our militia. It's called the Alyia battalion which was formed in 2002 from immigrants to Israel from veterans from the Red Army and CIS countries. They protect settlements in the occupied territories and promptly sent 20 highly trained fighters to Slavyansk with experience in the Soviet and Israeli armies, and in two weeks are ready to bring 200 soldiers to fight the Nazis."
One blogger openly calling themselves "The Daily Stalin" and proclaiming "Stalin Lives" praised the Battalion's "fight against the spread of Ukrainian Fascism". Also known as the Vanguard of the Ben Mahager Battalion, it included Israeli officers who had fought in Lebanon in 2006 and allegedly "protected" Jewish sites in the West Bank, just as they were now in Ukraine to protect "sacred sites" from alleged destruction by the Right Sector and National Guard. "They stated to the Donetsk Republic news service that they were expecting at least 200 to 500 other members to arrive in Donetsk within a week or so."
Great work, Sean. And thank you for including our site in your blog roll. We've done the same. Can I guest post this excellent article on our site and link and credit you? Please let me know if this is ok. Thank you.
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