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Moldovan oligarch, wanted at home in billion-dollar scandal, backs Russian interests from a haven in Israel
CHISINAU, Moldova (JTA) — Perched on a sofa somewhere in Israel, fugitive Moldovan-Jewish businessman-turned-politician Ilan Shor is seen in a video from last month speaking to his supporters back home. His message is, by his standards, relatively mild.
“Maia, you really are Hitler,” he says, addressing Moldova’s pro-European president, Maia Sandu. “Whether you like it or not, I will make sure my people live well.”
With backing from Russia, Ilan Shor has become a leading figure in Moscow’s campaign to destabilize Moldova, a tiny impoverished country wedged between Ukraine and Romania. Facing charges — and since last week, a conviction in absentia — that he stole $1 billion dollars from the Moldovan banking system in 2014, he has been sheltering in Israel.
From there, the opposition leader who is still a member of Moldova’s parliament has been denouncing his charges as politically motivated, organizing regular protests in his native country and spreading disinformation that critics say is designed to undermine Moldova’s efforts to align itself closer with the European Union and away from Russia. Last June, Moldova — which has repeatedly condemned the Russian war in Ukraine — was granted candidate status to the European Union, together with Ukraine. (A previous government collapsed in February under the weight of economic and political stress amplified by Russia’s invasion.)
Whether a fugitive from justice or a target of political retaliation, the presence of the pro-Russian oligarch has become frequently awkward for Israel, which has in recent years become more willing to extradite its citizens facing charges abroad. Shor is an Israeli citizen, and yet he has been sanctioned by the United States in October and the United Kingdom in December. The Israeli foreign ministry declined to comment on any issues related to Shor’s activities, with officials saying that it was a legal issue.
“We do not want the territory of other countries to be used as a launching pad for hybrid attacks against us and for attempts to bring violence here,” said one senior official in Chisinau, Moldova’s capital, when asked how they felt about Shor’s presence in Israel.
Last week, a court in Chisinau sentenced Shor to 15 years in prison for his involvement in the heist and ordered the confiscation of $290 million of his assets. Shor claims that the verdict was “revenge for the protest movement” and promised that it would be “annulled the day after the change in regime.”
Before the recent sentencing, Nicu Popescu, Moldova’s foreign minister, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency from his office in downtown Chisinau that Moldova had established information about “clear coordination between Shor and Russia in their joint attempts to destabilize Moldova.”
“The reality is that Shor is trying to bring violence onto the streets,” Popescu added. “He is operating from Israeli territory and that is problematic. This situation related to Shor is a factor that is problematic for our country, its stability, and for the stability of the region. The scale of the attempts to destabilize Moldova through violent means have risen recently and that is something that matters a lot.”
Ahead of a protest in downtown Chisinau last month, where 54 people were arrested, Moldova police said that they had detained seven people who had been promised up to $10,000 each to stir violence during the protests. Media here reported that the Shor Party, which Shor created in 2015, has been bribing people to attend protests and busing them in from towns across Moldova.
JTA requested an interview with a representative of Shor’s political party but received no response.
Ilan Shor was born in Israel to Moldovan Jewish parents who moved to Israel in the late 1970s, then moved back to Chisinau in 1990. He inherited from his father a successful chain of Moldovan duty-free stores and built a network of businesses across the country. He entered politics in 2015, in a move widely seen as an effort to try and protect himself from the legal fall-out of the banking scandal and fled to Israel in 2019.
Intelligence assessments in both Moldova and the United States have determined that Russia had been seeking to use such protests as a platform to topple Moldova’s government. Shor regularly addresses the protests on videos from his base in Israel.
Ukrainian and Western officials say Shor has links with the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, which has been channeling money into Moldova as part of its attempts to support pro-Russian voices, The Washington Post reported. Shor, who is married to a Russian pop star, is allegedly known to the FSB as “the Young One” (he is 36).
Demonstrators in Chisinau protest the Moldovan government, Nov 13, 2022. Shor has been involved in organizing ongoing protests. (Vudi Xhymshiti/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
“Moldova is facing hybrid threats,” Popescu said. “We take our security very seriously and our institutions are doing everything they can to keep peace and calm, but it is totally unacceptable that people like Shor try to bring violence onto the streets of Moldova.”
Moldova has submitted an extradition request to Israeli authorities for Ilan Shor’s role in the banking scandal but has received no response, according to senior officials at the Moldovan foreign ministry. Some officials in Chisinau say that Israel may have been waiting for the completion of Shor’s legal appeal process, and that there may now be movement following his sentencing in absentia. Shor is also currently under investigation as a suspect in a range of other cases related to his activities during and since the fraud scandal.
“He is operating from Israeli territory and that is problematic,” Popescu said. “Our institutions are and will be taking the security of our citizens very seriously and knowing how careful Israel is about its own security, I am sure that Israel can have a lot of sympathy.”
“Shor is the most important political ally of Russia in Moldova,” said Valeriu Pasha, the director of the Moldovan thinktank Watchdog.MD. “The Shor Party works as a classic organized crime group, and it looks like he is ready to be part of some of the tough scenarios of Russian influence in Moldova.”
“He has received almost total control of Russian-affiliated media which is broadcasting in Moldova,” added Pasha. Shor owns a number of channels, while outlets like Russia’s Perviy Kanal, or Channel One, are rebroadcast in Moldova, where Romanian is the state language and Russian is spoken by Russians, Ukrainians and other ethnic minorities. Pasha said that Shor was playing a “critical role” in spreading pro-Russian narratives about the war in Ukraine and the Moldovan government.
Officials in Chisinau said that they were concerned that Shor could flee to Russia if his seven-and-half year sentence is upheld by Moldova’s Appellate Court. “We would want to see him extradited now,” said Veronica Dragalin, Moldova’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, “because we do not want that to happen.”
Dragalin dismisses allegations by Shor and his allies that the case against him is politically motivated.
“This tactic of trying to claim that you are being politically persecuted is something that happens quite often in these situations in Moldova,” said Dragalin. Bringing Shor to justice in Moldova “would have a significant ripple-down effect in terms of deterring crime,” by underlining that there are consequences for the “rich and powerful” when they break the law, she said.
Some among Moldova’s approximately 15,000 Jews — who have spent the past year dealing with an influx of Jewish refugees from Ukraine — worry that increasing anger towards Shor, who has a number of close Jewish associates in the country, might blow back onto the community.
“Speaking about the consequences of everything that is going on,” said Aliona Grossu, the director of the Jewish Community of Moldova, “when it is linked to some political figures, of course there is a spill-over effect on the community.”
This, she worried, had caused an uptick in antisemitism by causing the proliferation of stereotypes that most Jews in Moldova were either “illegally wealthy” or were “connected” to Shor.
Shor is not particularly close to the Jewish community in Moldova. Grossu emphasized that despite her having worked for the community for 13 years, she had never met him, and that he had never had any involvement with the community — beyond paying his membership dues.
There are pockets of support for Shor among the local Jewish population, which is overwhelmingly Russian-speaking. On a recent day in Orhei, a sleepy town in central Moldova that Shor was once mayor of and remains its member in parliament, the leader of the tiny local Jewish community welcomed a set of Jewish visitors from Chisinau. Iziaslav Mundrean, standing outside the town’s Jewish museum, said that Shor was “a good man.”
Shor, he added, had paid for the construction of a new driveway for the collapsing Jewish cemetery and a new gate to be installed. He had also funded windows for an old synagogue that has since been transformed into the Jewish museum for the town.
Two other Jewish men from Chisinau standing nearby raised their eyebrows at Mundrean’s comments and launched into a debate about whether there was anything to respect about Shor.
Shor simply “had not been given the opportunity,” Mundrean continued, adding that the widespread dislike towards him across Moldova was because “people by-and-large do not like rich Jews.”
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Unarmed man who tackled Bondi Beach Hanukkah attacker identified as Ahmed al-Ahmed
(JTA) — Viral video circulating after the Bondi Beach Hanukkah attack showed an unarmed man racing toward one of the shooters and tackling him from behind before wrestling the gun from his hands.
The man has been identified as Ahmed al-Ahmed, the operator of a fruit stand in a Sydney suburb who happened to be in the area. He was shot twice but expected to survive.
“He is a hero, 100%,” a relative who identified himself as Mustafa told 7News Australia.
Chris Minns, the premier of New South Wales, the Australian state that includes Sydney, called the footage “the most unbelievable scene I’ve ever seen.”
He added, “That man is a genuine hero, and I’ve got no doubt that there are many, many people alive tonight as a result of his bravery.”
At least 11 people were killed during the attack on a Hanukkah celebration on Sunday night, with dozens of others injured.
The video shows al-Ahmed crouching behind a car before running up behind the shooter. After taking hold of the gun, al-Ahmed aims the attacker’s gun at him but not firing, as a second attacker fired on him from a nearby footbridge. No other first responders are visible in the video.
Moments after al-Ahmed takes hold of the long gun, a second person joins him. Then a man wearing a kippah and tzitzit, the fringes worn by religiously observant Jewish men, runs into the picture and toward the attacker, who is wearing a backpack. The Jewish man throws something at the attacker. The video does not make clear what was thrown or whether it hit its intended target.
After taking hold of the gun, al-Ahmed puts it down against a tree and raises his hand, apparently signaling that he is not a participant in the attack.
In his response to the attack, which killed a prominent Chabad rabbi among others, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese praised “everyday Australians who, without hesitating, put themselves in danger in order to keep their fellow Australians safe.” He added, “These Australians are heroes and their bravery has saved lives.”
The post Unarmed man who tackled Bondi Beach Hanukkah attacker identified as Ahmed al-Ahmed appeared first on The Forward.
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Bondi Beach witnesses, including antisemitism activist, describe grim scene after Hanukkah attack
(JTA) — Arsen Ostrovsky moved back to Australia from Israel two weeks ago to helm the Sydney office of AIJAC, the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council.
On Sunday, he was one of scores of people shot during an attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach. At least 11 people were killed, as well as one of the attackers.
Ostrovsky, who grew up in Sydney after leaving the Soviet Union as a child, was injured in the head and treated at the scene.
“It was actually chaos. We didn’t know what was happening, where the gunfire was coming from. I saw blood gushing from me. I saw people hit, saw people fall to the ground,” he told a local news station, his head bandaged with blood visible on his face and clothing. “My only concern was, where are my kids? Where are my kids? Where’s my wife, where’s my family?”
He said he had been briefly separated from his family before finding them safe. But he had seen
“I saw children falling to the floor, I saw elderly, I saw invalids,” he said. “It was an absolute bloodbath, blood gushing everywhere.”
The attack struck at a centerpiece of Jewish community in Sydney, home to an estimated 40,000 Jews, nearly half of Australia’s total Jewish population. At least 1,000 people had turned up for the beachside celebration on the first night of Hanukkah.
“There were people dead everywhere, young, old, rabbi — they’re all dead,” Vlad, a Jewish chaplain with the State Emergency Service, told a local TV station. “And then two people died while we’re trying to save them, because the ambulance didn’t arrive on time.”
He said the people who died were an elderly woman who had been shot in the leg and an “older gentleman” who was shot in the head.
“It’s not just people, it’s people that I know, people from our community, people that we know well, people that we see often,” said Vlad, who had covered his 8-year-old son with his body during the attack. “My rabbi is dead.”
The rabbi who was killed, Eli Schlanger, moved to Bondi Beach as an emissary of the Chabad movement 18 years ago. He was the father of five children, including a son born two months ago.
“He wasn’t some distant figure. He was the guy staying up late planning the logistics for a Menorah lighting that most people will take for granted. The one stressing about the weather. The one making sure there were enough latkes and the kids weren’t bored,” wrote Eli Tewel, another Chabad emissary, on X.
“He was just doing his job. Showing up. Being the constant, reliable presence for his community,” Tewel added. “And that’s where the gut punch lands: He was killed while doing the most basic, kindest, most normal part of our lives. It wasn’t a battlefield. It was a Chanukah party.”
The post Bondi Beach witnesses, including antisemitism activist, describe grim scene after Hanukkah attack appeared first on The Forward.
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I grew up believing Australia was the best place to be Jewish. This Hanukkah shooting forces a reckoning I do not want.
I grew up believing that Australia was one of the best places on earth to be Jewish. This country always felt like a gift: Extraordinary beaches, glorious wildlife, and a cultural temperament that values fairness and ease over hierarchy. For most of my life, my Jewishness in Australia was unremarkable. My parents and grandparents chose this place because it promised normality, and for a long time, it delivered.
So when I heard that there had been a mass shooting at Bondi Beach, at a Hanukkah event, my body reacted before my mind could catch up.
Gun violence is almost unthinkable in Australia. The country limited gun ownership after the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania in 1996, when we made collective choices about who we wanted to be as a nation. That a shooting could happen here, and that Jews were the target, feels like a rupture in something we believed was settled.
At the time I write this, at least 11 people are dead, including a rabbi. Dozens more are injured. I recognise some of the names being circulated in prayer groups.
Rising antisemitism in Australia
Historically, being Jewish in Australia was not something that required vigilance, it was something you simply were.
Since October 7, that certainty has begun to fray. I have had the persistent feeling that something fundamental has shifted, and that the country I love is becoming less recognisable to me.
Many in Australia’s Jewish community mark Oct. 9, 2023 as the moment the ground moved beneath our feet. The protest outside the Sydney Opera House, where there were open chants of “Where’s the Jews” and “F–k the Jews,” at one of our country’s most iconic sites, with no arrests and no charges, felt like a breaking point.
The months since have been relentless with Jewish Australians assaulted, hateful graffiti, doxxing, Jewish businesses targeted, and a steady drip of hostility that causes us to question whether something is irreversibly changing for Jews in this country.
We have repeatedly reached out to our government, telling them that we do not feel safe. And yet, it has often felt as though these concerns are met with procedural gestures like more security funding, that never quite reach the level of protection and reassurance we are seeking.
When Australia wants to take a zero-tolerance approach to anything, it does so with gusto, ask anyone who lived here during the COVID-19 pandemic. Australian Jews do not feel that the Australian government is taking its approach to antisemitism as seriously as it should.
And so, here we are.
Bondi Beach now symbolizes death and disaster
Images of bodies on Bondi Beach are now seared into my mind. Bondi, the shorthand for Australian ease and sunlight and openness, has become a shrine to death and disaster for Australian Jews.
For most of my life, being a Jewish Australian has felt like a profound blessing. Today I feel something colder. I find myself asking questions that feel both irrational and unavoidable.
Is it foolish to stay in a country where Jews can be killed in public for lighting Hanukkah candles? Am I clinging to a story about Australia that no longer matches reality? Is it naive to assume that Jewish life here will stabilise, rather than continue to narrow?
These thoughts are frightening, but what frightens me more is how practical they suddenly feel. I am a parent, and I take my children to community events. The idea that attending a Hanukkah celebration could be a life-threatening decision is not something I ever imagined I would have to consider in Australia.
This moment forces a reckoning I do not want. It asks whether Jewish belonging in Australia is conditional. Whether safety is fragile. Whether the country my ancestors chose, and that I still love deeply, is willing and able to protect Jewish life.
As I type these words I feel grief not just for the dead tonight, but for a version of Australia that felt solid and reliable, alongside a growing fear that something essential about the way Jews have always lived in this country has already been lost.
The post I grew up believing Australia was the best place to be Jewish. This Hanukkah shooting forces a reckoning I do not want. appeared first on The Forward.