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‘When Russia Goes Through Bad Times, They Target the Jews,’ Ukrainian Ambassador to Israel Warns in Appeal for Unity
Yevgen Korniychuk, Ukraine’s Ambassador to the State of Israel, in his office in Tel Aviv. Photo: Ben Cohen/The Algemeiner
Yevgen Korniychuk, Ukraine’s Ambassador in Tel Aviv, has found himself in a rare position since Oct. 7, when Hamas terrorists unleashed a bestial pogrom in southern Israel, as the diplomatic representative of one country caught in a war of existential survival dispatched to a second country that is engaged in a war with similar stakes.
“Yes, it’s a strange feeling,” Korniychuk told The Algemeiner during an extensive telephone interview on Tuesday, emitting a short laugh. Having served in Israel for more than two years — a period covering the brutal Russian invasion of his country in Feb. 2022 — Korniychuk has encountered several moments of frustration in his bid to win stronger diplomatic and military support from Jerusalem as Ukraine confronts its Russian enemy. “As the ambassador, I have to remain optimistic,” he reflected during a previous interview in Jan. 2023 with this publication. “If I am pessimistic, I may as well retire.”
Korniychuk firmly believes that Israel and Ukraine are natural allies, even if the Israeli government, nervous of poking Moscow, has shied away from saying so explicitly. In part, it’s because both countries are facing the same enemy in the shape of Iran, which has been providing the devastating Shahed drones used by the Russians to attack Ukrainian population centers at the same time as backing proxy terrorist groups, among them Hamas and Hezbollah, dedicated to Israel’s destruction. “Russia, Iran, and the Iranian proxies are the axis of evil,” Korniychuk emphasized.
He also counsels that Israel cannot trust Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime, pointing to the long and violent history of Russian antisemitism and the key role Russia has played in spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories, dating back to the fabricated “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” unveiled by the Tsarist secret police in 1903. “The Russian regime is always looking for the Ukrainian roots of whatever problems they have,” Korniychuk said, referring to Russia’s patently false claim that the democratic government in Kyiv was responsible for last weekend’s attack by ISIS terrorists on a crowded theater in Moscow. “But the truth is that they will be looking for the Jewish roots also. When Russia goes through bad times, they target the Jews and then the other minorities; if you look at Russian history in the 19th and 20th centuries, that was always the case.”
In the last few days, Russian representatives have unwittingly proved Korniychuk’s point, with Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov ridiculing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in the wake of the ISIS attack, as a “peculiar kind of Jew.” Putin himself has also deployed similar rhetoric, describing Zelensky as a “disgrace to the Jewish people” in comments last June. All this reflects, as Korniychuk remarked, the ultranationalist ideology reigning in Moscow which holds that those Jews living outside of Russia’s orbit have been corrupted by capitalism and the desire to turn a quick profit — in contrast to the “traditionalist” Jews of the east, to use the term of Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin, whose values are supposedly aligned with those espoused by their Russian hosts.
Korniychuk recounted a meeting with officials at the Israeli foreign ministry right before our conversation, in which he had made the same substantive points. The realist calculus deployed by the Israelis in assessing Russian actions — “putting themselves in Russia’s shoes,” as Korniychuk put it — frustrates him, because what Russia is doing “is not rational.” Similarly, talk of Russian “escalation” sounds empty to Ukrainian ears. “We don’t see any further escalation because we’ve already had a full-scale war for the last two years,” the ambassador observed. True, he added, the Russians “could decide to use nuclear weapons, but even then, our resistance will not stop. We believe that anything could happen and we have to be ready for everything, as do our European neighbors. The big European states — France, Germany, Italy — now understand what they are dealing with.”
Another area of Ukrainian-Israeli common interest outlined by Korniychuk concerns the efforts within the US Congress to pass a $95 billion aid package for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. While the measure won Senate approval last month, it has been stalled in the House of Representatives by far right Republican supporters of former President Donald Trump, many of whom have followed Trump’s lead in advocating that Ukraine surrender to Russian conquest. Bipartisan attempts to approve the package have examined other methods for funneling the aid, for example in the form of a loan, but while the deliberations go on, Ukrainian forces are running perilously short of ammunition and other basic materiel.
Korniychuk has been advocating for a united lobbying effort in Washington, DC, to break the deadlock. “This is money that will be spent in the US on ammunition and anti-missile defense, so it’s a win-win for the US,” he asserted. “Israel is experiencing the same problems with ammunition, so this is why it’s important for us to join forces.” He remains hopeful that Ukrainian advocacy groups will work with AIPAC, the main pro-Israel lobby organization in the US, which in the recent past has hailed closer Ukrainian-Israeli cooperation in the face of the Russian threat.
In that regard, Korniychuk also stresses that Putin’s regime maintains close ties with Israel’s deadliest adversaries, pointing out that Moscow has warmly received delegations from Hamas and other radical Palestinian factions, as well as Hezbollah and the rebel Houthis in Yemen, who have caused havoc in the Red Sea with intentional attacks on Western — but not Russian or Chinese — cargo vessels since Oct. 7. As a diplomat he said, he has not seen any intelligence to suggest that Russia had advance knowledge of the Oct. 7 pogrom, but “we have enough evidence of their close ties and relations and support of those groups, so we can reach the appropriate conclusions.”
Korniychuk emphasized that since Oct. 7, he had moderated his criticisms of the Israeli government’s reluctance to ally more openly with Ukraine. “We are not talking about a ceasefire. We have been attacked brutally by Russia, like Hamas attacked Israel. We support the right of Israel to self-defense,” he said. At the same time, he noted with regret that the “excessive loss of civilian life” in Gaza meant that Israel was “losing the propaganda war.”
“I understand the difficult position [the Israelis] are in at the moment, and we are cooperating now on a very good level in terms of security,” he said. “These are difficult times, and we don’t get to choose our circumstances. If we achieve even modest goals, that is something, given the situation in which we find ourselves.”
The post ‘When Russia Goes Through Bad Times, They Target the Jews,’ Ukrainian Ambassador to Israel Warns in Appeal for Unity first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
JNS.org – The Israeli airstrikes on Iran last month destroyed a secret nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, 19 miles southeast of Tehran, Axios reported on Friday.
The clandestine site held sophisticated equipment used for testing explosives needed to detonate nuclear devices, the report read, citing three US officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security acquired high-resolution satellite imagery of the facility, which showed that it was completely destroyed in Israel’s Oct. 26 attack.
Israeli and US intelligence agencies began noticing activity in the Taleghan 2 facility in the Parchin military complex in early 2024, which had been largely inactive since 2003, when the Islamic Republic froze its military nuclear program, according to Axios.
One unnamed US official quoted in the report said: “[The Iranians] conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon. It was a top secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t.”
Although President Joe Biden asked Jerusalem not to target Tehran’s nuclear facilities, the site in Parchin was chosen as a target because it was not part of Iran’s declared nuclear program.
This placed the mullah regime in a position where admitting a hit to the site would expose its efforts to resume activity forbidden by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Moreover, “The strike was a not so subtle message that the Israelis have significant insight into the Iranian system even when it comes to things that were kept top secret and known to a very small group of people in the Iranian government,” the report cited a US official as saying.
Last week, Rafael Grossi, the director of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, visited Iran for the first time since May.
He is expected to meet with his agency’s board of governors in Vienna this week for a vote on a resolution to censure Tehran for its lack of cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Speaking about the tensions between Israel and Iran, Grossi said during a news conference in Tehran on Thursday that the Islamic Republic’s “nuclear installations should not be attacked.”
Earlier in the week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz suggested that Iran’s nuclear facilities may be targeted.
Iran is “more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities. We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal—to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel,” Katz said.
Israel’s two assaults against Iran’s air defense system this year have left the country vulnerable to future attacks, with all four of Tehran’s Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries destroyed, according to U.S. media.
On April 19, Israel took out one of the S-300 systems in response to Tehran’s first-ever direct attack against the Jewish state. On Oct. 26, in response to a second Iranian attack, Israel targeted 20 sites in Iran, destroying the remaining three.
“The majority of Iran’s air defense was taken out,” a senior Israeli official told Fox News.
The post Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat
Houthi-mobilized fighters ride atop a car in Sanaa, Yemen, Sept. 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Yemen’s Houthi forces attacked “a vital target” in Israel’s Red Sea port city of Eilat with a number of drones, the Iran-aligned group’s military spokesperson Yahya Saree said on Saturday.
The terrorist group has launched dozens of attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea region since November in solidarity with Hamas.
“These operations will not stop until the aggression stops, the siege on the Gaza Strip is lifted, and the aggression on Lebanon stops,” Saree added in a televised speech.
The Houthi attacks have upended global trade by forcing ship owners to reroute vessels away from the vital Suez Canal shortcut, and drawn retaliatory U.S. and British strikes since February.
The post Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks
US Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, Sept. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
JNS.org – Muslim leaders in the United Stated who called for supporting President-elect Donald Trump at the expense of Democrat runner Kamala Harris are deeply disappointed with the former president’s Cabinet nominees, Reuters reported on Thursday.
“It’s like he’s going on Zionist overdrive,” Abandon Harris campaign co-founder Hassan Abdel Salam, a former professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, said about Trump’s recently announced picks.
“We were always extremely skeptical. … Obviously we’re still waiting to see where the administration will go, but it does look like our community has been played,” Abdel Salam told Reuters.
Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump, was cited as saying: “Trump won because of us and we’re not happy with his secretary of state pick and others.”
Some political strategists believe that the Muslim vote for Trump, or the renunciation of Harris, helped tilt several swing states such as Michigan in the favor of the Republican candidate.
“It seems like this administration has been packed entirely with neoconservatives and extremely pro-Israel, pro-war people, which is a failure on the side of President Trump, to the pro-peace and anti-war movement,” said Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network.
On Wednesday, Trump named Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as his choice to be secretary of state.
Rubio is known for his staunch pro-Israel stance, including calling on Jerusalem earlier this year to destroy “every element” of Hamas and dubbing the Gaza-based terrorist organization as “vicious animals.”
Rubio joins a slew of pro-Israel officials Trump has tapped since he won the U.S. election, including former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) as his U.N. ambassador with a seat in the Cabinet.
Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), told JNS that Trump’s focus so early in the transition process on Israel-related foreign policy picks is a mark of how his second administration will approach the region.
“That, in and of itself, signals that President Trump and his administration are going to take the region, the Middle East, the threats confronting Israel, seriously and take the U.S. friendship with Israel seriously,” Misztal said.
“The people that we’ve seen are known to be tremendously strong friends of Israel, first and foremost, but also very clear-eyed about the threats that the United States and Israel face together in the region.”
Before the election on Nov. 5, Trump promised Arab and Muslim voters he would restore stability in Lebanon and the Middle East, while criticizing the current administration’s regional policies during campaign stops targeting Muslim communities in Michigan.
Trump recently addressed Lebanese Americans, stating, “Your friends and family in Lebanon deserve to live in peace, prosperity and harmony with their neighbors, and this can only happen when there is peace and stability in the Middle East.”
Israel has been at war for more than a year on its southern and northern borders, ever since Hamas led a surprise attack on communities near the Gaza Strip border on Oct. 7, 2023, murdering some 1,200 people and abducting 251 more into the Palestinian enclave. A day later, Hezbollah joined Hamas’s efforts by firing rockets into Israel’s north.
The post Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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