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In a Ukrainian city liberated from Russia, local Jewish leaders are being accused of collaboration
(JTA) — When Russian troops poured across the Ukrainian border in March, thousands fled from the cities that would be first in their path. But in Kherson, the southern port city with strategic value to the Russians, Rabbi Yosef Itzhak Wolff decided to stay put.
His decision to remain put him in line with the philosophy of his Jewish movement, Chabad, whose rabbis typically commit to the cities where they are stationed and stay there through thick and thin.
But his decision could also cost him the ability to serve Kherson’s Jews. According to a report this week in the New York Times, Wolff is now in Germany, concerned because some in Kherson accuse him of collaborating with the Russian forces.
Meanwhile, a member of his Jewish community is facing life in prison over his actions during the chaotic early days of the war, according to the New York Times report.
Russia captured Kherson on March 2, 2022, and for months, the city suffered a brutal occupation that resulted in hundreds dead and scores more “disappeared” or tortured, according to Human Rights Watch.
Among those living in the occupied city was Wolff, an Israel-born rabbi who arrived in Ukraine nearly 30 years ago, just after the fall of the Soviet Union and Ukraine’s independence. For the past 13 years, he had presided over a Jewish community in Kherson estimated before the war at 8,000 people.
In the early days of the war, Wolff’s work to supply food, medicine and at least some semblance of a joyous Purim to his community was highly publicized.
During one trip, the Times of Israel reported, he dodged bullets shuttling food back to the city from the border with Crimea, where his brother is also a rabbi. In another, according to Chabad.org, he went out to deliver food even as Russian tanks rolled through the town.
“Despite heavy fighting in the streets of Kherson, Rabbi Yosef Wolff did not abandon his community for a moment, remaining in the war-torn city through it all and serving the local population,” Rabbi Motti Seligson, a spokesperson for the Chabad movement, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He called Wolff a “true hero of the Jewish people and for people of good conscience everywhere.”
Before the Holocaust, Kherson was a major center of Jewish life, with some 26 synagogues, but now, there is only Wolff’s. And before the war, it was like Chabad centers around the world: serving a local community, but also famously welcoming to unfamiliar faces, including foreign visitors.
Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Wolff and mayor of Kherson Volodymyr Mykolaienko light Hanukkah candles, Dec. 19, 2017, in Kherson, Ukraine. (PLes Kasyanov/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
Opening the doors to newcomers took on added gravity after the war began and Russians streamed into Kherson. For much of the year, it was unclear whether Ukraine would regain control of the city, or whether it would become like Crimea and remain under Russian occupation. But last month, Ukraine liberated Kherson, generating scenes of jubilation — and putting anyone perceived as collaborating with the Russian army under suspicion.
Some of that suspicion landed on Wolff, who had allowed Russian soldiers to pray in his synagogue. The soldiers were Jewish officers who had arrived with armed guards, he told the New York Times.
In the days after liberation, he left Kherson, and Ukraine, for Germany. Now, with efforts to penalize collaborators underway, he told the newspaper that he is not sure when or if he will return.
Among those who remained in Kherson was a prominent member of the Jewish community who is now being prosecuted for his choices amid the messy reality of occupation.
Illia Karamalikov, a nightclub owner and member of Kherson’s city council, was close to Wolff, frequently allowing Chabad to use his nightclub’s space for events, the rabbi told the New York Times.
In the early days of the occupation, Kherson descended into a state of lawlessness. The Ukrainian civil administration fled ahead of the Russian forces and, after conquering the city without much resistance, Russia took little responsibility for its administration, instead sending soldiers on to other targets such as neighboring regions of Odessa, Mykolaiv, Kryvyi Rih — Ukrainian president Voldymyr Zelensky’s hometown — and ultimately, Kyiv.
Looting was rampant, and cut off from power and supply lines, the thousands of people who remained in the city faced a real risk of starvation.
It was locals who managed to bring back some semblance of order. Karamalikov helped organize a 1,200-strong community patrol to enforce curfews and watch for looters.
A boy stands with Ukrainian flag in the central square of Kherson after the city was liberated from Russian occupation, Nov. 19, 2022. (Oleksii Samsonov/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
It was in that role, according to the New York Times report, that he found himself face to face with a lost and confused Russian pilot, whom his men had taken into captivity. Karamalikov held the prisoner in a utility closet in his home for a night, before ultimately making the decision to return him to the Russian forces unharmed.
That earned him a 12-page indictment from Ukraine, as he ran afoul of new laws enacted at the outbreak of the war that stipulate that “cooperation with the aggressor state, its armed formations, or its occupation administration;” are punishable as acts of collaboration under Ukraine’s criminal code.
Many of those who spoke to the New York Times said the laws don’t account for the reality of living under occupation.
“All these people who ran away are judging us,” Wolff told the newspaper. “These are cruel times.”
Through returning the soldier, Karamalikov allegedly “organized the further participation of a Russian serviceman in aggression against Ukraine,” according to his indictment.
But many in Kherson are not sure what other option they had. Karamalikov’s community watch organization was a volunteer and non-military force whose limited power involved pressing looters into doing community service. To have harmed the soldier would have made them combatants against Russia.
“We wondered later: Should we have killed the soldier and kept it secret?” one of Karamalikov’s watchmen, Andriy Skvortsov told the New York Times. “But I’ve decided no, that wouldn’t have been good.”
“With a life in his hands, I can’t imagine Illia ever killing anyone,” Wolff told the newspaper. “What he did was the most humane decision he could make.”
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From Fatwa to Conspiracy: Joe Kent’s Iran Case Falls Apart
Smoke billows from Jebel Ali port after an Iranian attack, following United States and Israel strikes on Iran, United Arab Emirates, March 1, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Amr Alfik
Joe Kent chose a revealing place to begin his claim that Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States.
Sitting across from Tucker Carlson, Kent pointed to the Islamic Republic’s supposed “fatwa” against nuclear weapons — offering it as proof that Iran could be trusted to stop short of the bomb.
That argument collapses on contact with reality.
Setting aside that this so-called fatwa is unwritten and, by Iran’s own officials’ admission, not legally binding, no country builds deeply buried, hardened nuclear facilities under mountains — for civilian energy. No country enriches uranium to 60% for peaceful use. And once enrichment reaches that level, the remaining step to weapons-grade is short — measured at most in weeks, and in some scenarios just a few days. That is the baseline assessment across the nonproliferation community.
Iran has not hidden this trajectory. It has advanced it.
By early 2026, Iran had accumulated significant quantities of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade while making clear — publicly and in negotiations — that it would neither dismantle that stockpile nor include its ballistic missile program in any agreement. That is not restraint. It is leverage.
Kent’s claim of no “imminent” threat depends on a definition no serious military or intelligence body uses. Imminence is not measured by whether a missile has been launched, but how quickly one can be.
A regime able to move from threshold capability to a nuclear weapon on short notice — and already building delivery systems — is not a distant concern.
And Iran’s missile program was central to that threat.
Before late February 2026, Iran fielded the largest ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East, and was expanding it. Missiles are relatively fast and inexpensive to produce. Interceptors are not. Systems like Arrow, David’s Sling, and Patriot require time, precision manufacturing, and far greater cost. Over time, the imbalance becomes structural.
That is how defenses are overwhelmed — through volume.
The implications extend far beyond Israel.
A nuclear-threshold Iran positioned along the Strait of Hormuz would sit at one of the world’s most critical chokepoints, through which roughly 20% of global oil flows. Combined with nuclear latency, a large missile force, and an entrenched proxy network, an Iranian regime aligned squarely with Russia and China would gain the ability to threaten energy markets, impose itself on neighboring states, and distort the global economy without firing a shot.
Any serious “America First” analysis would start there. Kent’s does not.
Instead, to argue the US is acting “for Israel,” he defaults to a familiar trope: that Israel “duped” the United States into the 2003 Iraq war.
This is not serious history. It is a recycled narrative common to both the antisemitic far-right and far-left, serving the same purpose: removing American agency and replacing it with manipulation by Israel or “the Jews.”
The record is clear.
Before 2003, Israeli leadership warned that Iran — not Iraq — posed the greater long-term threat. The intelligence cited by the Bush administration to support attacking Iraq came primarily from American and British sources. Colin Powell’s UN presentation relied on Western intelligence, not Israeli briefings.
Reducing that war to Israeli influence is not analysis. It is conspiracy theory.
Kent did not stop there.
In his resignation letter, he blamed Israel for the death of his first wife.
But Shannon Kent was killed in Syria while serving as a US intelligence officer. The war she died in was the Syrian Civil War — triggered by Assad’s mass violence, fueled by ISIS, and sustained in large part by Iran through the IRGC and Hezbollah. Iran helped keep that war going.
Blaming Israel for that is not a misreading. It is counterfactual scapegoating.
And it follows a pattern.
Kent has been elevated in a media ecosystem built on distrust of institutions and hostility to alliances, increasingly drifting into the claim that American policy is not the product of American decisions, but of outside (Jewish) forces pulling the strings. During his Carlson interview, Kent nodded toward the worst conspiracies circulating in that space — including claims popularized by Candace Owens about Charlie Kirk and Israel — while Carlson played his familiar role of laundering them through “just asking questions.”
That ecosystem runs on repetition, not evidence.
Kent’s description to Carlson of Ali Larijani as a moderate reflects a similar disregard for facts. Larijani spent decades at the center of the Islamic Republic — serving as nuclear negotiator, parliament speaker, and senior regime figure — in a system that imprisons, tortures, and mass-murders its own citizens. There is nothing moderate about that record.
Then there is the timing of Kent’s resignation, which followed reports that he was under investigation for leaking classified information. That context matters. It makes the letter read less like principle and more like preemption.
It also exposes a deeper inconsistency.
Kent and his cohorts argue that confronting Iran plainly serves Israel’s interests more than America’s — as if that ends the analysis. The same argument was made before World War II: that aiding Britain served British, not American, interests. And Britain was certainly more immediately threatened by Nazi Germany. That did not make defeating Nazi Germany any less an American interest.
An action benefiting an ally more than it does America can still be plainly in America’s interest.
Yet in the same media space elevating Kent, figures once widely condemned — including Marjorie Taylor Greene — find new audiences when their conspiratorial instincts align with the moment. The consistency is not ideological. It is to support a narrative: America as manipulated, its institutions as compromised, and its citizens as spectators.
That has consequences.
A self-governing society depends on the belief that its policies reflect its own decisions. Convince people that unseen forces are always in control, and participation begins to erode.
If the United States can be “duped” into war by a far smaller ally, then voting, deliberation, and leadership become performative. The system is hollow.
That is not a side effect. It is the destination.
And it is why the facts about Iran matter. Iran’s nuclear program, its proximity to breakout, its expanding missile arsenal, its declared “death to America” hostility toward the United States, its role in the deaths of hundreds of American service members, and its alignment with Russia and China are not speculative. They are established facts.
Dismissing that record requires more than disagreement. It requires dismissing facts.
At that point, the argument is no longer about Iran.
It is about whether facts still matter — and whether a society that decides they do not can continue to govern itself at all.
That is the direction parts of the “woke right” and the far-left are now pushing — different rhetoric, same conclusion: America is not acting, it is being controlled; its people are not deciding, they are being managed or “duped.” Tucker Carlson says it one way. Cenk Uygur says it another. The message lands the same.
A country that internalizes that message does not remain self-governing. It hollows out from within.
And when that happens, the beneficiaries are clear: Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran — regimes that do not need to defeat the United States if Americans can be convinced to lose faith in their own capacity to govern.
Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish history. He serves on the board of Herut North America.
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Why Did the US Just Lift Sanctions on Iranian Oil?
The Liberian-flagged oil tanker Ice Energy transfers crude oil from the Iranian-flagged oil tanker Lana (former Pegas), off the shore of Karystos, on the Island of Evia, Greece, May 26, 2022. REUTERS/Costas Baltas
According to estimates, on the eve of the current war, some 140 million barrels of Iranian oil were floating at sea. This oil had already been produced and loaded onto tankers, and the vast bulk of it had already passed through the Strait of Hormuz before the war broke out. The Chinese had bought most of this oil, but chose to leave it at sea because their strategic reserves were full of the medium-sour oil that Iran produces, and US sanctions on the Iranian banking system made it difficult to resell the oil to other customers. Iranian oil tankers were thus left waiting for months near China’s shore.
On March 20, 2026, the US announced a temporary 30-day lifting of sanctions on the sale and delivery of Iranian oil. The permit applies only to oil that was already loaded onto tankers by that day, and the oil in question must be unloaded by April 19.
The US is attempting to quickly calm the market by allowing countries to buy these millions of barrels of oil. As a significant portion of this oil had already been sold to China, Washington is effectively allowing Beijing, if it so wishes, to release the cargo to be sold in Japan, India, South Korea, and other Asian countries interested in Iranian medium-sour oil.
Even if the Chinese opt to keep all the oil for themselves, the result will still relieve the market, because similar types of oil — primarily Russian medium-sour — can then flow to other customers in Asia. According to the US Secretary of Energy, these tankers could begin arriving at Asian ports within three to four days.
The type of oil is very important here, because it determines who can benefit from the American sanctions relief on Iran’s oil. Oil grades are defined by two main indicators: density (“light” vs. “heavy”) and sulfur content (“sweet” vs. “sour”). The oil’s grade affects the costs of transportation and refining, as well as the types of distillates that can be produced from it. Light and sweet oil can produce more gasoline, diesel fuel, and jet fuel. Heavy oil is more suitable for bunker oil for ships or bitumen for asphalt. Refineries are usually built to operate most efficiently with a specific grade of crude oil. They can process other oil grades if necessary, but not at the same level of profitability or efficiency.
Iranian oil is mostly medium-sour. Not every refinery can produce the same distillates from it with the same efficiency, and not all countries in Asia have the necessary refining capacity in the first place. Countries like India, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore are well-suited for this oil and have more advanced refining capabilities. In contrast, countries that depend more on imported distillates and less on independent refining, such as the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Australia, are more vulnerable to prolonged disruptions and would benefit from Iranian oil only indirectly.
This is where China comes into the picture. It has a huge domestic refining capacity and significant reserves, and thus has great influence on gasoline and diesel prices throughout Asia. Even without the American relief on Iranian oil, Beijing could have released some of its strategic reserves or distillates into the market and eased prices for its neighbors — but it has no interest in doing so. As early as the first week of the war, China announced restrictions on distillate exports, leading to a dramatic increase in gasoline and diesel prices in Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam. China may be using this as a political lever to increase pressure on the US to end the fighting, or it may at the very least be planning to turn energy into a regional bargaining tool and sell distillates to its neighbors in exchange for political benefits.
The main criticism of the American move is that lifting oil sanctions strengthens the Iranian regime and enriches its coffers during the war. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claims that Washington will monitor sales and make it difficult for Iran to access these revenues, emphasizing the continuation of the “maximum pressure” policy on Iran’s ability to use the international financial system. However, he has not explained how the US will prevent Iran from circumventing the restrictions, as it has done so far. In its trading with China, Iran has often used barter transactions, cash, or payments in yuan rather than dollars to circumvent sanctions. It has also used intermediary companies and countries (mainly Oman and Malaysia) to “launder” the source of its oil, and has relied on offshore bank accounts in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Mauritius, and elsewhere with the full knowledge of the countries involved.
It can be argued, however, that Iran’s ability to circumvent US restrictions has been reduced since the beginning of the war, now that Iran itself has bombed some of the countries where it holds offshore accounts. The United Arab Emirates, for example, announced on March 5 that it is considering freezing Iranian accounts in the country. This allows the US to say with greater confidence that it has more control over revenue coming from Iranian oil sales, whether or not this is in fact the case.
In the short term, this seems to be a relatively calculated move by the US. According to the administration’s own statements, its goal is not to provide relief to Iran’s economy but to quickly release oil that has already been produced and is now at sea. The move is designed to relieve pressure on the market for about two weeks. From Washington’s perspective, this is a limited price it is willing to pay to buy time, stabilize the energy market, and preserve greater freedom of action in the war, at least until it can greatly reduce Iran’s ability to close the Strait of Hormuz.
Dr. Elai Rettig is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Studies and a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University. He specializes in energy geopolitics and national security. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
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Israel and Canada Both Use American Fighter Jets — But Politics Keeps Them Apart
A US Marines F-35C Lightning II is staged for flight operations on the flight deck of the US Navy Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in support of the Operation Epic Fury attack on Iran from an undisclosed location March 3, 2026. Photo: US Navy/Handout via REUTERS
After the attack by the US and Israel on Iran, Canada issued a statement recognizing that Iran is the main source of terror in the Middle East, that it has one of the world’s worst human rights records, and that it can not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. I was pleased to see that it also recognized Israel’s right to defend itself and provide security to its people.
When it comes to security, Israel and Canada are very different. Israel has had to face the hostility of its neighbors ever since its birth in 1948, whereas Canada has not had to worry for decades. Yet, the two countries are similar in having to rely on US warplanes for their defense.
The seemingly endless arms race between Israel and its enemies has resulted in the development of an increasingly sophisticated Israeli arms industry and a large arms export business.
The title of a recent Economist Magazine article, “Israel may not be popular, but its weapons are,” says it all. Israel’s weapons exports amounted to almost $15 billion in 2024, about 10% of total Israeli exports. But Israel still relies on the US for warplanes.
In 1956, 70 years ago, the situation for Israel was dire. Periodic terrorist incursions from the West Bank, then under Jordanian jurisdiction, and from Egyptian-controlled Gaza, resulted in numerous Israeli casualties. Arms embargoes imposed by the US and Britain in 1948 made it difficult for Israel to defend itself. (The US embargo lasted until 1965, almost two decades after the state’s founding.)
In 1956, the Canadian government, after some debate, approved a request from Israel to buy 24 F86 Sabre jet interceptors, produced under license from the US by Canadair Ltd, Montreal. In justifying the decision, Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent pointed out that Egypt, with airfields only 10 minutes flying time from Tel Aviv, had received 200 MIG-15 jet fighters and 40 to 50 Ilyushin jet bombers from the Soviet Union.
The Canadian Sabre jets never made it to Israel. The outbreak of the Suez Crisis in late 1956, when Israel attacked Egypt in concert with France and Britain, led to the cancellation of the deal. (Lester B. Pearson, then Canada’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and later Prime Minister, helped resolve the crisis through the creation of a UN peacekeeping force. Pearson was awarded the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.)
For the Israelis, it didn’t really matter. The French government had agreed to supply Israel with Mystère jets, and France remained Israel’s main source of jet fighters for the next decade.
In fact, at the time of the Sabre jet discussions with Israel, Canada was developing a state-of-the-art supersonic jet fighter of its own — the Avro Arrow. However, the project was cancelled abruptly in 1959, even though early production models had flown successfully. The cancellation, a disaster for the Canadian aerospace industry, was based on cost. It was cheaper to buy American jets.
Israel went through a very similar experience. During the mid-1980s, Israel developed its own advanced fighter jet, the Lavi (Hebrew for lion). The Lavi was a small, highly maneuverable, supersonic jet with advanced electronic capabilities. In 1987, it too was cancelled, after early models were at the flight testing stage. The reason? Cost. It was cheaper to buy jets from the US.
At the recent World Economic Forum at Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke of the need for middle powers, such as Canada, to become more autonomous and proactive in world affairs. Coincidentally, Canada is in the midst of having to decide which jet fighter would be best for its future defense needs: the American made F-35, the same plane that is the current mainstay of Israel’s air force, or the Gripen, a fighter jet produced in Sweden.
Sophisticated jet fighters are expensive to design and build, although Sweden, a country with a population and economy about the same size as that of Israel, has managed to do so. (For example, one F-35 fighter jet can cost well over $100 million.) A 2025 article by Udi Etsion in The Jerusalem Post suggests that to lessen the financial burden, Israel should seek a partner for the development of its own stealth fighter jet.
Why not Canada? After all, both Canada and Israel are seeking combat aircraft self-sufficiency. But Canada, once considered by some the best place for Jews, has experienced an exponential increase in antisemitism since October 7, 2023, along with an erosion in support for Israel.
In fact, after initially supporting the strike on Iran, Prime Minister Carney has backtracked and now expresses “regret” for the strike. That Carney recently traveled to China, the UAE, and Qatar to shore up trade relations, but omitted Israel — one of the best performing economies in the world — speaks volumes. When it comes to the Middle East, even a match made in heaven is not a sure thing.
Jacob Sivak, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.