Jewish Star on Russian Gay Bashing Victim

Image by getty images

Contributing Columnist Jay Michaelson December 3, 2013

The latest video from the Russian Neo-Nazi group “Occupy Pedophilia” has hit the Russian social media site, VK.com.

Image by getty images

The video follows the same format of the gay-bashing torture videos that the group is (in-)famous for: a bully taunts, assaults and humiliates a gay man lured by a fake personal ad. Only this time, the victim is Alexander Bohun, a recent contestant on the Ukrainian version of “X Factor.”

What’s also notable is that, in addition to a rainbow flag painted onto Bohun’s head, the young man’s tormentors drew Jewish stars on his body. It is not known whether Bohun is actually Jewish — though this hasn’t mattered to Russia’s militias and thugs, who have targeted people for appearing Jewish just as it has targeted people for appearing gay. What does matter is that it shows that Jews need not be Dietrich Bonhoeffer (“First they came for the Communists…”) to stand up and take notice of the daily torture of LGBT people in Russia. To “Occupy Pedophilia,” gays are foreigners are pedophiles are Jews. There is no distinction in their feeble minds, and there should be no distinction in ours either.

The chief rabbi of Russia, Berel Lazar, has so far remained silent on this anti-Semitic aspect of the anti-gay violence sweeping Russia. Will he speak up now? Probably — he’s a staunch Putin ally. But he is also a prominent Chabad-Lubavitch leader. Will Chabad’s American leadership demand an end to this anti-Semitism? Or does the intermingling of Judaism and homosexuality somehow erase the anti-Semitism of these thugs?

How many more people have to be tortured with Jewish stars painted on their chests before the American Jewish community rises up in outrage, and demands that the Chabad organization take a stand in Russia?

Rabbi Jay Michaelson is a contributing columnist for the Forward and for Rolling Stone. He is the author of 10 books, and won the 2023 New York Society for Professional Journalists award for opinion writing.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward. Discover more perspectives in Opinion. To contact Opinion authors, email [email protected].

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