A prominent Russian Jewish organization expressed concern over anti-Semitism in Ukraine. “There is concern in the Russian Jewish community over what is beginning to manifest itself in times of social and political instability as in recent attacks on Jews and Jewish targets in Ukraine,” Andrei Glotser, spokesperson of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia,…
He may lack the cachet and recognition of the Anti-Defamation League’s Abraham Foxman, but in the federal government’s sprawling bureaucracy, Ira Forman is the only official tasked with identifying and addressing anti-Semitism worldwide on behalf of the United States. Now, suddenly, with Ukraine in crisis, Forman’s usually low-profile brief is front and center, as he…
(JTA) — When even Russian policemen had to pass security checks to enter the Sochi Winter Olympics, Rabbi Berel Lazar was waved in without ever showing his ID. Lazar, a Chabad-affiliated chief rabbi of Russia, was invited to the opening ceremony of the games last month by President Vladimir Putin’s office. But since the event…
The Kremlin has issued more condemnations of anti-Semitism in the past week than in the preceding decade. The danger of anti-Semitism was on the lips of the Russian Ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and President Vladimir Putin himself. Not Russian anti-Semitism, of course. It was Ukrainian “Neo-Nazism, fascism and…
Call it Sochifreude. For the past two years, human rights activists have decried the conditions of the Sochi Olympic games, which wrap up this week, often to deaf ears. They’ve reported accounts of migrant workers being abused, environmental laws being trashed, billions of dollars being embezzled, and, of course, the ban on gay “propaganda” which…
A local politician from the party of Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Jews of destroying Russia. The accusation by Oleg Bolychev, a legislator from the ruling United Russia party at the regional parliament in Kaliningrad, was made in the parliament on Feb. 6, according to the Regnum news agency, which reported on it on…
An activist wearing a mask of Russian President Vladimir Putin joins protesters on the opening day of the Sochi Winter Olympic Games. / Getty Images As the winter Olympics open today, there has been a crescendo of condemnation in the West of Russia’s many human rights violations. Sadly, in spite of all the attention Vladimir…
Former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky on Sunday promised not to seek power in Russia but said he would fight for the freedom of people he considered political prisoners, challenging Vladimir Putin two days after a presidential pardon freed him from jail. Khodorkovsky told reporters in Berlin that “the struggle for power is not for me”,…
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