NFT: Whoa - pro-Russian forces in Donetsk "registering" Jews?

The leaflet then described which documents Jews should provide: "ID and passport are required to register your Jewish religion, religious documents of family members, as well as documents establishing the rights to all real estate property that belongs to you, including vehicles or you can create a Facebook account."

how large the Jewish populations is in that area?

...

In comment 11625094 Rob in NYC said:

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at this point whose handiwork this is? What's pretty clear is that there are some very dangerous actors involved on both sides.

Rob - I think it's pretty clear with respect to this particular incident whose handiwork it is. However, I totally agree with you that there are dangerous actors involved on both sides.

at this point. It's guys with masks handing out leaflets. Disturbing, certainly. And I understand the sensitivity, of course. But that it's any bigger than that right now doesn't seem clear.

Those guys in masks arent working alone..

military conflict anymore. It's a question of when. Power hungry morally repugnant expansionist thugs with nukes... how long can the rest of the world stand idly by?

in this conflict

.

But guys in masks with leaflets often don't represent anyone other than themselves. I'm glad this is getting attention, but we'll see how much it deserves as this develops.

In comment 11625117 njm said:

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In comment 11625094 Rob in NYC said: Quote: at this point whose handiwork this is? What's pretty clear is that there are some very dangerous actors involved on both sides. Rob - I think it's pretty clear with respect to this particular incident whose handiwork it is. However, I totally agree with you that there are dangerous actors involved on both sides.

Is it? Part of Russia's position has been that the Ukrainian government was neo-facist (almost certainly true) and therefore a risk to the Jewish population of the Ukraine. What better way to discredit that position than to make pro-Russian supporters equally ugly (also almost certainly true)?

I don't know, honestly.

what is very obvious is that there is more than a good bit of anti-semitism on both sides of this conflict.

It starts with a leaflet, then an arrest of a dissident to the leaflet, an arrest of sympathizers to the dissident in the name of civil peace.......ending with fake 'group showers'.

This is why it is such an important subject and should not be sugar coated and white washed. You have to learn from it or else you repeat the same mistakes.

of an information operations campaign. It's quite possible this information is being generated by someone (perhaps even another government) to create an effect.

Don't have much more than "wow" at the moment.

In comment 11625154 rebel yell said:

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of an information operations campaign. It's quite possible this information is being generated by someone (perhaps even another government) to create an effect.

Could be. Unite and refocus. When in doubt, fuck with the Jews. The perennial fall guys.

and whether they are just trying to provoke a reaction from one side or the other. From the New Republic:

________

Today, the Western press caught up with the Ukrainian rumor mill: apparently, the People's Republic of Donetsk had ordered all Jews over the age of 16 to pay a fee of $50 U.S. and register with the new "authorities," or face loss of citizenship or expulsion. This was laid out in officious-looking fliers pasted on the local synagogue. One local snapped a photo of the fliers and sent it to a friend in Israel, who then took it to the Israeli press and, voila, an international scandal: American Twitter is abuzz with it, Drudge is hawking it, and, today in Geneva, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry slammed the fliers as "grotesque."

The Donetsk Jewish community dismissed this as "a provocation," which it clearly is. "It's an obvious provocation designed to get this exact response, going all the way up to Kerry," says Fyodr Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs. "I have no doubt that there is a sizeable community of anti-Semites on both sides of the barricades, but for one of them to do something this stupid—this is done to compromise the pro-Russian groups in the east."

Link - ( New Window )

I had a flashback to everything I've read, heard & seen and it makes me sick to my stomach

In comment 11625165 Del Shofner said:

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and whether they are just trying to provoke a reaction from one side or the other. From the New Republic: ________ Today, the Western press caught up with the Ukrainian rumor mill: apparently, the People's Republic of Donetsk had ordered all Jews over the age of 16 to pay a fee of $50 U.S. and register with the new "authorities," or face loss of citizenship or expulsion. This was laid out in officious-looking fliers pasted on the local synagogue. One local snapped a photo of the fliers and sent it to a friend in Israel, who then took it to the Israeli press and, voila, an international scandal: American Twitter is abuzz with it, Drudge is hawking it, and, today in Geneva, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry slammed the fliers as "grotesque." The Donetsk Jewish community dismissed this as "a provocation," which it clearly is. "It's an obvious provocation designed to get this exact response, going all the way up to Kerry," says Fyodr Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs. "I have no doubt that there is a sizeable community of anti-Semites on both sides of the barricades, but for one of them to do something this stupid—this is done to compromise the pro-Russian groups in the east." Link - ( New Window )

Exactly why it's difficult to take any of what's happening there at face value right now.

You can at least rule out the probability of the Ukrainian government coordinating this but it still wouldn't answer the question of whether these guys were on their own or were taking direction.

Put this out to see how people react (maybe someone tips their hand) and try to squeeze some advantage or bargaining point out of those reactions.
This creates the potential for chaos and chaos is Putin's primary justification for invading.

The $50 helps cover the cost of the gold star badge and tattooing process.

There are some topics I really feel are above sarcastic humor. This is one. That is truly in poor taste.

.

In comment 11625089 Ten Ton Hammer said:

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that Russians don't like Jews

You've met Russian Jews because they're here and not in Russia!

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written that,they would be ripped to shreds

There's a reason you met them - you weren't in Russia.

take off the mask and show your face on television while you hand those flyers out. then we'll see what's up.

(pistol in face of das registrar)

In comment 11625287 Bleedin Blue said:

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In comment 11625089 Ten Ton Hammer said: Quote: that Russians don't like Jews You've met Russian Jews because they're here and not in Russia!

Lol. I guess what I meant was that that's not one of the things that ever came up in conversation. I worked with an older Russian guy when I was a watch repair tech. Funny guy, and a talker. Of all the topics, that just never came up. He definitely didn't care for muslims though. That was quite clear.

nice post.

has a heavy Russian and Ukrainian population, mostly Jewish and I remember having a conversation with a few family friends about how they grew up. One of the things that they said, when there were in school in the Ukraine, they used to ask the Students to fill out these identification cards for their nationality (I guess somewhat similar to filling out your race here in the US). On those forms "Jewish" is listed as one of the nationalities. When my friend was in school there, they had the students say out loud that they were Russian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, etc. His teacher came up to him and asked him not to speak because he knew he was Jewish and he didn't want him beaten up after (or during) school. This was 15-20 years ago. Not surprised to hear this even now.

movement to get Jews out of the then Soviet Union during the Refusenik period. It wasn't until Gorbachev came to power that it became much easier for Jews to get visas, but some had to remain in Russia. Before that, well we all know about the Ukranian Einsatzgruppen and Russians sending Jews to work camps in Siberia. Even before the pogroms, there was the medieval notion of "Christ-Killers" and I believe that Jews were blamed for assassinating one of the czars (Alexander II or III, I believe).

Fact is, like many places, Jews never were treated well in foreign countries. Russia has a long history of anti-Semitism with pogroms, gulags and a bunch of discriminatory laws. Even Bolshevism, which was embraced was construed as a Jewish ideology and was called Jewish Bolshevism and pogroms continued despite the condemnation by Lenin.



Side-note, I believe Natan Sharansky was from Donestk

The lesson is - as always - the Russians are cockbags.

Hopefully it's just political BS by either the Russians or Ukrainians to make the other one look bad. But it can't be ignored.

hold-overs from the former, very recent, pro-russian regime, then you probably have a few nazis within the anti-russian side, along side modern moderates of the internet generation vs the russians, so its very complex...a fucking mess.

but- RB nailed it.

I've met quite a few Ukrainian Jews at my temple and at work. The overwhelming sentiment among them is that they are glad to be here rather than there. From what I gather the sentiment among Jews over there , is that they are trying to stay out of the crossfire and do not particularly like either side.

As bad as Putin is, the Ukrainian government is not any better. This is a failed bankrupt state with a level of corruption that's extreme, even by ex-Soviet state standards. There was plenty of anti-semitism in Ukraine before this incident that was probably only tempered by Ukraine's desire to make nice with the west .

In comment 11625258 shepherdsam said:

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The $50 helps cover the cost of the gold star badge and tattooing process.

You can be a bit of a cunt at times, can't you?

There is a lot of deception going on. I'll leave it at that.

This guy Putin is arming these ' Pro-russian Ukranians' and letting them run rampant to kick up dirt so he can invade to "settle down the region" I hope that isn't true. Register if your Jewish? In 2014? I guess history does repeat itself

during Pograms - which were Jewish purges in the early 1900's before WWI

In comment 11625293 RB^2 said:

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There's a reason you met them - you weren't in Russia.

So the reason some people living outside
of Russia having no problem with the Russian government/society is precisely because they are living outside of Russia (and thus not knowing the ugly persecutions inside that nation).

But, if somehow some people living inside of Russia say they have no problem with the Russian society government/society, well, then, that is precisely because they are living inside of Russia (and thus cannot possibly speak freely for themselves; they are yearning for their liberation day).

Is that how the argument goes? I like that. It covers both sides, and cannot lose.

In comment 11625249 RB^2 said:

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You can at least rule out the probability of the Ukrainian government coordinating this but it still wouldn't answer the question of whether these guys were on their own or were taking direction.

You mean, in a war -- this is what it is over there now, a war -- sides are reliably discerned by what they speak? Is there an inherent and insurmountable limitation on human race to learn to speak more than one language in a life time?

http://www.haaretz.com/mobile/.premium-1.586174?v=EF0D3C50561D7DD48BD998A357ACC3E6

A survivor that I met later, now in Australia, constantly called the Ukrainian collaborators "butchers"... One afternoon he told me: "Strutnicki was a famous butcher. He killed many people. And there was another butcher, Matwiecki, that boasted that he personally killed 400 Jews himself. There was a family called Maniouk - a Ukrainian family, that spoke perfect Yiddish, and two of the brothers assaulted the Jews during the holocaust and they too killed many..." "The Germans were bad, my grandfather would say, when he described... what happened to the Jews of Bolechov during World War II. The Poles were worse. But the Ukrainians were the worst of all."
—Daniel Mendelsohn, The Lost, pp 128, 166

top to bottom is an epic foreign policy disaster. when the army we're supposedly backing sends in an operation and they have their armor STOLEN from them by "locals"... whoa boy.

better speed up that election. lol

aware that the meek passive Jews can now make the Ukraine the "Nation formerly Known as the Ukraine"?
Ukraine is weak. - ( New Window )

I'm still inclined to believe stuff like this is the work of fringe groups - loudest and most heinous - to muddy the situation and feint.