The Ukraine-Israel Relationship

Origins of Zionism, Ihor Kolomoyski, & Historic Ethnic Cleansing

After the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the beginning of the genocide in Palestine in October 2023, Western mainstream outlets and politicians began to run op-eds arguing that the West needed to support both Israel and Ukraine as a crucial moral duty. Some continue to use the same rhetoric, drawing a comparison between the two countries’ ideologies as they are said to be based on “shared democratic” or “Western values.” While the framing of this argument is obviously flawed, Israel and Ukraine do in fact share important ideological connections and a shared history. Ukraine can be considered as the birthplace of Zionism.

As I’ve written previously, we often assume we are living in a time of post-history, where the political and philosophical movements of the past no longer affect us. However, the 2020s may serve as evidence that our countries’ historic ideologies and tensions did not simply vanish with the conclusion of the first Cold War, and instead evolved into similar dark philosophies that impact violence and destruction in both Palestine and the Ukraine today.

The first general assembly of the Odessa Committee, 1890 (Source: Wikipedia)

Early Zionist Roots

During the 1880s, what is now Ukraine was considered a part of the Russian Empire. At the time, Russia was divided into different territorial designations, and the land that is now Ukraine was mostly within a designation called the “Pale of Settlement.” The Pale was where many Ukrainian and Russian Jews resided, as there were less legal restrictions upon them at the time than there were in other areas of the Russian empire. Around the turn of the 20th century however Russia began to lift restrictions on Jews, and as new opportunities opened up, many Jews were attracted to Odessa as an intellectual and cultural centre. Odessa thus became a central hub for proto-Zionist movements.

In response to pogroms taking place in the Russian Empire, a movement called Hibbat Zion, or the Lovers of Zion, began to spread amongst Jewish communities in Eastern and Central Europe. Two figures who are often credited with the popularization of the movement were two Jewish Ukrainians named Leon Pinsker and Moshe Leib Lilienblum, who were based out of Odessa. Pinsker was the chairman of the first conference between the Hovevei Zion organizations; he interestingly advocated against Palestine as the only destination for a Jewish commonwealth, suggesting a “physical center” in Argentina instead. Similar to other Zionist projects in Israel, the Lovers of Zion movement sought financial support for the movement from Baron Edmond Rothschild, and Rothschild was reportedly the “key to [their] success.” He purchased land and businesses like the Carmel Wine Company to help facilitate Zionist settlements.

Many prominent proto-Zionists were thus Ukrainian. Ber Borochov, a Ukrainian Marxist Zionist, believed that Arab and Jewish working classes had a common proletarian interest and would collaborate once Jews had immigrated to Palestine. However, while he expressed the belief that it was an “odious crime” to oppress and expel the indigenous Arab population from Palestine, he nevertheless also demonstrated a belief that native Palestinians were inferior, and would need to “assimilate economically and culturally” to the Jews who would bring “higher standards of civilization” to the region. His synthesis of Marxism and Zionism eventually became the founding ideology for Israel’s Labor party, while Ze’ev Jabotinsky helped develop the ideology of the Likud party, which is Netanyahu’s party today. Jabotinsky also established the Beitar youth movement, as well as the Irgun.

Many Ukrainians thus molded early Israeli literature, political structures, and Zionist thought. Asher Ginsberg, also known as Ahad Ha’am, was born and lived most of his life in Ukraine, and is considered the founder of “cultural Zionism.” He led a secret society for elite intellectuals called Bnai Moshe in 1889, which sought to cultivate the Hebrew language and encourage a Jewish cultural renaissance prior to bringing Jews to the Land of Israel. Under his leadership, Odessa remained the centre of Zionism until Theodor Herzel convened the First Zionist Congress in 1897. Other prominent Ukrainian Zionists included Golda Meir and Hayim Nahman Biyalik, and the legacies of these thinkers continue to impact Zionist thought to this day.

Photo by Marek Studzinski on Unsplash

Contemporary Connections Between Ukraine and Israel

Like many other countries in the Western empire, Israel and the Ukraine are historic allies, which is said to be based on “Western democratic values.” Unfortunately, “Western democratic values” does not have the positive connotation we once assumed it had. Whether Israel and Ukraine’s relationship can be characterized by their mutual history of Zionism or whether Zionism and Ukrainian nationalism simply represent compatible fascist ideologies, these ideologies are both marred by violence and allegations of corruption.

Since the early years of the proxy war, Western media outlets have depicted Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodomyr Zelensky as a symbol of Ukrainian defiance, a Churchillian figure and David to a larger Goliath. In reality, Zelensky is a more polarizing figure. While he ran on a platform of anti-corruption, he faces accusations of corruption himself, particularly regarding his connection to Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoyski. In January 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a money laundering accusation against Kolomoyski’s former bank, PrivatBank, which is the largest bank in the Ukraine. According to the report, some of this stolen money was from IMF loans granted to the Ukrainian government after the 2014 Maidan coup, and Kolomoyski also bankrolled neo-Nazi paramilitary groups like the Azov Regiment. Due to this scandal as well as the Pandora Papers allegations regarding international offshore companies, 78% of respondents in a poll by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, the Razymkov Centre, and Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in Ukraine agreed with the statement that Zelensky is directly responsible for corruption within his state administration.

Kolomoyski also owned the media group which aired the comedy series Servant of the People, a series that starred Zelensky, a former comedian. Kolomoyski’s alleged financial support of Zelensky at the time is pointed to by critics as evidence that Zelensky is in the pocket of Kolomoyski and other Ukrainian oligarchs.

Kolomoyski is also an Israeli, and has been living in Israel in self-imposed exile since the scandal. Since the corruption allegations, Zelensky has attempted to distance himself from his alleged financial sponsor, however rumours of close ties remain. In 2019 there were reports that Zelensky visited Kolomoyski in Israel multiple times before he was elected, including for Kolomoyski’s birthday, and Zelensky’s appointment of Kolomoisky’s lawyer Andriy Bohdan as head of the Presidential Administration in 2019 added to concerns that Zelensky is controlled, with his major backer being based out of Israel.

Zelensky has also been quoted as saying that he saw the future of Ukraine as a “big Israel.” This apparently would incorporate a model that involves mandatory conscription for Ukrainians (it should be noted that Ukrainians have already been forcibly conscripted for years.) This model also suggests that Ukraine should be practicing “defense” in the same way that Israel is practicing “defense,” which is not encouraging, for obvious reasons.

Further evidence that Zionism and Ukrainian nationalism are compatible ideologies can be seen of course in their Nazism. In 2022, Illia Samoilenko, a Ukrainian from the Nazi Azov Regiment, was welcomed into Israel, where he expressed his support for Israel’s genocide. According to the Times of Israel, he saw “Israel and Ukraine on the same side, the civilized battling the uncivilized in a struggle for the future of humanity.” Notably, though Zionist groups like the ADL previously condemned the Azov battalion in 2019, after Russia’s invasion, they minimized Ukraine’s Nazism and dismissed discussions of it as Russian propaganda. There is also evidence that Ukrainians are relocating and recruiting to the IDF to help the Zionists commit their genocide.

Other Westerners from countries like Germany and Britain are also guilty of this practice, however, IDF soldiers are also fighting in Ukraine. What makes Ukraine unique in their relationship to Israel is also not only their historic roots of Zionism, but the similarities in practices between Ukrainian nationalists and Zionists. Neither is limited to incidents that happened in the 2020s. Around the time Zionists were ethnically cleansing Palestine during the Nakba, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army was committing the Volhynian Massacre in Poland. Similar to the Zionists’ cruelty towards Palestinian children, Volhynian children were not spared. This monument in Poland, depicting a child skewered on a tryzub, was designed to represent this violence against children, with estimates suggesting that up to 30-40% of victims were under 18.

Many people are awakening to the genocide in Gaza, but continue to push for an extension to the proxy war in Ukraine. Hopefully as the world awakens to their connection, more people may help push for a peaceful conclusion to the war in Ukraine as well.