NCSEJ WEEKLY TOP 10 Washington, D.C. May 25, 2018

Secretary of State promises appointment of special envoy to monitor anti-Semitism Jewish News Syndicate, May 24, 2018 https://www.jns.org/secretary-of-state-promises-appointment-of-special-envoy-to-monitor-anti-semitism/

At a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo promised that he would work towards an appointment of a Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism.

During testimony in front of the House committee, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.H.), a senior member of the committee, had asked the Pompeo to act on the appointment of the vacant Special Envoy position. “And in 2004, I authored the Anti-Semitism Special Envoy. That, too, has not been filled,” Smith said to Pompeo of the vacancy. “And I know that you care deeply about combating the scourge of anti-Semitism, which is rising all over the globe. Please move on that as well.”

“You have my word,” Pompeo told Smith in response.

The Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism heads the State Department office responsible for leading U.S. efforts to counter anti-Semitism around the globe.

The exchange in Congress came after a letter, spearheaded by the leaders of the Bipartisan Taskforce for Combating Anti-Semitism—Reps. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), Ileana Ros- Lehtinen (R-Fl.), Ted Deutch (D-Fl.), Marc Veasey (D-Texas) and Kay Granger (R-Texas)—was sent to Pompeo and signed by 120 members of Congress.

“Without a Special Envoy, the United States lacks the focus of a person solely dedicated to spearheading our important diplomatic efforts in the fight against anti-Semitism,” the letter stated. “Appointing this important position will make clear to foreign governments that combating anti-Semitism remains an American priority and that the U.S. maintains its traditional leadership in the fight.”

The American Jewish Committee applauded the efforts by Congress to fill an anti-Semitism envoy position.

“Congress plays a vital role in U.S. efforts to combat global anti-Semitism, and one of its most effective instruments has been the creation, maintenance and ongoing interaction with the Office of the Special Envoy,” said Jason Isaacson, AJC associate executive director for policy. “Its very existence sends a powerful signal to world leaders and to vulnerable Jewish communities of America’s commitment to confronting this menace.”

Pompeo Calls For Russian Troop Pullout From Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, May 21, 2018 https://www.rferl.org/a/pompeo-calls-for-russian-troop-pullout-from-georgia/29240854.html

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called for to withdraw its troops from breakaway regions in Georgia while also pledging deeper security and economic support for .

"The United States unequivocally condemns Russia’s occupation on Georgian soil," Pompeo said in opening remarks to the annual U.S.-Georgian Strategic Partnership in Washington on May 21. "Russia's forcible invasion of Georgia is a clear violation of international peace and security."

Russia has troops stationed in Georgia's Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions that remained after a 2008 war in South Ossetia between Russian and Georgian troops.

Moscow and a few other nations have recognized the two separatist regions as independent countries.

Pompeo also repeated U.S. policy that Washington supports Georgia's eventual membership in NATO.

Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili said after a meeting with Pompeo that U.S. support for a peaceful resolution to Russian troops in Georgia "is of highest importance to our country and regional stability."

Kvirikashvili added that Georgia's membership in the military alliance would be a "clear added value for Euro- Atlantic security."

NATO promised Georgia eventual membership in 2008.

Kvirikashvili said U.S. involvement in infrastructure projects in Georgia, like the Anaklia deep-sea port on the Black Sea coast, would help attract economic interest to the area.

Despite sanctions, some Americans still want to do business in Russia By Amie-Ferris Rotman Washington Post, May 25, 2018 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/despite-sanctions-some-americans-still-want-to-do-business-in- russia/2018/05/25/7be0e2f0-5f86-11e8-b656-236c6214ef01_story.html?utm_term=.8c9efb6c326a

Russian poetry was quoted. Jokes were made about flying to Mars. One American chief executive even lauded his company’s relationship with Russia for outlasting his own marriage.

Ties between Russia and the West may be at their worst since the days of the Cold War, but that did little to stop a slew of American business leaders from speaking at a panel at the country’s annual lavish investment summit on Friday.

They were part of the largest international attendance in four years, when Russia was hit with U.S. and European Union sanctions for annexing Crimea from Ukraine. Since then, ’s ties with Washington have only further deteriorated over allegations of election interference.

French President Emmanuel Macron jetted in to headline the event alongside his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. On Friday, the two spoke at length to Russia’s business and political elite, just moments after the Netherlands and Australia said they were holding Russia legally responsible for the downing of flight MH17, which was shot down over Ukraine four years ago, killing all 298 people on board. But the forum hummed along with Macron saying France hoped to become Russia’s largest investor.

Encouraged to attend by Washington’s ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman, himself a businessman, the Americans’ optimism in continuing business with Russia underscored the parallel reality in which those trying to straddle the fraught U.S.-Russian relationship often find themselves.

“Mutual isolation will only drive us further apart,” Huntsman said in a video address on the embassy’s feed. “That is why I’m going.”

The panel was joined by sanctioned , whom special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has taken a recent interest in. Huntsman had originally been scheduled to attend the panel, and it was not immediately clear why he pulled out. “He is here in spirit,” Russian foods tycoon David Yakobashvili told the panel.

President Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen received payments of a reported half a million dollars after the 2016 election from a company linked to Vekselberg, and the motives for this are under investigation. One of Russia’s richest men, Vekselberg is under intense media scrutiny and spent much of the first two days of the St. Petersburg forum dodging reporters’ questions.

On the panel, Vekselberg, who has made his fortune from oil and metals, was wearing one of his many hats as president of Skolkovo, ostensibly Russia’s answer to Silicon Valley. Vekselberg appeared wistful as he described current relations between Moscow and Washington. “The number of optimists has declined, though some remain in this room,” said the tycoon, whose two children both attended universities in the United States. He quoted a famous song by Soviet writer Bulat Okudzhava, about the futility of military service, and soldiers’ feelings of disappointment at not being able to truly change the world.

Vekselberg was not the only one to wax lyrical. Markwart von Pentz, who heads agriculture and turf equipment at the American John Deere Company, cited the 19th century Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev, saying “Russia cannot be understood with the mind alone,” before saying the world’s largest country has the potential to feed a growing world.

The president of Boeing, Bertrand-Marc Allen, said Russia “is a place for long-term partnership,” noting that his company’s 25 years in Russia exceeded the time he has been married to his wife. The American aerospace company was recently on the receiving end of the Kremlin’s ire when Russia said it would cancel titanium exports to Boeing as part of counter-sanctions. That proposed ban was later rolled back by Russia.

Sitting near the front was Sergey Kislyak, until recently Russia’s long-serving ambassador to Washington and once at the center of alleged collusion by Russia in Trump’s campaign. The veteran Russian diplomat issued the most measured response to the surge of enthusiasm in the room. “I consider the people who gather here as sort of pioneers in a new environment in bettering American-Russian relations,” he told reporters on the panel’s sidelines. “There are still a few.”

Know your oligarch: A guide to the Jewish machers in the Russia probe By Ron Kampeas Jewish Telegraphic Agency, May 22, 2018 https://www.jta.org/2018/05/22/news-opinion/know-oligarch-guide-jewish-machers-russia-probe

The special prosecutor’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election offers an unsettling journey for anyone steeped in Russian Jewry, and the transition from the repression of the former to the relative freedoms of the Russian Federation.

Of 10 billionaires with Kremlin ties who funneled political contributions to and a number of top Republican leaders, at least five are Jewish. (The Dallas Morning News has a handy set of interactive charts.)

There’s , the dual British-American citizen who dumped huge amounts of cash on Republican candidates in the last election cycle, much of it funneled through his myriad investment firms. (The same Len Blavatnik funds scholarships for IDF veterans and who is friends with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.) Alexander Shustorovich is the president of IMG Artists, a titan among impresarios, who gave Trumps’ inauguration committee a cool $1 million. He arrived in 1977 with his penniless family in New York at age 11, fleeing Soviet persecution of .

The list goes on — we explore some of the names below. But first: What was going on in the Soviet Union as it headed towards collapse in the late 1980s that led to the proliferation of Jewish names among its powerful business leaders?

“Not all oligarchs are Jewish, of course, not the majority, but there is a significant number,” said Mark Levin, the CEO of the National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry, who joined its predecessor, the National Council on Soviet Jewry, in 1980 as a staffer. “They were in the right place at the right time.”

Here are some of the factors that put them in the “right place at the right time.”

You can go home again

Many Soviet Jews left the country because bigotry and punitive Soviet policies kept them, among other indignities, from getting jobs in their preferred professions. But with the collapse of the USSR, and with opportunities opening up at home, a number of these younger emigrants drew on the entrepreneurial strain, training and connections they found in their new countries, be it the United States, Britain and .

In the late 1980s, when they heard that the policy of glasnost was loosening up markets, a number of them traveled back to their homeland seeking opportunity, armed with savvy and with moneyed connections in their new countries. They were in place after 1991 when Russia and its former republics rapidly privatized everything from mines to media.

“I know people who left the Soviet Union, it imploded, they went back, they had friends and acquaintances who were telling them there were great opportunities,” Levin said. “There were business people who were partnering with people in Russia and other countries because they had the connections to complete business deals.”

Networks

The Jews who stayed behind kept in touch with friends and family who were succeeding overseas and were able to tap them for investment opportunities.

“Jews in the ex-USSR had a ready-made network of trusted contacts in the U.S. and Israel who they could go into business with,” said Oliver Bullough, a British author and journalist whose expertise is Russian history and politics. “It was harder for who had no contacts abroad to achieve this. This also, in my opinion, explains why ex-KGB people did well since they had a network of former spies in other countries.”

Glasnost opened doors

Glasnost, or openness, instituted by Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, included opening up plum government jobs to minorities that had previously been marginalized. That accelerated Jewish entry into higher ranks of the bureaucracy just when it was opportune to be in a position to know what sector was about to be privatized, and which government-owned business was about to be broken up.

It helped that unlike communist regimes in eastern Europe, Levin said, in Russia and the former Soviet republics, the elites remained in place — only the ideology of communism was jettisoned.

“Russia and most successor states of the Soviet Union went through a much different transformation than the former communist Europe nations,” he said. “Most of the governing elite didn’t change.”

Moreover, the very professions to which Jews were restricted under the old Soviet system were the ones that proved useful in the new economy. Jews, Levin said, were likelier to be entrepreneurs.

“There were Jews who were helping to make the transition from a command economy to a market economy,” he said.

Author Michael Wolff, profiling tech entrepreneur Yuri Milner in 20111, wrote, “The Jews in Soviet Russia, often kept from taking official career paths, came to thrive in the gray and black markets. Hence, they were among the only capitalists in Russia when capitalism emerged.”

Bullough said the scientific disciplines that accepted Jews under the old system were suddenly in demand under the new.

“Jews were often excluded from the kind of universities that produced diplomats, and therefore pushed more towards pure sciences, which meant there was a disproportionate number of Jewish mathematicians who were able to engage with the new banking industry,” he said.

But who really knows.

Most of all, said Levin, it was chaos. Massive sectors of the economy were up for grabs. At times, there seemed to be no controlling authority. When the dust settled, Russia had entered the age of . “In the beginning, it was like Chicago in the 1920s,” he said. Connie Bruck, profiling Blavatnik in The New Yorker in 2014, quoted a new Russian phrase: “Never ask about the first million.”

Here are some of the businessmen with Soviet Jewish roots who have been named in stories about the Trump-Russia investigation.

Leonard Blavatnik, 60

Oligarch factor: U.S.-British citizen. Forbes lists him as the 48th richest man in the world. , which he founded in 1986 while he was at Harvard Business school, exploded in its earlier years through investments in oil in the collapsing Soviet Union. It has since expanded into massive media holdings. (Blavatnik rejects the term “oligarch,” believing it to be pejorative. “Mr. Blavatnik has no involvement in Russian politics or in the Russian government, and, in fact, has never been a Russian citizen,” a spokesman told JTA in an email. The spokesman also pointed out that Blavatnik does not appear on U.S. Treasury list of designated oligarchs. (His longtime partner, Viktor Vekselberg, for example, does feature prominently on the list.)

Trump factor: Gave more than $6 million in the 2016 election cycle, virtually all to Republicans, after a pattern of relatively modest donations to both political parties. Longstanding business ties to Viktor Vekselberg, the oligarch allegedly linked to secret payments to Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. Blavatnik donated $12,700 last year to the Republican party, which used part of it for a legal fund that has helped to pay Trump’s lawyers in the Russia inquiry. (The spokesman for Blavatnik said that the businessman did not know the money was targeted for the legal fund.)

Jewish ties: He has served on the board of University, the Center for Jewish History and the 92nd Street Y. His family foundation funds a Colel Chabad-run food bank and warehouse in Kiryat Malachi in Israel, which sends monthly shipments of food to 5,000 poor families in 25 Israeli cities. He is friends with Netanyahu, and has been questioned by police in connection with the investigation into gifts the prime minister allegedly has received from wealthy benefactors. He funds scholarships for Israeli army soldiers.

Andrew Intrater, 55

Oligarch factor: A cousin to Vekselberg, who has a Jewish father but does not identify as Jewish. Intrater, a U.S. citizen, is the CEO of Columbus Nova, the investment company with close ties to Vekselberg’s Renova. An SEC filing from 2007 lists Intrater as the chairman of the board of CableCom, a Moscow-area cable TV provider.

Trump factor: Columbus Nova funneled payments from Renova to Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer. Intrater also donated $250,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee.

Jewish ties: Intrater, the child of a Holocaust survivor, has given more than $500,000 to the University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation and has donated to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation Committee. Intrater’s brother, Frederick, the design manager for Columbus Nova, bought up a batch of domain names with associations with the “alt-right” in the summer of 2016, when support for then-candidate Trump on the far right was rising and Get Out the Vote drives were intensifying. Frederick Intrater said he made the purchases without Andrew’s knowledge, and later regretted it, allowing the URL names to wither. “To conclude that I support white supremacy or anti-Semitism is unreasonable given what I’ve described above and also taking into consideration that I am a Jew and son of a Holocaust survivor,” Frederick Intrater said.

Alexander Shustorovich, 52

Oligarch factor: Shustorovich, a U.S. citizen, traveled to Moscow in 1989, a year after graduating from Harvard, and immediately became a player in media there, starting scientific publications. He unsuccessfully sought to get his company, Pleiades Group, into the $12 billion deal that sold Soviet nuclear fuel to the United States. He is now CEO of IMG Artists, a company that manages talent in classical music and dance.

Trump factor: Shustorovich gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee. Notably, his attempt to give the George W. Bush campaign $250,000 in 2000 was rejected in part because of his ties at the time to Russia’s government.

Jewish ties: Shustorovich arrived in New York at 11 in 1977 with his family, who did not have enough money to buy food. His father, Evgeny, pushed out of work in Russia as a chemist because of his hopes of emigrating, joined Kodak in Rochester, N.Y. and soon rose to prominence in his field. For a period in 1986-1987, Evgeny Shustorovich was one of the faces of the Soviet Jewry movement as he became an ardent advocate for the right of his brother — also named Alexander — to emigrate from the former Soviet Union.

Simon Kukes, 72

Oligarch factor: Kukes, a U.S. citizen, left the Soviet Union in 1977, settling in the Houston area. A chemist, he was for a period an academic, and then worked in the Texas oil industry. He returned to Russia and became an executive in the post-Soviet oil industry there. In 2003, he became head of the oil company after another Jewish oligarch, , was jailed by Russian leader Vladimir Putin for tax evasion and theft — but mostly, most observers think, for funding opposition parties.

The Guardian in 2003 uncovered CIA documents linking Kukes to bribery, charges which he has denied. Prior to his year-long gig helming Yukos, Kukes was from 1998-2003 the president of TNK, another oil company, whose principal stakeholders were Blavatnik and Vekselberg. In 2012 when he headed the Russian arm of Hess, Forbes reported that Kukes’ former chauffeur, who had risen through the company ranks, was a Russian mafia boss. The man denied the charges, but Kukes pushed him out of the company. Last year, Kukes was a U.S.-based CEO of Nafta, a consulting firm for investors in Russia’s energy sector. Nafta’s website has since been scrubbed.

Trump factor: With no major history of GOP giving, Kukes suddenly funneled $285,000 into the Trump reelection effort — much of it after June 2016, when Russian interest in the possibility of a Trump presidency intensified.

Jewish ties: Kukes does not have apparent formal ties with the organized Jewish community, although he tells interviewers he left the former Soviet Union because he was Jewish. In 2015, he bought a 12.5 percent share in Leverate, an Israeli-founded company that develops brokerage software.

Yuri Milner, 56

Oligarch factor: Milner never fled the Soviet Union — his parents still live in Moscow. He was the first non- emigre from the Soviet Union to attend Wharton business school, and was for years involved in Russian banking before entering tech. He is well known as a Silicon Valley investor, owning one of the most luxurious houses in ritzy Los Altos Hills, valued in 2011 at $100 million. Last year, it was revealed through leaked documents that Russia’s government funded substantive stakes in Twitter and that were for a time held by his company, DST Global. In 2013, Milner joined Facebook’s , Google’s and ’s in establishing the multi-million dollar for scientists.

Trump factor: After last year’s revelations, Milner scoffed at the notion that Russia was plowing money into efforts to influence elections, noting that he never sought a seat on the board of the companies he invested in. Milner in 2015 invested $850,000 in Cadre, a real estate startup launched by , Trump’s son-in-law, and Kushner’s brother Josh. Milner has said that he met Jared Kushner only once. Kushner’s stake in Cadre was one of many that he initially failed to disclose when he became an adviser to his father-in-law.

Jewish ties: Milner attends a when he is in Moscow. Somewhere along the line, he appears to have acquired Israeli citizenship. Speaking with Forbes in 2017 after the magazine named him one of the 100 “greatest living business minds,” Milner said he was “humbled and honored” to be “the only Russian or Israeli citizen on the list.”

Respecting Migrants: A New Approach for Conflict Resolution in Eastern Europe By Maxim Samorukov Carnegie Moscow Center, May 23, 2018 https://carnegie.ru/commentary/76429

Times have changed in the way conflicts are viewed and resolved. It is almost impossible to imagine that any international mediator would propose that two warring countries undertake an exchange of populations, as they did in the 1920s or the 1940s. Even a democratic referendum on changing borders is not considered to be a humane way of resolving a conflict.

The individual and his rights, rather than vague conceptions of national community, now stand at the heart of conflict resolution efforts. The idea that people have a right to live and be integrated in the territory where they were born continues to have a disproportionate influence on negotiation processes.

Yet the reality of Eastern Europe is of a place where many borders have been altered and have become state frontiers quite arbitrarily. The notion that people always desire to live in the place where they were born is often illusory. The policy locks ethnic communities hostile to one another inside small depressed spaces and frequently runs against the real wishes of most of the inhabitants of these conflict zones. Quite often, these people would be more than ready to integrate into the normal life of another European state, far away from their adversaries. This reality should be a factor in conflict mediation and an instrument in the hands of the mediators.

Before wasting energy on determining the international status and legal regime of disputed territories such as Transdniestria and northern parts of Kosovo, we should think about who will live there in the long term. If there won’t be anyone to live there in just a generation or two because of mass emigration, perhaps that is for the best.

Recent demographic trends show that some regions of Eastern Europe are doomed to get more depressed, even without conflicts, simply because of their economic underdevelopment. It is even less reasonable to expect people to stop leaving areas where these problems are compounded by conflict.

According to UN data, the number of people who have emigrated from Moldova (including Transdniestria) came to 24 percent of the population as of 2017. They are not leaving because of the Transdniestria conflict. The proportion of those emigrating has grown steadily since the 1990s (from 14 percent in 2000 to 17 percent in 2005 and 20 percent in 2010), even though there has been no violence during this time. Moreover, the number of those who have emigrated from neighboring Romania is just as striking: 18 percent of the population as of 2017.

The mass exodus from eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region began long before conflict broke out there in 2014. Even based on flawed official statistics, the total population of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions had shrunk by 10 percent in just ten years (2003–2013). In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Dayton Accords that ended the war there did nothing to stop mass emigration. In just over two decades of peace, the proportion of emigrants in the population rose from 36 percent in 1995 to a mind-boggling 47 percent in 2017.

In this context, we should start thinking of emigration to wealthier countries as a solution and not a problem. It is a reliable and inexpensive win-win solution that has already been used de facto throughout Eastern Europe, successfully reducing tension in regional conflicts.

Of course, when the government in Zagreb handed out Croatian passports to Bosnian Croats during the breakup of Yugoslavia, it was pursuing its own domestic political interests rather than seeking to ease ethnic tensions in neighboring Bosnia. But as a result, Bosnian Croats have Croatian EU passports, and they now work to make a life for themselves in Dalmatia, Austria, or Germany. A conflict zone is both getting rid of potential young radicals and earning remittances from labor migrants that can somewhat alleviate the problems of the Bosnian economy.

In the same way, the Romanian government has given citizenship to Moldovans, and the Russian government has done the same in Transdniestria itself. Bucharest and Moscow were guided by thoughts of additional voters, international influence, geopolitics, and the like. Yet by handing out passports, the two countries reduced the intensity of the conflict in Transdniestria by removing hundreds of thousands of young, active, but unemployed men from the region.

In similar fashion, Poland had radically simplified the issuing of work permits to Ukrainians long before the Ukraine crisis. Warsaw used this to compensate for the drain of Polish workers to Western Europe following its entry into the EU. It was a selfish measure, but after 2014 it turned out to have great stabilizing potential. In 2014–2017, the number of Ukrainians who moved to Poland to work grew severalfold to 1.5 million. Their remittances are comparable to IMF loans. If Ukraine had several hundred thousand disgruntled citizens instead of several billion dollars in remittances, it would have been incomparably more difficult to keep the situation under control.

If it is easier for people from Donbas to integrate into life in Russia or Poland, then it is in the interests of the international community to support that instead of continuing to try to force them to make peace with Ukraine.

Naturally, this kind of stabilization through emigration has its shortcomings. Older generations and other socially disadvantaged groups are not able to take advantage of the opportunity to move. The exodus of working-age people inevitably depresses local economic activity, which is unlikely to be compensated just by remittances from those who left. Instead of the risks of new conflict, the disputed regions will face the threat of slow economic disintegration.

Host countries can encounter problems as well. The mass influx of foreign migrants may cause a backlash from the local population. These challenges are real, but their scale should not be overestimated. The population of the most troubled territories in Eastern Europe (Transdniestria, the Serbs in North Kosovo, and the ethnic minorities in Bosnia) is only several hundred thousand: a relatively modest number compared to the annual migrant flow to the EU or even to Russia. The scale in the contested Donetsk and Luhansk regions is a little bigger, with a population of 3.5 million, but over the past three years of the conflict more than 2 million people have already left.

Those who remain in the conflict zones certainly need outside support, but not much is necessary. The priority is to create mechanisms for targeted assistance to the most vulnerable social groups, for example, by providing supplements to pensioners the way Russia does in Transdniestria.

All of this should be much more effective and productive than allocating billions of dollars to restore infrastructure in Donbas, most of which will have no one to use it in twenty or thirty years.

International mediators and donors need to understand that population mobility in the main conflict zones of Eastern Europe is increasing so rapidly while the population is shrinking so swiftly that in a generation or two there will be no one living there, regardless of the results of conflict resolution. So, the priority should be to transition from helping the territories affected by the conflicts to helping the people affected by the conflicts— most of whom don’t need any special assistance. All they need is equal opportunities with the native populations of the countries to which they are moving.

The Paradoxes of Polish-Ukrainian Relations By Wojciech Kononczuk Kennan Institute Focus Ukraine Blog, May 23, 2018 http://www.kennan-focusukraine.org/the-paradoxes-of-polish-ukrainian-relations/

The narrative that Polish-Ukrainian relations are in crisis is too simplistic. An obvious problem lies in the two countries’ different perceptions of the tragic past and the politicization of history, but less recognized is that they are engaging in an unprecedented level of cooperation in other spheres. Poland’s support of Ukraine in matters of strategic importance is undeniable but goes largely unnoticed. Part of the problem is that confidence has been undermined and there is poor communication between the sides.

From media reports and various experts’ opinions about the current state of affairs between Poland and Ukraine, one could easily conclude that historical issues dominate all else. Traditional news media and websites in both countries are replete with stories pointing up deteriorating relations between Warsaw and Kyiv as a result of disputes over the interpretation of historical events shared by the two countries. If we limited bilateral relations just to the assessment of events from the World War II era, they would certainly seem to be at a critical juncture. But a broader perspective yields a different diagnosis.

History does matter, of course, and for both sides. But here Poland and Ukraine are not so unlike their neighbors, most of which have conflicting views on some historical events, and the different interpretations have to be dealt with sooner or later. One such difficult episode that has proved a sticking point in Polish- Ukrainian relations is the massacre of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia carried out in 1943–1944 by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which resulted in up to 100,000 Polish civilian casualties. This ethnic cleansing is widely recognized by Polish and most Western historians as genocide. The problem of how to characterize these events was raised in bilateral talks after 1991 at Warsaw’s initiative but in a rather subtle manner, as the Poles waited for certain processes in Ukraine to mature. However, subsequent Ukrainian governments have neither wanted to condemn the UPA nor even taken this issue seriously.

After the Law and Justice party won the 2015 parliamentary elections in Poland, Warsaw initiated a more assertive historical policy toward Ukraine. Warsaw’s new stance was also a reaction to the complete redefinition of Ukraine’s politics of memory after the Revolution of Dignity, a result partly of the Russian aggression and partly of the accelerated process of building Ukraine’s new state identity. The problem was compounded by Ukraine’s adoption of decommunization laws in April 2015, which introduced the possibility of punishing those who denied the heroic nature of Ukrainian independence fighters, including the UPA. The Verkhovna Rada approved this provision even though it anticipated a negative reaction from Warsaw. Furthermore, the Ukrainian deputies voted on the laws on the same day that Poland’s President Bronisław Komorowski delivered a speech in the Verkhovna Rada, in which he clearly signaled that Poland was interested in good relations with Ukraine. The adoption of the law on the same day was perceived by Warsaw as an intentional humiliation. In 2016 the Polish parliament passed a unanimous resolution to recognize the Volhynia massacres as a genocide of the Polish people. This decision was highly criticized in Ukraine, where the narrative promoted by the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance is that the Volhynia events were just a part of the Polish-Ukrainian war and that both sides committed similar crimes.

The media in both countries often present the problem of history as a “clash between Polish and Ukrainian truths.” This, however, is an oversimplification. In fact, there is no Polish or Ukrainian side in the assessment of what happened during World War II involving the Poles and the Ukrainians. The picture often presented by Ukrainian journalists and too many experts is far from an honest view; they often repeat the manipulated version of history commissioned by the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance. Paradoxically, before the Revolution of Dignity there was more pluralism in the Ukrainian discussion about what really happened in Polish-Ukrainian relations. To take just one example, in 2013 one of the most prominent Ukrainian historians, Yaroslav Hrytsak, called the Volhynia Massacre “a genocide against the Poles.” He is not the only Ukrainian historian to have used this term.

The dispute over history took a turn for the worse after April 2017, when Ukraine introduced a ban on Polish exhumation works in Volhynia and other Ukrainian regions. This incomprehensible step was officially explained as a response to the demolition of the illegally erected UPA monument in a tiny Polish village close to the Polish-Ukrainian border. The most recent blow to historical reconciliation was an amendment to the bill on the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, adopted by the parliament in January 2018, which introduced criminal responsibility for the denial of “the crimes of Ukrainian nationalists in the years 1925–1950.” It provoked a harsh and justified criticism in Kyiv and actually froze Polish-Ukrainian historical dialogue. However, the new bill has been highly criticized even by some influential members of the Polish ruling party, who have called it a “serious mistake.” The Polish president Andrzej Duda has asked the Constitutional Tribunal to review the bill for compliance with Poland’s fundamental rights laws.

Historical disputes provoke emotional responses on both sides but at the same time darken the wider context of Polish-Ukrainian relations. Although there has been a clear change in Polish historical policy, Warsaw’s strategic disposition toward Ukraine shows an essential continuity. The objectives of Poland’s foreign policy remain the same: to support Ukraine on the international stage, encourage its democratization and reform process, and back its European integration. Generally speaking, Ukraine was and remains the key issue in Poland’s Eastern policy. Here is some basic evidence to justify this opinion.

According to data from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, Poland was fourth among the providers of foreign military assistance to Ukraine in 2014–2017, after the United States, Canada, and NATO but ahead of the UK. Furthermore, in the last two years, cooperation in some spheres, including military and defense, has ramped up. A few dozen Polish military instructors now train Ukrainian soldiers, including the special forces units. In 2016 a common Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian Brigade (LITPOLUKRBRIG; 4,500 troops strong) achieved operational readiness. Both countries’ army units conduct joint maneuvers on a regular basis.

Poland remains one of the countries that strongly support Ukraine’s European aspirations and explain its significance to the world. The Polish role is important in regard to advocating for sanctions against Russia and opposing Nord Stream 2, which would seriously weaken Ukrainian interests. In a February interview with the German newspaper Die Welt, the Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki called the planned gas pipeline “harmful and unnecessary,” pointing out that it would seriously undermine Ukrainian security. Poland and Ukraine are currently working on increasing the capacity of the transborder gas pipeline, which would afford additional possibilities to deliver gas to Ukraine. And in December 2015 the National Bank of Poland agreed to establish the 1 billion euro currency swap deal aimed at stabilizing Ukraine’s financial system. Finally, economic relations are growing quickly, and currently Poland is second biggest export market for Ukrainian products, just slightly behind Russia.

The social dimension of bilateral relations is also strong. According to a 2017 Kantar public opinion poll, 87 percent of Poles view Ukraine as a European country—the highest level in the EU. Only 54 percent of German, 48 percent of French, and 43 percent of Dutch survey respondents agreed with this statement. Furthermore, Poland is at the top of the list of foreign countries Ukrainians like.

Poland is the main destination for Ukrainian migrants, about one million of whom currently work there. Geographic proximity and cultural and language similarities are the main reasons, but Poland also has the most liberal labor laws in the EU for Ukrainian workers. Many see it as a win-win situation: a thriving Polish economy needs migrant workers from Ukraine, and their remittances, estimated in 2017 at around $3.1 billion, are an important source of money for the Ukrainian economy. Furthermore, recent polling by the Kyiv-based KMIS shows that 36 percent of Ukrainian respondents who would like to work abroad choose Poland, ahead of the Czech Republic (12.5 per cent) and Germany (11 percent). Other polls indicate that 29 percent of Ukrainians currently living in Poland would like to remain there for the rest of their life, and 32 percent for a few years.

Last October Poland’s top diplomat, Witold Waszczykowski, published an article in the Rzeczpospolita daily with the telling title, “Warsaw Wants an Alliance with Kyiv.” There were just two sentences about history. The minister stated that “partnership with Ukraine remains a key task for Poland’s foreign policy” and that “Poland is guided by a firm belief that a European, politically and economically stable Ukraine is indispensable for our continent’s security.” He also stressed that “Warsaw views Kyiv as a partner and wants to share with it successes, benefits, but also responsibility. A genuine alliance can only be built on such equal partnership.” The main goal behind this piece was to strongly confirm that for Poland, the strategic dimension of relations with Ukraine is still in force. Unfortunately, Ukrainian decision-makers and pundits overlooked—or, worse, ignored—this program article. Just a month later the Kyiv-based Foreign Policy Council Ukrainian Prism conducted a poll among Ukrainian scholars dealing with international affairs. One of the questions elicited opinions on which countries were considered most hostile toward Ukraine. The result was surprising: Poland was in fifth place It seems that at least some Ukrainian experts have a problem assessing reality. The general fog surrounding the matter of Polish-Ukrainian relations from the Ukrainian perspective means it would be difficult to find a statement by any influential decision-maker that attempted to outline what Ukraine actually expects from Poland and where Warsaw stands in Ukrainian foreign policy.

Those believing there is a crisis in Poland-Ukraine relations would do well to compare recent developments in Ukrainian-Hungarian relations. After the Verkhovna Rada in September 2017 adopted the new Education Act, which dealt a blow to the school system for national minorities, Budapest threatened to block Ukraine’s bid for Euro-Atlantic integration. The new law also hits Polish minority schools in Ukraine, but Warsaw’s reaction was very different.

To sum up, disagreements over history did not remove Ukraine from a position of top priority in Poland’s foreign policy. Polish support of Ukraine in matters of strategic importance was and remains unequivocal and unconditional, though this stance toward its neighbor unfortunately is usually missed in Ukraine. And this is the biggest paradox of the bilateral relationship. What is needed now is a rebuilding of the undermined confidence and better communication, as well as more good will as the two countries tackle difficult historical issues they have in common. Finally, both sides should bear in mind the many common interests they share.

WWII-era Polish cardinal who was hostile to Jews is on the path to sainthood Jewish Telegraphic Agency, May 24, 2018 https://www.jta.org/2018/05/24/news-opinion/wwii-era-polish-cardinal-hostile-jews-path-sainthood

A World War II-era Polish cardinal who was hostile to Jews was recognized by Pope Francis as having “heroic virtues,” the first step to sainthood.

Cardinal August Hlond was one of 12 sainthood cases to be advanced last week by the pope.

In a letter to the Vatican, the American Jewish Committee warned that putting Hlond on the track toward sainthood “will be perceived within the Jewish community and beyond as an expression of approval of Cardinal Hlond’s extremely negative approach towards the Jewish community.” Rabbi David Rosen, the AJC’s director of international interreligious affairs, wrote the letter.

In his 1936 pastoral letter, Hlond condemned Judaism and called for a boycott of Jewish businesses.

“It is good to prefer your own kind when shopping, to avoid Jewish stores and Jewish stalls in the marketplace,” the letter said. It went on to say, “One should stay away from the harmful moral influence of Jews, keep away from their anti-Christian culture, and especially boycott the Jewish press and demoralizing Jewish publications.”

Hlond refused to meet with Polish Jewish leaders 10 years later over concerns about the accusations of ritual murder ahead of Passover and the danger of pogroms.

The community’s fears came true on July 4, 1946, when a mob attacked the building of the Jewish Committee in Kielce, leaving 42 Jews dead and more than 40 wounded. A week later, the AJC letter said, “Cardinal Hlond held a press conference but he did not condemn the pogrom nor urge Poles to stop murdering Jews. Rather, he pointed out that the Jews were all communists or supporters of communism and that the pogrom was their own fault.”

Hlond was the highest ranking church official in Poland from 1926 to 1948, and is credited with keeping the church strong and protecting its autonomy during the Nazi occupation and postwar communism.

The Vatican must still confirm a miracle attributed to his intercession for Hlond to be beatified, and a second one for him to be canonized.

Hungary’s ‘missing’ Jews come out of hibernation to take community’s helm By Yaakov Schwartz Haaretz, May 18, 2018 https://www.timesofisrael.com/hungarys-missing-jews-come-out-of-hibernation-to-take-communitys-helm/

Peter Berenyi found out he was Jewish when he was 8 years old, over a bowl of matzah ball soup.

“At the time, we were just like kids in any regular Jewish Hungarian family,” Berenyi says. “That is, we had no idea we were Jewish. And then my parents gave us this soup, and my brothers and I asked what it was. They told us it was a Jewish soup, and that they grew up with it as a tradition in their homes.”

Though Berenyi’s parents let the children in on the family secret, they cautioned them not to speak about it in public. It was the mid-1980s, and then, as today, Hungarian Jews were anxious about displaying any outward signs of their heritage. Many didn’t even speak of it among themselves.

The trauma of the Holocaust, in which around 560,000 of Hungary’s 800,000 Jews were exterminated by the Nazis, and the subsequent communist rule from shortly after World War II until 1989, had sent what was one of the most robust Jewish communities in Europe into hibernation. As a result, much of Hungary’s current Jewish leadership grew up either completely unaware of their Judaism, or were discouraged from speaking about it until later in life.

Berenyi’s parents made the uncommon decision of emigrating to Israel when he was 11 in order to foster a sense of Jewish identity in the boys. Though financial difficulties caused the family to move back to Hungary three years later, the time in Israel was largely successful in strengthening Berenyi’s Jewish ties.

Berenyi is the deputy director of the Balint House JCC in Budapest, which was founded by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in 1994. Berenyi has worked at the Balint House since 2005, and is in charge of programs such as the popular Judafest summer street festival and the Budapest Jewish Film Festival.

“What’s important to realize is that there are many people today who find out that they’re Jewish, but don’t develop any connection to or feeling of Judaism,” he says.

Berenyi’s boss, Balint House JCC director Zsuzsa Fritz, agrees.

Like Berenyi, Fritz, who was born in 1966, spent her childhood not knowing she was Jewish. Though her maternal grandparents lived with the family, it was not until she arrived at her own father’s funeral at a Jewish cemetery and saw a rabbi that she learned about her roots. She was 16.

“It was just something that nobody talked about in my family. I don’t know if it was conscious or not. And after I figured it out, I still didn’t know what to ask, so I didn’t,” says Fritz.

Fritz says that a few months after her father’s death, her mother encouraged her to attend Friday night events at Budapest’s rabbinical seminary in the hopes that she would meet a Jewish boy. The gatherings, led by the seminary’s head, Rabbi Alexander Scheiber, were one of the only officially sanctioned Jewish youth activities available at the time.

It was among the 30 to 40 teenagers who would attend these events that Fritz found a peer group and sense of belonging that she says was crucial to her as a young adult.

“We all came from a similar situation,” she says. “I think, until today, for many of the Jews this is the single most important thing. They don’t care about their children not knowing much about Jewish tradition, but they want them to marry within the community, because they feel that will assure a mutual value system.”

A perfect storm of past trauma and the current census policy has made calculating even a ballpark number of Hungarian Jews a demographer’s nightmare. The Holocaust succeeded in almost completely obliterating Hungary’s largely Hasidic ultra-Orthodox population, who lived in smaller towns throughout the country and then-Hungarian Transylvania.

The mostly secular Jews of Budapest fared slightly better, with a survival rate of around 50 percent. But in the years following the Holocaust, most strongly-identifying Hungarian Jews fled to Israel or the United States. The rise of communism following the Holocaust succeeded in driving what was left of Hungarian Jewish identity underground.

Dr. Andras Kovacs, a professor of sociology at Central European University in Budapest and the author of a seminal survey on Hungary’s postwar Jewish population, maintains that it’s hard to say how many Jews are still living in Hungary, and that estimates vary further based on the definition of a “Jew.”

In the first such extensive research since the Holocaust, Kovacs conducted nearly 2,000 interviews with people from a variety of Jewish subgroups, from religious to completely unaffiliated. (Kovacs’ original survey was compiled in 1999 and 2000. He will be releasing an updated study with an additional 2,000 interviews in the coming weeks.)

“If we calculate the number of Jews based on the definition outlined in the Law of Return, that is, having at least one Jewish grandparent, minus any non-Jewish family members, then there must be between 150,000 to 200,000 Jews in Hungary today,” says Kovacs.

Kovacs says that the calculations are based on the latest postwar numbers, which date back to the 1950s, and take into account factors such as intermarriage, migration, and population growth. Still, he cautions that the numbers are only an estimate and that it’s impossible to gauge with any degree of real accuracy how many Jews are living in Hungary today.

Pressed to estimate how many halachically Jewish people there are in Hungary – that is, according to Jewish law, which follows matrilineal descent – Kovacs guessed that there might be anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 halachic Jews.

According to current census numbers, there are roughly 12,000 self-identifying Jews living in Hungary today. This leaves a potential discrepancy of anywhere from 38,000 to 188,000 Jews still unaccounted for.

Many of these Jews are either completely unaware of their heritage, or are apathetic to it, and will likely disappear in a number of generations. But not all of the missing Jews are necessarily devoid of any Jewish identity whatsoever.

“The Hungarian census has an optional question on religious and ethnic belonging,” says Kovacs. “But this is an optional question, and the definition – belonging to a religious denomination or to an ethnic group – limits the numbers, because the majority of the Jews in Hungary are not religious and don’t define themselves as a minority.”

It is the fringe Jews who are hesitant to join the community but are still somewhat aware of their identity that Fritz and Berenyi seek to bring into the fold.

“The majority of potentially active Jews are not really engaged,” says Fritz. “So one of our priorities is to create entry points. And since it’s a very traumatized community with a lot of issues with Jewish identity due to their history, these entry points need to be as varied and as open as they can be.”

Under Fritz, the Balint House JCC offers adult learning courses, family programming, and also provides a physical space for Jewish innovation and initiatives from the community.

Fritz puts an emphasis on creating Jewish learning opportunities, she says, because Jewish literacy is lacking.

“The more people know about their roots and about Jewish identity and about Judaism, the stronger they will feel that they belong,” says Fritz.

She also says that it’s important to leave the physical confines of the building and take those educational opportunities outside to meet people who might not otherwise attend JCC events. To that end, the JCC hosts the Judafest street festival, another flagship JDC program in Hungary and Berenyi’s pet project, which he first helped put together in 2008.

The JDC has long been involved with the local Jewish community, supporting the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust and then working to rebuild Hungarian Jewry in its wake — at times clandestinely, after being expelled by the communist regime in 1953. The organization officially returned to Hungary in 1980.

Berenyi says that in Judafest’s inaugural year, Hungarians were hesitant about street festivals of any type – let alone obviously Jewish ones. In all, there were seven partners that first year, and, unexpectedly, the daylong festival was a huge success, drawing 2,500 people.

In recent years, Judafest has grown considerably, attracting over 50 partners and drawing 12,000 attendees. Partner organizations span the entire spectrum of Hungarian Jewish life, from the ultra-Orthodox to the completely secular. This year the festival falls out on June 10.

Six years ago also saw the introduction of the Budapest Jewish Film Festival, which takes place in November. It’s the largest event of its kind in Central and Eastern Europe.

Berenyi says that it’s important to him to keep local organizations working together and pooling resources, and that he is constantly coming up with new ways to engage young adults. The stress on inclusivity is shared by Fritz, who wants everyone to feel that they have a share in the community.

“My idea, along with the JCC, was to create a very open institution, very pluralistic, and also very inclusive,” says Fritz. “Because I do believe that this is the only way to create a strong community where people feel welcome, safe, and part of a community that accepts them.”

Knesset to Debate Recognizing Armenian Genocide Amid Spat With Turkey By Jonathan Lis Haaretz, May 23, 2018 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israeli-government-won-t-object-to-armenian-genocide-recognition- 1.6112673

The voted on Wednesday evening to hold a debate on recognizing the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Turkish government a century ago.

Meretz chairwoman Tamar Zandberg submitted the motion earlier on Wednesday. The debate will be held at an unspecified date in the future.

Only 16 Knesset members participated in the session and a mere two MKs from the coalition, alongside Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein and Public Security Minister , attended the session.

In an exceptional move, the government informed the Knesset earlier on Wednesday that it would not submit a response to the motion to hold the debate on recognizing the Armenian genocide. In the past, the government objected to holding such a debate in the Knesset plenum. had submitted similar resolutions in recent years that were subsequently debated in the Knesset Education Committee. This time she submitted the motion to the entire Knesset, insisting that the full Knesset debate it, rather than one of the committees.

The Knesset has been marking the Armenian genocide every year since 2012, but proposals of the sort are usually blocked because of the special relationship with . The assumption is they will be blocked again.

Last week, several coalition MKs announced their intention to submit draft legislation on recognizing the Armenian genocide in response to anti-Israel comments and actions by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Education Minister asked Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein to “approve official recognition by the State of Israel of the Armenian Holocaust committed by Turkey.”

Zandberg said Tuesday, “For many years now Israel has been evading recognition of the Armenian genocide, one of the most despicable acts of murder in the 20th century. This lack of recognition is a moral stain on Israel and on every country that chooses, out of its own interests, to ignore the suffering of the other. For us it is a matter of morality and not a momentary political act.”

Meretz led the struggle to recognize the genocide back in the days of . As education minister in 2000, Sarid attended an event marking the 85th anniversary of the genocide in the Armenian Church in Jerusalem. At the event, Sarid called on the Israeli government, then headed by Ehud Barak, to officially recognize the genocide. During his tenure as education minister, content about the Armenian genocide was included in the school curriculum, but it was removed by the Likud government when it returned to power.

Also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the genocide in question was the systematic killing of 1,500,000 Aremanians by the Ottoman government during and after World War I. Most of those killed were citizens of the Ottoman empire.

As Tensions With Iran Mount, Officials From Neighboring Azerbaijan Visit Israel By Noa Landau Haaretz, May 23, 2018 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-iran-tensions-azerbaijan-officials-visit-israel- 1.6112935?=&ts=_1527261384888

Last Monday, the world’s eyes were cast mostly on southern Jerusalem, where the U.S. was inaugurating its new embassy in Israel’s capital, and on Gaza, where the list of dead grew by the hour in tandem with the festive ceremony. Immediately afterward, condemnation from Muslim nations began pouring in, led by Turkey, which declared an acute diplomatic crisis with Israel. But at the same time, under the radar, a new milestone was reached in Israel’s relations with a Muslim friend of Turkey and neighbor of Iran: the Republic of Azerbaijan.

That day, May 14, on the backdrop of the tensions, senior Azeri officials visited Israel for the first meeting of the inter-governmental economic committee established to tighten ties between the two countries. The delegation, headed by the Azeri tax minister accompanied by deputy ministers, stayed in Israel for three days, from Sunday to Tuesday. The purpose of the meeting, where the Israeli government was represented by Minister Zeev Elkin, was to examine ways to promote economic, commercial and business ties, as announced during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the country in December 2016.

Relations between the two countries are seen of strategic importance since Azerbaijan gained independence in the early 1990s. Azerbaijan is a major energy supplier of Israel, and also a major buyer of Israeli weapons. As said, its location is key. Azerbaijan has big oil and gas fields, which Baku supplies Israel via Turkey.

Israel also sells a great deal of arms to Baku, which is delicately positioned between Russia, Turkey and Iran. During Netanyahu’s visit to Baku in 2016, President Ilham Aliyev revealed that his country had purchased from Israel about $5 billion worth of armaments. Or more precisely, $4.85 billion. Most of the contracts had been executed already, Aliyev said.

Azeri media reports have said that Israel agreed to sell Azerbaijan the missile-defense Iron Dome system. Other foreign reports state that Israel sells radar systems and drones to Azerbaijan, and uses its territory to collect intelligence on Iran.

The Kuwaiti paper Al-Jarida recently quoted an Israeli source saying the Mossad had moved the Iranian nuclear documents through Azerbaijan. According to the report, two trucks were used to transport the nuclear files – traveling different routes in order conceal the operation - while the Mossad agents escaped on foot to separate locations in Iran. Two other Mossad operatives accompanied the truck travelling to Iran’s northeastern border, near Azerbaijan, where a third Mossad team awaited them along with Iranian smugglers.

In March 2012, Foreign Policy reported that Israel was thinking of basing its attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities from Azerbaijan.

In 2014, then-Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon visited a weapons fair in Azerbaijan at which several Israeli companies were participating.

According to other foreign reports, an Israeli Harop "suicide drone" made by the Israel Aerospace Industries was observed attacking in the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan has been feuding with over the control of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is in Azeri territory but is peopled mainly by Christian Armenians.

Israel sells the weapons despite the international position that the flames should be lowered in the Aremnian- Azeri conflict. This prompted Jerusalem lawyer Etay Mack to write in 2014 to the supervisory department of military exports, demanding that export licenses to Azerbaijan be voided because of the tension between Azerbaijan and Armenia. During fighting between Azeri and Armenian forces in the enclave, Zehava Galon, a Knesset member at the time, urged that Israel stop supplying arms.

Israel also supplies Azerbaijan with high-tech, agriculture and medical supplies. The country also has a long- standing Jewish community and Jewish schools, including a Chabad center.

In response to the present diplomatic crisis with Turkey, this week Knesset members including Amir Ohana of Likud and Itzik Shmuli of the Zionist Union suggested that Israel officially recognize the Armenian genocide, through legislation.

The Knesset has been marking the Armenian genocide every year since 2012, but proposals of the sort are usually blocked because of the special relationship with Azerbaijan. The assumption is they will be blocked again.

On Wednesday, Meretz chairwoman was set to motion a debate at the plenum for recognizing the Aremnian Holocaust. The government informed it will not respond to Zandberg's motion, and offered no further comments.