Fallout Between Israel and Ukraine Continues as Ukraine Gives State Honors to WW2 Nazi Collaborator

Fallout Between Israel and Ukraine Continues as Ukraine Gives State Honors to WW2 Nazi Collaborator

 

Tensions between Israel and Ukraine are flaring again after the Ukrainian government held a state reburial ceremony honoring Andriy Melnyk, a leader of the wartime Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) who collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II.

According to multiple reports, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and senior officials attended the ceremony in Kyiv, where Melnyk was described as a national hero whose remains were repatriated from Luxembourg. Israel’s Foreign Ministry condemned the event, saying there is “no place for ignoring historical truth and the memory of the victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”

Yad Vashem also criticized the honors, warning that celebrating leaders tied to movements that collaborated with Nazi Germany undermines Holocaust remembrance.

The controversy touches a longstanding fault line in Ukraine. Figures such as Andriy Melnyk and Stepan Bandera are viewed by many Ukrainians as anti-Soviet independence fighters, while critics — including Israeli and Polish officials — point to documented collaboration between factions of the OUN and Nazi Germany, including involvement in atrocities against Jews and Poles.

This is not a new dispute. Israel and Poland jointly condemned state-sponsored glorification of Bandera and Melnyk as early as 2020, and Ukrainian officials at the time pushed back by calling it an internal Ukrainian matter.

GhostofBasedPatrickHenry:

The History of Russia is perhaps the most tragic and complicated in all of world history. Ukraine—which means “borderlands” in Russian—is a big reason for the tragedy and complexity.

The modern-day nation of Ukraine is enormous; the largest country in Europe. Historically, Ukraine proper was far smaller, localized around Kiev. The regions in the East and South belonged to the Russian Empire. The regions in the West belonged to the Austro-Hungarian (Hapsburg) Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Historically speaking, these territories represent some of the most ethnically and culturally diverse populations found anywhere in the world. They are situated on the largest open plain in the world, known as The Steppe, between the Carpathian Mountains in Central Europe and the Ural Mountains at the Russia-Kazakhstan border. They have been conquered by every great empire, kingdom, khanganate, and caliphate to ever ride on horseback across Eurasia. In fact, this plain is where all horses on earth originate. It’s easy to understand why God chose this vast open space to place such creatures.

Every major religion—including Judaism and countless forms of paganism—has at one point or another gained a foothold here. Every culture from Vikings, to Greeks, to Mongols, to Muslims, and Cossacks (among countless others) have had their turn ruling these lands and spreading their proverbial seed. And unlike the Middle East, here it was common for multiple empires to proliferate and coexist simultaneously. Mostly because Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe, and the resources could easily sustain all that life.

What this means is that modern-day Ukraine will never be the homogenous ethno-state that Andrey Melnik and Stepan Bandera aspired to create when they formed the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in 1929. Melnik and Bandera were both born Austro-Hungarian (German/Cossack) citizens in the western regions of modern-day Ukraine. The OUN’s predecessor was the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO) was founded in 1920 and operated in secret out of Prague, engaging in terrorism to advance their political interests.

Their counterpart would have been the Jewish militants that emerged from the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine—from the Russian Pale of Jewish Settlement. These militants became known as the Bolsheviks.

Though the OUN immediately allied with the Nazis in the 1930’s and began running pogroms for them against their Jewish brethren in the East, the Bolsheviks and the UVO/OUN did have common ground: they were both hyper-violent terrorist organizations, and they both harbored a historic hatred for Russians, blaming Russia for their respective cultures’ subjugation.

Perhaps this explains how the Banderite culture of violent insurgency became adopted by Jewish-Ukrainian militants, despite Bandera and Melnik’s collaboration with the Third Reich. (Truth be told, I think there were thousands of Jewish Nazis in the Third Reich, as well. All of which were Zionists.)

What we are witnessing now is the hyper-radicalization of two cultures (Israel/Ukraine) with a shared ancestry and history—both fueled by their historical connection to the lands they currently inhabit. One is more secular and the other is more esoteric, but both seem possessed by a conviction that they are fulfilling some kind of prophecy or destiny. That’s what makes both such dangerous animals.