Europe in shame: Ukraine and European identity
Why the conflict in Ukraine is key to European identity
Modern Europe has always been sold as the epitome of freedom, unity, diversity, progressivism, cooperation, help, and cosmopolitanism. This falls like a house of cards when you start studying modern European history. Just read about what happened, in the early twentieth century, to one of the most cosmopolitan peoples, scattered throughout Europe. Interestingly, it was one of the few peoples wich did not have any civil rights until the middle of the 19th century. The people wich dreamed of a territory of free movement and freedom and equality for their citizens.
The Jewish people were annihilated in Europe by the very «old Europeans». Not even fifty years after becoming full-fledged citizens, with equal rights and duties and being able to leave the ghettos behind, there were already paintings of “Jews: go to Palestine” in Vienna. It was the same Vienna of the cafes, the enlightened and civilized cradle of Europe. The city where Freud, Hertzl, Marx, Stalin, Tito, Trotsky, and Shitler lived, some of them simultaneously for a time. Fifteen years later, the systematic genocide of the most cosmopolitan people in Europe, along with the Romani, started.
Modern Europe, political Europe, the European Union, is a fraud. If we look at its two engines, we will find the two countries that have caused and participated in each and every European war, always: France and Germany. It is fascinating how the world has allowed those directly responsible for the two world wars to be the driving force behind the project intended to bring peace and understanding to the continent. The same two countries with the most imperial anguish, with special mention to Louis XIV, Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm, and Adolf Shitler.
Today, in the darkest moment of the continent’s last 80 years, while all European countries were struggling to see who made the most useless statement, two countries were the first to take action to stop the savages: Poland and Turkey.
It is the countries on the periphery that are responding. The countries that the euro-core, the Franco-German axis (with a wink to the United Kingdom), had considered second or third class. Remember that it was the Poles who broke the German Enigma — and those who broke the siege of, drumroll, Vienna. That’s why the surprise came when it was the countries of stale Europe, led by Switzerland, that decided to do something other than a stunt.
Poland has about 3 million sins to atone for. Turkey also has many conflicts that need to be confronted. But it is precisely these two countries, especially Turkey — the barbarians — who are doing practical things to stop the Russian savage, that should make the whole European horde think a lot. It should also make us think about what we want to do with the European Union.
A good course of action would be to dismantle it. Everyone keeps talking about “The EU will do this or that”, “The EU will send weapons”… but in reality, the EU does nothing at all. Some countries within the EU will send weapons, others will increase investment in defense, and others will do nothing, “because the EU will.” The use of language shows us, once again, that the EU is a ghost that only serves to say that we want to do things, and ending up doing nothing.
Like the UN, an organization currently run by countries such as Saudi Arabia, or Russia itself, with certain members of the “permanent council” with the right of veto. How conceivable is a right of veto within an organization that should ensure the security of ALL countries? If we look at its predecessor, the League of Nations, we can guess how the UN will act and how useful it will be. Let us remember the request of Hailie Selassie for help in 1936, in the face of the invasion of Ethiopia by the fascist dictator Mussolini.
A good complementary action could be sending to total and complete social ostracism all the moral cowards and scoundrels, who these days complain that there is racism in Poland because they only let in white refugees. A statement with which they show ignorance of the Slavic reality, but this is not surprising.
This group of people is the same who strongly complained about the «international aggression» which forced Putin to attack civilians. They are the ones complaining that weapons are being sent to Ukraine and then asking the Ukrainians not to defend themselves. And if Ukrainians dare to defend themselves, they accuse them of the crimes of the attackers. They utter that of “I’m not racist, I even have friends (put any non-white variant here)”. They are the ones who complain about asking Russian artists to position themselves clearly. Total ostracism to all that people of shame.
Some readers may be wondering why I talk so much about Jews in this article about Europe. If at this point in the text you are still wondering, we have a pretty big problem. But I will explain myself.
As I have said twice, the Jewish people are the only people who believed, from the beginning, in a Political Europe, as a space of unity and freedom. And that happened after more than a thousand years of persecutions and assassinations. Nowadays, Ukraine is the third country in continental Europe with the highest Jewish population. It is part of the Pale of Settlement area, from the Baltic Sea to the Black sea, physically separating Europe from Asia, where Jews were deported en masse in the 19th century. It is where the tales of Shulem Aleihem take place — with Tevye the milkman at the head, singing «Tradition!» — and hosts the grave, in Uman, of one of the most popular Hassidic figures, Rabbi Nachman of Breslev. Uman is a city that receives so many Jewish visitors that its road signs are also in Hebrew.
All of Ukraine, including Crimea of course, and the adjacent areas of Georgia, has been a zone with a strong Jewish presence for over a thousand years. A population that has withstood crusades, empires, genocides, phony emperors, tsars, Nazis, and communists. In fact, over a million Ukrainian Jews were murdered during the nazi occupation, five million Ukrainians in total. Around 10% of the total population. And a thousand years later, they are still there.
Why is all this important in the current conflict? One of the first places where Russian missiles landed, a few hours after the announcement of the invasion, was in Uman. The first target of Putin’s army, once the siege of Kyiv officially began, was the site of the Babi Yar Memorial, a memorial to the city’s massacre of Jews in late September 1941. And antisemitism was one of the pretexts for the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
It is also important because those who today complain about Western imperialism and the Ukrainians defending themselves are the heirs of those who, eighty years ago, in Vienna, painted “Jews, go to Palestine.” And they are the same ones who paint «Jews, get out of Palestine” today. And they are the ones who complain when the Jews dare to defend themselves from their aggressors. And they are the ones who blame the State of Israel for Hamas’ bombing of civilians.
Former Commonwealth Rabbi Jonathan Sacks — may his memory be a blessing — always reminded us that “what begins with the Jews almost always ends up with the rest of the population.” Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is being justified by «de-nazificating» the third-largest Jewish population country on the European continent, with a Jewish president claiming his country as European, and calling on political Europe to believe herself. And the first official target of the siege of its capital has been the place of commemoration of one of the most important massacres in Shoah.
Every day that passes is one day less for those who today paint «Jews out of Palestine” to begin trying to pass this war as a product of international Zionism. It is strange that they still don’t — probably because the United States is playing safe and the focus is on Europe. Maybe that’s why the state of Israel, home to a large number of Russians and Ukrainians, is thinking so much about doing or saying nothing. Because when they do, they will all come out from under the stones, to defend even more fervently the Putinist attack on Europe and all that it represents.
And as always, after the experiments to see if the idea works or not, when it is proven to work, everyone is behind it, without exception. Keep this in mind when thinking about your positioning.
A. Hillel Fuentes lives and works in Barcelona. He understands, speaks, and writes in Catalan, Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, Italian, and a little Hebrew.
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