ГУЛаг Палестины

image. He goes to Ukraine not to study it, not to report on its reality, but merely to provide

a backdrop for the proclamation of his own preconceptions, of his own prejudices so deeply

rooted that confirmation scarcely seems necessary, of his own stereotypes so apparently

unchallengeable that the anticipation that they might be in error does not enter consciousness.

(13) Peasants with nuclear weapons. Mr. Safer states: "Uneducated peasants, deeply

superstitious, in possession of this bizarre anomaly: nuclear weapons capable of mass

destruction thousands of miles away!"

This is one piece of information that I did find both newsworthy and disquieting. Although it

requires us to lay aside data indicating that American education is inferior to Ukrainian, we

cannot but be persuaded that the farmers shown in the broadcast were indeed both uneducated and

deeply superstitious - one look at their weatherbeaten faces and deep wrinkles and I was

convinced.

The information is so alarming and the threat to world stability so great that I expect Mr.

Safer must have immediately telegraphed President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine to inform him that

the uneducated and deeply superstitious peasants had seized control of Ukraine's nuclear

weapons, and to urge him to recapture the weapons and place them back under the control of the

educated and less-deeply-superstitious peasants.

Who can argue with Mr. Safer's syllogism here?
– Old and wrinkled people are uneducated and

deeply superstitious. Here is an old and wrinkled person who may or may not be Ukrainian.

Therefore, it is dangerous for Ukraine to have nuclear weapons. Out of respect for Mr. Safer's

personal vulnerability, I will refrain from demonstrating the retargetability of this syllogism.

But to be fair to Mr. Safer, he did not really say that the peasants were in possession of the

nuclear weapons - what he actually said was that they were in possession of an anomaly. This is

an unfamiliar concept, and I cannot get my mind around it - what does it mean to say that

someone is in possession of an anomaly? Perhaps what it means in this case is simply this

that Mr. Safer sensed that even the uncritical 60 Minutes viewer at whom he was aiming his story

wasn't going to believe that the Ukrainian peasants had gotten control of the nuclear weapons,

and so the thing to do was to speak gobbledygook - to suggest that they did but without actually

saying it.

(14) Why leave Ukraine? Mr. Safer suggests that the explanation of Jewish emigration from

Ukraine is anti-Semitism: "The [anti-Semitic] message is clear to Lvov's Jews. They're leaving

as quickly as they can get exit permits."

I can think of an alternative interpretation. It is that given the catastrophic and

deteriorating economic situation in Ukraine, practically everybody in the country wants to

leave, but it is disproportionately Jews who can afford to and who are allowed to. Anybody who

is emigrating from Ukraine today is, in comparison to the average Ukrainian, both wealthy and

influential. Iosef Zissels, co-president of the Association of Jewish Organizations and

Communities of Ukraine as well as co-president of Va'ad (Confederation of Jewish Communities of

the Former Soviet Union) has stated that: "Many Jews are emigrating from Ukraine, not because of

anti-Semitism, but because of the unstable situation in Ukraine. They see instability in

Ukraine, as well as in all the former republics of the Soviet Union, as lasting a long time"

(Ukrainian Weekly, January 26, 1992).

(15) Symon Petliura. Mr. Safer tells us that "Street names have been changed. There is now a

Petliura Street. To Ukrainians, Symon Petliura was a great General, but to Jews, he's the man

who slaughtered 60,000 Jews in 1919."

But that is not what happened and it is irresponsible to broadcast such an accusation.

Of course here as elsewhere, the 60 Minutes numbers may be somewhat inflated - Orest Subtelny

gives us a more moderate range of 35,000 to 50,000 Jewish fatalities (Ukraine: A History, 1994,

p. 363), though even the lower bound of 35,000 is still a horrendous number. The main point,

though, is that in 1919, Ukraine was in a state of civil war. Two Russian armies - the

Bolshevik Red Army and the anti-Bolshevik White army - were rampaging through the country, and

both were killing Jews. The White Army, in particular, had an official policy of killing Jews,

proceeded to do so in an organized and methodical manner, and can be credited with the majority

of the victims:

The Ukrainian pogroms differed from those of the Whites in two ways: in

contrast to the premeditated, systematic undertakings of the Russians, they

were spontaneous outbursts of demoralized and often drunken irregulars, and

they were committed against the express orders of the high command. Unlike the

White Russian generals such as Anton Denikin, the Ukrainian socialists,

especially the Social Democratic party to which Petliura belonged, had a long

tradition of friendly relations with Jewish political activists. Therefore,

the Directory renewed Jewish personal-cultural autonomy, attracted prominent

Jews such as Arnold Margolin and Solomon Goldelman into its government,

appropriated large amounts of money for pogrom victims, and even negotiated

with the famous Zionist leader Vladimir Zhabotinsky about the inclusion of

Jewish police units into its army.

But while Petliura's attitudes towards the Jews might have been