Grapevine September 29, 2021: Timely legislation

• Author: GREER FAY CASHMAN
• Published date: 28 September 2021

Perhaps more than for most presidents signing a bill into law, this particular bill was particularly meaningful to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy who is Jewish and who lost members of his family in the Holocaust.

No one knows exactly how many Jews live in Ukraine today. Estimates vary between 56,000 to 140,000. Before the Second World War, the Jewish population numbered in excess of 2.5 million, of whom approximately 1.5 million died or were murdered in the Holocaust. Ukraine's overall population today, is in the realm of 41 million, with Jews representing a minuscule percentage.

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Most Jewish Holocaust survivors chose not to remain in Ukraine, where during September 29 and 30, 1941, close to 34,000 men, women and children – most of them Jewish – were killed in one of the worst, inhuman atrocities: a mass shooting on the edge of a ravine on the outskirts of Kyiv. This was part of a Nazi master plan to kill all the Jews in Ukraine.

The definition of antisemitism within the context of the new law is hatred of Jews, calling for or justifying attacks on Jews, making false or hateful statements about Jews, and denying the mass extermination of Jews during the Holocaust.

The definition also includes the vandalization of buildings, monuments, and religious institutions.

The authors of the bill said that they were motivated by "the lack of a clear definition of antisemitism in Ukrainian legislation which did not allow for the proper classification of crimes committed" against Jews and Jewish owned property. This bothered them because "in practice, it led to the actual impunity of offenders," they said.

The bill provides for claims for compensation for material and moral damage to victims and/or their property, and violators may face penalties under existing hate-crime laws.

Commenting on the new legislation, Natan Sharansky, who was born in Ukraine and who is chair of the Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial Center said that this law will contribute greatly to the global battle against hatred and discrimination of Jews.

Coming as it did, so close to the 80th anniversary of the biggest single massacre of Jews on Ukrainian soil, this is an important piece of legislation that stresses the dangers of this age-old hatred and its prevalence today, said Sharansky, who will be in Ukraine next week for the commemoration ceremony.

■ OCTOBER WILL be a very fateful month for candidates who are hoping to become the next chair of the Jewish Agency of Israel. One of those candidates is Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Fleur Hassan Nahoum, who believes that the composite of her various identities make her an ideal choice for the post, and would help to usher in a new era for the 92-year-old institution. The Jewish Agency has never been chaired by a woman, though one came close.

In the 2018 elections, the dynamic Johanna Arbib-Perugia, a passionate Zionist leader from Rome who had served as a member of the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency, chair of the World Board of Trustees of Keren Hayesod, and president of the Jerusalem Foundation nearly won. She was also the choice of then prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to succeed Natan Sharansky who had decided to step down after nine years at the helm. The one thing that Arbib-Perugia was lacking, was a permanent address in Israel. In the final analysis the person elected as chairman of the Jewish Agency was Isaac Herzog.

Hassan Nahoum, is not only a woman, but a Sephardi woman with proven leadership abilities. A lawyer by profession, she knows from personal experience what it means to be an immigrant and what challenges immigrants face as they try to integrate into mainstream Israeli society. Having lived in the Diaspora for a little over half her lifetime, she is familiar with the way that Diaspora Jews think. As a lawyer, she is trained to look at the broader picture and to think logically when seeking solutions to problems. On top of all that, she's also an experienced fundraiser. "A main challenge for the Jewish people is not...