Ukrainian Jewish Lawmaker Attacked on Streets of Kiev

By JTA June 23, 2014

A Ukrainian Jewish lawmaker said he was threatened in central Kiev by uniformed men who hurled anti-Semitic insults at him.

Oleksandr Feldman, president of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, told police last week that the unidentified men surrounded his car on June 17 near the Ukrainian parliament, Ukrainian Jewish Committee Director Eduard Dolinsky told JTA.

“When he tried to leave, they punctured his car tires,” Dolinsky said, adding: “In the police report, Mr. Feldman noted that the men shouted anti-Semitic insults at him and this angle will be investigated.”

The suspected attackers left the scene as police approached, Dolinsky said. Feldman was guarded during the attack by his bodyguard, Dolinsky added. None of them were injured in the incident, which occurred on Institutskaya Street near the Ukrainian parliament.

Feldman, who wears a kippah and is one of Ukraine’s most well-known Jews, is also the initiator of the annual Kyiv Interfaith Forum.

Anti-Semitic attacks are rare in Ukraine, and Kiev especially, but several have occurred since November, after the eruption of a revolution that forced former president Viktor Yanukovych to flee for Russia and has left hundreds dead.

Last month, armed, masked men threatened to burn down the house of one of Ukraine’s chief rabbis, Yaakov Dov Bleich.

Bleich, the president of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine, was not in the country at the time of the attack, which ended without serious injury.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO