Flier calling on Donetsk Jews to register now widely seen as fake

Ukrainian city’s separatist leader, whose alleged signature is on document, says he never signed it; ADL ‘skeptical of fliers’ authenticity.’

By Haaretz | Apr. 18, 2014 | 12:08 AM

Part of the notice
Part of the notice as distributed on Twitter. Photo by Screenshot 
 

The pro-Russian separatist leader of Donetsk, whose alleged signature is on the now notorious fliers calling on the eastern Ukrainian city’s Jews to register on pain of deportation, said the documents were fakes, the ThinkProgress website reported Thursday.

 

“Some idiots yesterday were giving out these fliers in targeted areas,” said Denis Pushlin, head of the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk, whose forces have taken over Ukrainian government buildings in the city. Pushlin said he didn’t sign the documents and the People’s Republic, whose name is stamped on the fliers, didn’t produce them.

Meanwhile, the Anti-Defamation League said it was “skeptical about the … authenticity” of the fliers, which have been widely reported and accepted as authentic, including by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who denounced them as “grotesque.”

 

Also, Julia Ioffe, who covers Russia for The New Republic, wrote: “The Donetsk Jewish community dismissed [the fliers] as ‘a provocation,’ which it clearly is. ‘It’s an obvious provocation designed to get this exact response, going all the way up to Kerry,’ says Fyodr Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs. ‘I have no doubt that there is a sizeable community of anti-Semites on both sides of the barricades, but for one of them to do something this stupid — this is done to compromise the pro-Russian groups in the east.'”

According to the original report from Novosti Donbassa news agency, the fliers were handed out by three men wearing balaclavas and carrying Russian Federation flags on Monday, Passover eve, to Jews leaving synagogue in Donetsk.

The fliers order all Jews over the age of 16 to register at the government building, which has been occupied by pro-Russian insurgents in defiance of Kiev rule. Jews would also have to pay a registration fee of $50 before May 3 and list all real estate and vehicles owned.

The notice explained the measure as being due to the alleged support of Jewish leaders for the “nationalist junta of [Stepan] Bandera in Kiev” and their hostility “to the Orthodox Donetsk republic and its citizens.”

Failure to register, the notice said, would result in people being “stripped of their citizenship and deported forcibly outside the country with confiscation of property.”

Donetsk’s Jewish population numbers upwards of 15,000.

April 19, 2014 | 4 Comments »

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4 Comments / 4 Comments

  1. I said this was a false flag from the beginning: probably concocted at the white house to get the Jews against the russians or repayment for not voting against the russians at the UN. we know how vindictive he can be..

  2. keelie Said:

    The Copts are personnae non gratta in Egypt and are subject to the usual hatred with which we are all familiar.

    Isn’t Shenuda the coptic pope and weren’t his actions anti semitic. In such a case it appears that the anti semites are receiving ironic justice at the hands of the muslims they supported against the Jews, similar to the travails of the euros with their muslims.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Shenouda_III_of_Alexandria

  3. @ keelie:
    Keelie, very little in the way of comments on Israpundit are off-topic.
    —
    As for the threatening flyers targeting the Jewish community of one particular Russian-controlled city in eastern Ukraine, it had all the earmarks of a gimmick hashed together by the now-desperate gang that overthrew the pro-Russian presidency of Ukraine and so triggered their present crisis.
    —
    Arnold Harris
    Mount Horeb WI

  4. This is highly off-topic… Or is it?

    Many here will remember the vilification, a few weeks ago, of Giulio Meotti’s latest book by a somewhat fanatical Roman Catholic Irish commentator.

    There’s an article in Gates of Vienna that discusses the recent pilgrimages of Coptic Christian from Egypt to Jerusalem for Easter. Here is a quote from this article:

    Meanwhile, Orthodox Copts will deal with negative consequences upon return from Jerusalem. The Church hierarchy is irritated by the pilgrimages to Israel and stresses that Orthodox Christians are in violation of a 1978 edict issued by the late Pope Shenuda III forbidding visits to the Holy Land until Jerusalem is “liberated.”

    In a political alignment with Arab-Muslims, the anti-Semitic edict disregards Christian doctrine connecting the history of today’s New Testament Church to the prophecies and promises of the Hebrew texts. The former Pope, departing from his true spiritual role to mix in politics, attached severe religious penalties for disobeying his edict, which has not yet been rescinded by the current Pope. The legacy of Pope Shenuda III derived from his famous refusal to accompany President Sadat in November of 1977 on the President’s historic visit to Jerusalem. Subsequent to this incident, the Pope issued a church edict prohibiting the Orthodox to visit the Holy Land and threatened travelers with a loss of blessings.

    This is merely a continuation of what Meotti wrote about. The Copts are personnae non gratta in Egypt and are subject to the usual hatred with which we are all familiar. And the blame can be placed squarely on the Catholic Church, as Meotti indicates throughout his book, irate Irish Catholics notwithstanding.