RazingerZ
Madmaxista
- Desde
- 19 Ene 2023
- Mensajes
- 10.514
- Reputación
- 26.557
Israelis Are Fighting and Dying for Ukraine. In Israel, Their Deaths Go Unreported
Despite the conflict’s mounting deaths, the Israeli media has covered only three of its citizens who died while fighting in Ukraine. Many Israelis may be unaware that their compatriots are fighting there at all
Share in Facebook
Share in Twitter
Send in e-mailSend in e-mail
Go to comments
Print article
SaveSave article to reading list
Zen Read
Open gallery view
Andriy Reznikov and Andriy Glembotskiy. One Israeli-Ukrainian fighter in Ukraine estimates that several hundred more are taking part in the war there.
Anat Peled
Get email notification for articles from Anat PeledFollow
Apr 20, 2023
Every day after school, three teenagers named Andriy, Olga and Artur would meet at the Lviv Jewish Agency club in Ukraine to learn about Zionism. In a photo taken shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Andriy Reznikov can be seen happily posing with his friends in a blue tracksuit. Posters of Israeli flags decorate the club wall behind them.
The one-state reality in Israel-Palestine: what does it miccionan for U.S. policy?
Subscribe
0:00
-- : --
Skip 15 seconds backwards
Play audio
Skip 15 seconds ahead
1XChange playback rate from 1 to 1.25
Mute audio
One after the other, the three friends left for Israel in their late teens as part of the immigration wave of Soviet Jews in the 1990s. Reznikov immigrated at age 18. He served in the IDF and studied in Ariel.
- Advertisment -
Reznikov spent 10 years in Israel before returning to Ukraine, where he settled down. He went on to marry a woman named Nadya Vyshivana and had a 10-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. With Russia’s invasion in February 2022, he immediately volunteered to fight, even before the draft was announced.
This did not surprise his Israeli friends from the Lviv Jewish Agency who describe him as a real Golanchik – an alumn of the IDF’s rugged Golani unit – and always first to volunteer for a task. His wife Nadya recalls that she told him that they could leave Ukraine because of his Israeli citizenship. “He said, ‘I’m standing up for what is right.’” He promised Nadya that as soon as Ukraine was victorious, they would visit Israel.
Breaking news and the best of Haaretz straight to your inbox
Email *
Please enter a valid email address
Sign Up
By signing up, I agree to Haaretzterms and conditions
Open gallery view
Andriy Reznikov and his friends at the Lviv Jewish Agency.Credit: Courtesy of Artur Birman
On November 7, 2022, Reznikov was killed on the battlefields of Eastern Ukraine. His death was not reported in Israel, and he is not alone. Experts consulted for this article estimate that between 10 and 16 Israeli nationals have died fighting in Ukraine.
- Advertisment -
Despite the conflict’s mounting deaths, the Israeli media has covered only three of its citizens who died while fighting in Ukraine. This is problematic because it prevents the Israeli public from seeing the Israeli angle on the personal toll of the war and underplays the involvement of Israeli citizens as the conflict grinds on.
“It’s very difficult to keep track,” admits the Ukrainian Ambassador to Israel, Yevgen Korniychuk. He adds that the embassy often learns about the deaths of Israeli nationals through the media rather than directly from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.
- How Russia tried to destroy Yitzhak Rabin’s family village in Ukraine
- The Israeli police officer now fighting in the Ukrainian army
- Israel to extend aid to Ukrainian refugees by one year
From the start of the invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy who is Jewish, has stressed the commonalities between his country and Israel, both people who have struggled for their independence. His government has repeatedly asked for Israel to send military and intelligence equipment.
- Advertisment -
In a speech to Israelis in March 2022, he begged for compassion towards Ukraine’s tragedy, comparing the Russian invasion to the Holocaust. ”Indifference kills,” he implored. But more than a year later, little seems to have changed, as Israel still finds itself toeing a delicate line of trying to support Ukraine in muted ways that don’t risk its relations with Russia.
Open gallery view
Reznikov with his friends in the IDF.Credit: Courtesy of Artur Birman
According to Yigal Levin, a former IDF officer and editor at the newspaper Focus who runs a popular Telegram channel with analysis of the war, there are currently around 100 Israelis fighting on the ground in Ukraine, down from roughly 200 at the start of the war.
Most are dual citizens of both Israel and Ukraine, and have family and friends in both countries. But exact numbers are difficult to come by. An Israeli-Ukrainian fighter in Ukraine who asked to remain anonymous estimates there are several hundred Israeli-Ukrainians currently fighting.
The Ukrainian army is often more than happy to take these volunteers, welcoming their IDF experience and knowledge of the Ukrainian language. And while Israel does not encourage Israelis to go fight in Ukraine, it does not prohibit them from doing so.
This sets it apart from certain Eastern European states such as Serbia, notes researcher Kacper Rekawek, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo, and the author of the first academic study on foreign fighters in Ukraine.
Several Eastern European countries still have rules in place about going to fight for another country and volunteer fighters have to receive exemptions to go. In some countries these are just formalities with no consequences but in others it can involve jail time.
Breaking news and the best of Haaretz straight to your inbox
Email *
Please enter a valid email address
Sign Up
By signing up, I agree to Haaretzterms and conditions
Rekawek adds that the real number of Israeli fighters would have to be gathered from several different bureaucracies in Ukraine, and that some fighters never officially register as such, and therefore do not appear in the system.
When Russia’s invasion first started, it was covered non-stop both in Israel and around the world. For several weeks, Israeli news channels raced to send their correspondents to the field and images of the war were widespread. Israeli media antiestéticatured the stories of Israeli nationals who decided to fight in Ukraine, showing them in uniform and preparing to go into the field and training others. But as time went on, this coverage abated.
Open gallery view
Reznikov in the Ukrainian Army.Credit: Courtesy of Artur Birman.
Today, to many Israelis the war feels far-away and removed. Many may be unaware that there are Israeli citizens fighting in Ukraine.
Anna Zharva, founder of the Israeli Friends of Ukraine Association, the largest non-profit pro-Ukrainian organization in Israel, says that even her organization doesn’t know about all the Israeli citizens who have died in Ukraine.
“I think that in some cases, the family doesn’t want [to talk about it] and in some cases it’s just so far-away that it doesn’t always reach the Israeli media,” she says. She believes that the difficulty in getting the Israeli media interested in Ukraine also has to do with the country’s focus on its own domestic crisis.
But this does not fully explain general Israeli apathy towards the war.
“If someone [Israeli] is killed in a motorcycle accident in Nepal or something like that, it reaches the headlines, but an Israeli soldier killed in Ukraine doesn’t. It’s an anomaly. I don’t have an explanation for this. It should be in the headlines,” says Jenya Lerer, an Israeli volunteer currently distributing humanitarian aid in Ukraine.
The public’s lack of interest may have to do with something else. Israeli society still holds persistent stereotypes about immigrants from the former Soviet Union. While earlier waves of immigration prioritized the “melting pot” model – encouraging new transplants to cast off their roots in favor of Israeliness – many from the 1990s aliyah maintained their connections to their home countries, and often returned to them for stretches.
Many of these immigrants are not seen by native-born Israelis as fully integrated into Israeli society because of their attachment to the cultures and languages of their homes. While these olim feel confident about their multifaceted identities, their belonging in Israel is often questioned. They are sometimes looked down as not “Jewish” enough, due to the common lack of religious observance among Russian-speaking migrants. Other stereotypes are exemplified by a recent song from Israeli pop-star Omer Adam about a young Russian woman, her love for vodka and inability to speak Hebrew.
He sings: "Where did she come from/She says that Hebrew is language difficult/All day long just Nyet and Da!".
“There is always the divide between the real tzabar [native-born Israeli] and the Russian. Who is the Russian? It doesn’t matter if he came from Georgia, he is still Russian,” says Levin, who was born in Odessa, Ukraine. He gives the example of Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of Yisrael Beiteinu, the political party supported mostly by Russian speakers. “Everyone knows he is Russian, but he is not Russian. He is from Moldova. But who [in Israel] even knows what Moldova is?”
The war has been a crystallizing moment for Ukrainian Israelis. If they would not correct Israelis who called them “Russian” in the past, they certainly do so now. They have mobilized for their country of birth by fighting on the ground and volunteering. They have also held large protests and rallies outside of the Russian Embassy in Tel Aviv.
The war and its tragedy are not abstract for this group. Many have lost friends. Their family members are hiding in bomb shelters. This is a fight for the survival and freedom of a country that they hold dear.
Open gallery view
Andriy Glembotskiy. 'The gate opened, and he saw a democratic country where you could realize yourself'Credit: Courtesy of the Glembotskiy family
Andriy Glembotskiy was one of the dual citizens killed fighting in Ukraine. His death on August 23, 2022 also did not receive public attention in Israel, although it was broadly covered in Ukrainian media. Born in Shostka in eastern Ukraine in 1973, he became interested in Israel after the fall of the USSR.
“We lived in the Soviet Union. There was no freedom. There was no democracy. The gate opened, and he saw a democratic country where you could realize yourself,” explains his friend Yuriy, who had known him since childhood.
Glembotskiy made aliyah at age 22 with his mother and sister. But his connection to his country of birth remained strong. After 10 years in Israel, including service in the IDF, he returned to Ukraine to help run a family business. During this period, Glembotskiy met his wife and became a committed activist in the 2014 Maidan protest, which ousted pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.
He and his wife Alina returned to Israel after Maidan and settled in Bat Yam, south of Tel Aviv. A photo taken during this period shows a happy young family: Glembotskiy holds his infant son on his shoulders at the Ramat Gan Safari on a warm, summer day.
Open gallery view
Andriy and Alina Glembotskiy with their infant son. 'He decided to stay to defend the country that gave life to him.'Credit: Courtesy of the Glembotskiy family
After the Russian invasion in February, Glembotskiy went back to Ukraine to save his elderly father in Dnipro. He did not originally plan to fight, but “decided to stay to defend the country that gave life to him,” says Yuriy. Since his wife was pregnant at the time, he was to be discharged after the birth, based on a Ukrainian law that exempts fathers of three from service.
With the birth of his long-awaited daughter, he returned to Israel in July, spending precious days with his family. But he felt that he could not leave his soldiers, who he also considered to be like his children, behind. He returned to fight with the plan of coming back to Israel for the start of his children’s school year in September. When driving through the Kharkiv region back to his base in Kyiv at the end of a mission, a Russian landmine killed him instantly.
Glembotskiy, like Reznikov and other Israeli-Ukrainians killed, were deeply attached and ready to fight for both of their countries.
While they have received attention and official awards in Ukraine where they are buried, Israel fails to grasp their engagement, their identity and give them the recognition they deserve.
On a Saturday morning in Jaffa shortly after his death, a dozen of Reznikov’s Jewish Agency era friends in Israel gathered in his memory. After a prayer they made their way to a downtown café where they spent the next three hours. Olga Khabibova, his old freind, brought along photos from their childhood in Lviv and marveled at how little they recognized themselves from those days. They laughed and cried and raised a glass to their fallen friend.
It’s time more Israelis knew Reznikov’s story and that of others like him, those killed in battle and those still fighting for Ukraine and for whom both Israel and Ukraine was home
