As the recent stomach-churning scene of Canadian lawmakers honoring a former Waffen-SS Nazi continues to trigger shock, outrage, and revulsion, Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine has erupted in an ill-conceived social media post.
The Telegram post (since deleted) by the Israeli diplomat, Michael Brodsky, showed two servicewomen in the Israel Defense Forces singing the Ukrainian song “Oi u luzi chervona kalyna" ("Oh, in the meadow a red guelder rose"). The folk song that the two young fair-haired women, likely repatriates from Ukraine serving with Tzahal (Hebrew-language acronym for Israel’s national military), were crooning is closely associated with the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists* (the organization’s activities are prohibited in the Russian Federation).
The notorious fascist militant formation known as the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrainian acronym UPA), was created in the 1930s as the paramilitary wing of the fascist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). The UPA was responsible for the killings of hundreds of thousands civilians in Nazi-occupied western Ukraine, among them ethnic Poles, Jews, Russians, and anti-fascist Ukrainians. Some volunteers of these formations ultimately ended up joining the infamous 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the Nazi SS, also known as 14th SS Volunteer Division Galicia. Incidentally, the very same that Ukrainian veteran Yaroslav Hunka served in.
Simultaneously with the glorification of the UPA in modern-day Ukraine, this song began to be performed as an unofficial nationalist anthem.
After Canada's embarrassing Nazi stunt, the video that apparently tugged at the heartstrings of the Israeli envoy gives one pause, asking the question: how is it possible to possess so short a memory and show such blatant disrespect to victims of the Holocaust - crimes that the UPA had a hand in perpetrating.
*The UPA is recognized as an extremist organization and banned in the Russian Federation.