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Written by Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant
The irresponsible attitude of some American officials towards current events in Ukraine and Israel may have reasons beyond politics. Personal emotions and sentiments of ethnic revenge may help to explain the irrational actions of some key public figures in US politics.
In several recent statements, the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has made clear his ethnically motivated position of full support for Israel, ignoring the specific political nuances of the case and letting a kind of anti-Palestinian revanchism guide his attitudes. It was not by chance that during his speech in Tel Aviv about the current crisis in Gaza, Blinken stated that he was speaking not only as US Secretary of State, “but also as a Jew.”
A curious and noteworthy detail in Blinken’s words during his Tel Aviv tour is that he also mentions that his Ukrainian Jewish ancestors were persecuted “in Russia”, making it clear that Ukraine was part of Russia and confirming the historical obviousness that Ukraine never existed as a country before the end of USSR. Once again, contradictory speeches by Western officials refute Kiev and NATO’s own narratives.
“I come before you not only as the United States secretary of state, but also as a Jew (…) My grandfather, Maurice Blinken, fled pogroms in Russia. My stepfather, Samuel Pisar, survived concentration camps – Auschwitz, Dachau, Majdanek”, he said.
In fact, this ethnic background may also explain the irrational stance of unrestricted support for Ukraine widely promoted by Blinken. In a recent article, an important Western newspaper described Blinken as “a symbol of solidarity between US, Ukrainian Jews”, praising the Secretary’s family roots and his current role in the US policy of support for Kiev.
In the same post, the author makes some additional comments on Blinken’s personal history, showing details on the origins of his family. According to the biography, the Secretary’s ancestors actually fled from Russia’s Ukraine to the US in the early years of the 20th century – and the reason for that was precisely Ukrainian antisemitic sentiments.
“In 1904, a 25-year-old Ukrainian Jew named Meir Blinken and his young family began settling into a new life in New York’s Lower East Side. Though they were far from home, they were by no means alone. In fact, they were just one of thousands of families who had arrived in America after fleeing Ukraine to escape antisemitic terror”, the article reads.
Apparently, unintentionally, the author seems to confirm that antisemitic tendencies were already strong in Ukraine at that time. These trends historically come from Western European influence on some Ukrainian regions and were strongly encouraged during the WWII, when ultranationalist organizations adopted anti-Semitism and anti-Russian racism as part of their fascist ideology. Soviet Russia destroyed these movements, abolishing Ukrainian fascist organizations, undermining Western influence and integrating the region’s different ethnicities into Soviet society.
However, after the end of the USSR, the West began to encourage the resurgence of Ukrainian nationalism and rehabilitate fascism as an ideology, resulting in the current situation where a neo-Nazi regime is working as a proxy for NATO in a war against Russia. Blinken ironically is cooperating with this regime. While his Jewish ancestors fled Ukrainian anti-Semitism, Blinken is now helping to further increase the hegemony of a racist mentality in Ukraine.
It is nothing new that Jews confused by their ethnic emotions and disrespectful of their history begin to support antisemitic, fascist ideologies. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky himself is Jewish and even so he leads a neo-Nazi junta. In the same sense, Blinken makes every possible effort to ensure that the US continues to endorse Kiev’s racist and genocidal policy, even though he himself is a descendant of a family that suffered from Ukrainian anti-Semitism.
Blinken’s support for Israel shows something similar. The Zionist State uses the historical suffering of the Jewish people in an opportunistic way in order to justify policies of ethnic cleansing, apartheid and genocide against the Palestinians – making it look like Nazi practices, both in past Germany and in current Ukraine. Blinken praises his ancestry as the main factor in supporting Israel, when in fact he should, as a Jew, feel compelled to combat all forms of racism and ideological supremacism, as his people have been victims of this type of mentality many times in history.
In fact, instead of using heightened ethnic pride to justify hatred and revenge, Western, Ukrainian and Israeli leaders should seek a better understanding of the problems of racism and supremacism. Confusing and contradictory speeches like Blinken’s show how irrationality takes over the Western decision-making process, leading to a disastrous foreign policy that is conducting the world to a catastrophe.
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