Haaretz
Kislev 15, 5765
When the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament
announced on Tuesday night that there would be a summit meeting between
"President Leonid Kuchma, President Viktor Yushchenko and President Viktor
Yanukovich" his words were met with derision by the community of Russian
speakers in Israel. But while elections in the country of three presidents
aroused wide interest in the community, the major topic of conversation
soon became the delegation of observers from Israel that was in Ukraine.
In fact, this subject has reached far beyond the community boundaries; it
is also causing distress in the Israeli embassy in Kiev, among the Jewish
community in Ukraine and even within Israel's Foreign Ministry.
The
delegation of observers sent from Israel to monitor the Ukraine elections
was put together by the Institute for the Study of the CIS and Eastern
Europe. There is no reason to feel uneasy if you have never heard of this
body. Since its establishment, in 2001, by former MK Alexander Tsinker
(Democratic Choice), the institute has not made headlines. In fact, it has
done very little. But all that changed instantly when 62 observers, most
of them journalists in the local Russian media, went off to Ukraine to
monitor the presidential elections there. (About 15 of them were Americans
and Britons, some of whom are coming to Israel to take part in the
Jerusalem Summit, a right-wing conference supported by Michael Chernoy,
and Israeli businessman of Russian origin. This is undeniably an important
mission, worthy of representatives - even unofficial ones - of a
democracy. And here the Jewish genius once again proved its
distinctiveness. Even though almost the entire world is outraged at the
disorder and perhaps even the illegitimacy of the elections, a different
message emerged from the Israeli delegation.
The Internet site
Yamik, which is in Russian and Ukrainian, related that, in contrast to the
complaints of the rest of the Western world, "official observers from an
international organization in Israel found no serious impediments in the
voting process and described the elections as legitimate and compatible
with democratic norms."
Similarly, the daily Pravda, an incarnation
of the veteran Soviet newspaper, reported happily that "there are also
other opinions" and quoted the differing view of the observers from
Israel. Even the Russian state television channel paid the Israeli
observers a special tribute when it quoted their finding that the
elections were legitimate. The report went on to quote Lev Varshenin, a
reporter and commentator for the Israeli Russian-language paper Vesty, who
is described as "director of the analytic branch of the institute," as
having stated, in a press conference in Ukraine, "The observers reached
the conclusion that it can be said that the elections met the standards of
democracy."
If the observers from Israeli found departures from the
norm, they were seen only in western Ukraine, the area most closely linked
with Europe, and where the opposition candidate, Yushchenko, won a clear
victory. The international community is divided into two camps: Europe and
the United States on one side, Russia and Israel on the other. According
to this pattern, the voting by the former Ukrainians in Israel was also
surprising: 80 percent of the 3,000 voters here, the highest number of any
Western country, cast their ballots for Yanukovich, the candidate who is
supported by Russia.
In Israel and in the Jewish community of
Ukraine the reports were greeted with astonishment. The big question was
the source of the funding that made possible the large delegation's
lengthy stay in Ukraine. The Israeli Foreign Ministry has completely
dissociated itself from the delegation. MK Michael Nudelman (National
Union), who is chairman of the Israel-Ukraine Parliamentary Association,
sounded angry. "How is it that only our democrats say that the United
States and the European Union are lying, and only Russia and our
delegation are in the right?" he asked. "If Yushchenko becomes president,
what kind of relations will we be able to maintain with his government in
the wake of the delegation's activity?"
MK Roman Bronfman
(Yahad-Meretz), the former political ally of Tsinker, was also concerned.
"I think that the participation of an Israeli delegation in undemocratic
elections whose legitimacy is in doubt, does nothing to enhance Israel's
international image," he said cautiously. "The fact that this is an
unofficial delegation, whose identity is not clear, only heightens the
damage."
Whose money?
The background against which
this problem sprang up is unclear. Tsinker rejects outright any allegation
that the delegation is ideologically or financially beholden to the Russia
of President Vladimir Putin, and says that he received the invitation to
send a delegation of observers from the "Clean Elections" organization.
Tsinker was unable to provide a precise reply about the organization's
identity. "I saw their request in Russian and Ukrainian, and I think it's
a Ukrainian organization," he says. "I don't know exactly who it belongs
to. When I talk to someone, I don't ask about his whole history. I took
someone to arrange all the details, hotels and expenses. I myself did not
enter the financial sphere. All I am interested in is the situation in
Ukraine."
One person who is very upset by the absence of more
information is the chairman of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine, Josef
Zisels. "I have a lot of questions and very few answers," he said by phone
from Kiev. "Who put the delegation together? Who paid the money? I asked
the members of the delegation, but they didn't answer. I asked in the
Israeli Embassy here, and they told me they don't know and they don't want
anything to do with them. I simply don't understand them. After all, it's
absurd that the whole Western world says one thing and only the Israeli
delegation says something else. I asked them about that, too, and they
said they don't see a lot of problems. I don't know how they didn't see
what the others saw. Maybe it has something to do with the source of the
financing, but I don't know."
Zisels related that on the day before
the elections the local television news broadcast a short segment from an
event held at the Russian club in Kiev. The place, officially described as
an intellectual club, is one of the channels of influence of President
Putin in Ukraine. To Zisels' amazement, the faces of Tsinker and Varashnin
also appeared on the screen. "I was stunned," Zisels says. "This club is
known as the place of people who have good relations with [outgoing
Ukraine President] Kuchma, who supports Yanukovich. What were they doing
there?"
Even if the astonishment expressed by Zisels (who supports
Yushchenko) is a vestige of Soviet paranoia, the fact remains that the
delegation from Israel left scorched earth in Ukraine. "It is a total
disgrace," says Dr. Alex Feldman of the Tel Aviv-based Mutagim Institute.
He is a permanent observer of elections in the republics of the former
Soviet Union, on behalf of the association of parliaments in Europe. This
time he was connected to the Tsinker delegation for technical reasons but
was not an integral part of it. "It's not the whole delegation that spoke
in this way, but a few people who are not very smart," he said on his
return to Israel. "I am convinced that the official report that will be
written will be different from these statements." And no wonder.