A few days ago, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the Knesset asking that Israel stand with Ukraine against the Russian invasion of his country.
He cited the Ukrainian Jewish colonist Golda Mabovitch (later Golda Meir), Israel’s former prime minister, who denied that the Palestinian people ever existed. Zelensky spoke of how Ukraine finds itself today in the same situation as Israel, namely that both countries seem to have horrible neighbours who “want to see us dead”.
Indeed, Israel has been most concerned about Ukrainian Jews, even before the Russian intervention began.
As early as January 2022, Israel began planning to transfer Ukrainian Jews to become colonists in the land of the Palestinians. Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Immigrant Absorption proclaimed: “We call on the Jews of Ukraine to immigrate to Israel – your home.”
The refugees/colonists began to arrive in early March, receiving preferential treatment, while Ukrainians who could not prove their Jewishness according to Israel’s racist criteria for refugees face myriad difficulties.
Meanwhile, the World Zionist Organization’s Settlement Division has begun preparing 1000 housing units for Ukrainian Jews on stolen and occupied Palestinian and Syrian land in the occupied West Bank and the occupied Golan Heights.
These Ukrainian refugees/colonists, however, are not the first Ukrainian Jews to colonise Palestine. Ukrainian Jews have played a pioneering role in the colonisation of Palestine since 1882.
A pioneering role
The story of southern Ukraine and of Ukrainian Jews is a principal part of the history of the colonisation of Palestine. It begins in the late 18th century when Catherine the Great (a German Lutheran who converted to Orthodoxy to become Tsarina) defeated the Ottomans in the Russo-Ottoman war of 1768-1774.
This led to the signing of the Kuchuk Kainarji peace treaty, and lost the Ottomans sovereignty over the northern Caucasus, including the Crimea and Kuban regions, saddling Istanbul with thousands of Tatar refugees. Catherine immediately embarked on the settler-colonisation of these areas.
The first wave of Russian settlers arrived in 1778 and elicited an immediate revolt by the Crimean Tatars, which Catherine put down before she formally annexed the Crimea in 1783.
The Russian-Ottoman war of 1787-1792 led to another Ottoman defeat and loss of territory, including the Sanjak of Ozi on the northern parts of the Black Sea, adjacent to Crimea. Russification of what was now called “New Russia” ensued.
The Black Sea Ottoman town of Hacibey was expanded into a new settler-colony established by the Russians and named “Odessa” in 1794, on the mistaken presumption that the ancient Greek colony of Odessos had existed there, which ironically it did not.
Catherine’s philhellenist christening of Hacibey with a Greek name was intended to “dazzle everyone with the brilliant achievements of the Great Catherine… [and] the first step toward ridding Europe of the Mohammedans and conquering Istanbul.”
On the Crimean Peninsula, Catherine established the city of Sebastopol in 1783 (also christening it with a Greek name) on the site of the Tatar town of Akhtiar and renamed the Tatar town of Aqmescit (meaning White or Western Mosque) Simferopol in 1784.
Crimea itself was renamed the “Tauride Governorate” in honour of the ancient Greek Tauris. Other Greek-named colonies included Olviopol, Tiraspol, Melitopol, Nikopol, Grigoriopol, Aleksopol, and Mariupol.