Israeli President Reuven Rivlin cut short his official visit to Ukraine following the death of former Israeli President Shimon Peres on Sept. 28. Initially, Rivlin planned to stay for several days to participate in the commemoration of the 100,000 victims — mostly Jews — killed by Nazi German soldiers at Babyn Yar ravine in Kyiv.
After almost 70 years of public service to Israel, Peres died at age 93. He had been hospitalized since Sept. 13 after suffering a stroke.
The Polish-born Peres was one of the last founding fathers of the Jewish state. He served twice as prime minister and also as president, from 2007 to 2014. He shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin “for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East.”
Peres also visited Ukraine on occasion and was considered a friend of the nation.
“Middle East was not a dream land, but it was the land that we had dreamt about,” said Peres in a speech during the Yalta European Strategy conference in Kyiv last year, when he called Ukraine one of the most important agricultural countries in the world. He spoke at the YES annual meetings three times — in 2011, 2013, 2015.
Victor Pinchuk, the Ukrainian businessman who founded the YES forum, recalled Peres’ first appearance at the conference.
“With his first words, the room fell silent. You felt how history had entered the room. He spoke about Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill, and he could speak about them because he was on their level. He had witnessed it all and risen to his own level long time ago. I know how many participants had goose bumps throughout his speech. I thought this was a moment that could never be repeated,” he said.
Pinchuk described Peres as a deeply caring and energetic person, true visionary and the wisest man he had known.
“He was a real friend of Ukraine. He was a man of peace and he would have wished for the war to end. But he knew that Ukrainians defend their freedom, their values, their right to live as they want, and that nobody can take this away from us. With his presence he made our conference and Ukraine a center of intellectual energy,” Pinchuk said.
Reuven Rivlin’s sorrows
On Sept. 26, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin arrived in Kyiv to commemorate victims of Babyn Yar.
In his emotional speech at Ukrainian parliament on Sept. 27, Rivlin shared a story of his wife Nechama’s family. Her mother, Drora Kayla Mints, was born in Bilozirka village in western Ukraine, and her father Mendi Shulman was from Maryina Horka village in Belarus.
Both of them were among the pioneers who came to Palestine-Eretz Israel in the mid-1920s and together with other Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union established an agricultural cooperative where Nechama and her sister Varda were born. The couple lost all their families in Second World War.
Reuven Rivlin read out the names of Mints and Shulman relatives who were shot dead by Nazis and lamented that, unlike them, most victims of Babyn Yar remain unidentified.
“Nobody knows who they were. Thousands of Jewish, Ukrainian, Roma people were shot and buried under the open sky, and nobody tried to document their names. They fell into oblivion and were erased from memory,” said Rivlin.
He said that 1.5 million Jews were killed on the territory of Ukraine during the Holocaust. He also said Ukrainians, including soldiers of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, known as OUN, participated in Nazi crimes by exposing Jews to Germans.
Iryna Gerashchenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian Parliament called Rivlin’s words about OUN “an incorrect and undiplomatic account on tragic pages in Ukrainian history” and expressed regret that he used clichés of Soviet propaganda, which had concealed Babyn Yar events for many years.
“I’m sorry that the president of Israel didn’t hear previous speeches about ordinary Ukrainians who risked their lives and lives of their children to save Jewish families and children,” she wrote on Facebook.
Future Israel – Ukraine cooperation
Besides the 75th commemoration of Babyn Yar, Rivlin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko marked the 25th anniversary or Ukrainian-Israeli relations.
“We mourn the past, but must also speak about the present and look to the future,” said Rivlin, following the philosophy of Peres, who said that the past is dead and the future is fresh and demanding.
At a press briefing on Sept. 27, Rivlin backed Israel’s support of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine and Russia’s withdrawal from Crimea. Both countries also committed to strengthening economic and cultural relations.
Thus, they agreed to advance negotiations on a free trade agreement between the two countries. Poroshenko invited Israeli investors to get involved in large-scale privatization projects in Ukraine. Finally, he announced that Ukrainian Culture Days will be held in Israel in December.
However, the issue with extradition from Israel of two former ministers from ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s government remains open. Ukraine’s General Prosecutor’s Office sent a request to Israeli authorities to extradite ex-minister of energy and coal industry Eduard Stavitsky, who had acquired Israeli citizenship and changed his name. Dmytro Tabachnyk, the ex-minister of education, was put on an international wanted list and allegedly has been hiding in Israel.
