Ukraine – Yushchenko: Anti-Semitic acts in my country are marginal

Ukrainian President Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko told the Israel Council on Foreign Relations of the World Jewish Congress that the number of anti-Semitic incidents in his country is minimal and sporadic.

In a speech to committee members, Yushchenko reviewed the ties between the Jewish and Ukrainian people, and said the two nations have friendly relations and a shared history.

With regard to the incidence of anti-Semitism, the president said, "there are those instances, and we are dealing with them. People who have expressed themselves in an anti-Semitism manner have stood trial and have even been punished, but we must treat this unemotionally and remember that they are marginal."

Professor Dina Porat, head of the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University disagreed with Yushchenko and said that anti-Semitism is still a centrak problem in the Ukrainian society, and in the past year 183 anti-Semitic acts were recorded.

According to statistics, Porat maintains, this is a rising phenomenon.

Source: www.haaretz.com

Date: Nov. 15, 2007

By Anshel Pfeffer

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