How Putin’s Aggression Has Destroyed Ukrainian Jewry, with Sam Sokol

Five and a half weeks into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, AIC asked journalist Sam Sokol what the war was doing to Ukraine’s Jews.

As AIC’s listing put it, Russian aggression in 2014 had already displaced Jewish communities across eastern Ukraine. In 2022 a war launched to restore parts of the Soviet Empire was destroying them across the whole country.

Sokol reported for Haaretz and had written Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews.

The webinar ran on Sunday, April 3, 2022, with the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation and St. Louis Friends of Israel. Cheryl Dorchinsky opened it, and Stuart of St. Louis Friends of Israel introduced Sokol. AIC has since cut three of his answers into short clips: why Ukraine’s Jews don’t just leave, the 73 percent of Ukrainians who voted for a Jewish comedian, and the Odessa pogrom that never happened.

Cheryl closed with an ask closer to home. Georgia’s HB 1274, the bill to adopt the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, was due for a vote the next day, and she asked everyone to push for a yes.