London, July 21 (RHC)-- According to political observers, the weapons industry relishes military conflicts around the world because they generate huge profits for them.  And the war in Ukraine is creating an arms sales bonanza and Israel's weapons producers are cashing in.

Only last month, a senior executive at Israel's largest Arms Company, Elbit Systems, claimed that interest in the company was at an all time peak.  These unscrupulous Israeli weapons companies trade on the fact that many of their weapons systems are battle tested in Palestine and Syria.

Ukraine, especially Odessa, was a key locus of the rise of the Zionist movement in the twentieth century.
The Zionist movement traced back to Ukraine, and its ties to Ukrainian Nazis.  

Historians note that Zionism has deep roots in Ukraine.  Jews are a significant element in the settler colony of Odessa, along with a range of non Jewish colonizers they settled on land from which Muslims had been expelled in the settlement around Haji Bay in 1794.

Ukraine, especially Odessa, was a key locus of the rise of the Zionist movement in the 20th century. The revisionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky, hailed from Odessa.  The apparent elective affinity between Zionism and Ukrainian nationalism is seen in the relationship between Jabotinsky and Symon Petliura, the leader of the Ukrainian National Army, the UNA.

Petliura was a proto fascist and his UNA was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Jewish civilians.  In 1921, Jabotinsky signed an agreement with Petliura. This was a complicated and embarrassing episode for the Zionist movement; a famous Soviet cartoon at the time depicted Jabotinsky, weeping at Petliura's grave.

Zionist ambivalence about Ukrainian nationalism continues to this day. A number of Ukrainian Zionists have warned of the rise of Nazi movements in Ukraine. They have pointed to the adoration of Stepan Bandera, the heir of Petliura, as leader of the Ukrainian nationalists.

Eduard Dolinsky, Director of the Kyiv based Ukrainian Jewish Committee, has been intensely critical of Ukrainian efforts to rehabilitate nationalist Holocaust era Nazi collaborators, as a result, he has faced threats from nationalists.

Leading Zionists in the Ukraine, such as the oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi, funded Dolinsky as well as creating his own right wing militias. He also gave funds to the Azov battalion.

In April 2014 Kolomoisky posed, proudly wearing a t shirt combining the Jewish emblem of the menorah along with the Ukrainian Ultra nationalist symbol of a trident, all in red and black, beneath it said 'Judo Bandera', Jewish Bandera.

It’s no surprise therefore that some Ukrainian Jews joined Azov, and up to forty fought with the battalion in Mariupol in 2022.

In the Zionist movement, more broadly, there has been a concerted turning away from the approach of Dolinsky to minimize the presence and political influence of Nazis in Ukraine. Zionists are engaging in other words, in Nazi apologism.

In 2019, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was still condemning the extremist Azov battalion, but by April 2022, they had published an interview on their website saying: "there are Neo Nazis in Ukraine, just as there are in the US and in Russia for that matter, but they are a very marginal group with no political influence, and who don't attack Jews or Jewish institutions in Ukraine".

In reality, Nazis infest the governing apparatus, the military, the police and the intelligence services, but the ADL does not care.  It is totally focused on bashing the Palestinians and their defenders.

Odessa was formed and founded as a city once the Russians, under Katherine the Great, had evicted the Ottoman Empire from the settlement which was there.

And the land was, therefore, empty because they got rid of the Ottomans and Muslims, and they sent people to colonize, to settle there. … to be a settler colonists you have to colonize somewhere and you have to settle there as opposed to move from a distance.

The Jews were amongst those who became settler colonists. There were others, there were Germans and various other national groups who became settler colonists there.

But the Zionist hate the idea that Jews were settler colonists in Odessa, which is simply a matter of historical fact, because they think it means that we're suggesting that Jews are always settler colonists, and that would be, for them, some kind of anti semitic draw.

Of course, we're not suggesting that we're suggesting that in a historical period that some Jews went to Odessa and became settler colonists along with others. But of course, the implication of that is that some of the Jews who were settler colonists in Odessa, of course their descendants went on to become settler colonists to Palestine.