Israel called Jews to leave Ukraine for fear of Russia invading, but very few went. Now they are part of a stream of refugees out of Ukraine to strengthen a revived Israel. The Bible allows some conclusions that are likely extremely controversial. I am going to develop a view point that may be misconstrued regarding the great movement of people in the fall of nations and the Hope of Israel, Jews and the Christian gospel.
The general understanding of the western world has so far departed from God that the Bible is controversial. It is sometimes thought anti-Semitic.
Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:7-9)
So in the following we try and let the Bible speak for itself beside events as Jews now leave Ukraine for Israel. Due to a lack of any history being taught and overly zealous Jewish education, a hollowed out simplistic view of the Holocaust is often the only history someone may know. But that history has a complex context in two thousand year persecution of Jews and the six thousand year plan of God.
Gospel: Resurrection of the Fathers of Israel in Israel
The Apostle Paul to the Jews of Rome,
But when the Jews (of the Roman area of Judea in context) spake against it (the Gospel), I was constrained to appeal unto Caesar; not that I had ought to accuse my nation of. For this cause therefore have I called for you, to see you, and to speak with you: because that for the hope of Israel I am bound with this chain. (Acts 28:19-20)
What was the Hope of Israel? Paul says,
“Now I stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers: Unto which promise our twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hope to come. For which hope's sake, king Agrippa, I am accused of the Jews. Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?” (Acts 26:6-8)
The hope of the fathers was about raising the dead. Paul said Christ told him to preach:
“To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Adversary unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.” (Acts 26:18)
Where was the inheritance of the faithful to be?
By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. (Hebrews 11:8)
Where was this place? It is today called Israel. When would Abraham receive his inheritance? After! After what? – his death! (see Hebrews 11 that confirms this). So why was it not incredible to Paul that God will raise the dead? Because it was the hope of Abraham, Isaac & Israel! They needed to live again to obtain land they were promised as an inheritance after their death! I say nothing but what is written.
The Nation of Israel began in Exile & Resurrection
There is more:
the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto your seed (descendants) have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates: (Genesis 15:18)
When were these descendants given it? After being strangers in exile.
The LORD said unto Abram, “Know of a surety that your seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance. (Genesis 15:13-14)
Note that the Hebrews were slaves oppressed exiles, as a people effectively 'dead' in Egypt. The nation of Israel was formed by coming out of exile and rising up as a firstborn nation (born in a day) while causing the destruction of Egypt. Egypt was led by one who did not know Joseph, or the God of Israel.
The Jews as descendants of Abraham, Isaac & Israel took the name Israel and gave that name to both their nation and their land which they were given by God after the exodus from Egypt. The term Jews came from the tribe of Judah the son of Israel that named the region of Judah (or in Roman times Judea).
For example the people of Danmark were Dani from Dan who settled the land. Most Danes will have ancestry they know of in one small area of Denmark over four hundred years with the sense these ancestors have been there since recorded time began. Those who leave Denmark permanently to settle other places may cease to be Danes, but many even after a few generations regard the land as their place of origin and the term Danish as their identity – this is to give a non-emotive context.
After more generations than Danes can number, Jews in the land of Israel are scattered by their God Yahweh Elohim He who will be Mighty Ones for sin!
Behold, the eyes of the Lord GOD are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth; saving that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the LORD. For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth. All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, which say, The evil shall not overtake nor prevent us. (Amos 9:8-10)
The People of Israel go into in Exile Again
Jews are sent captive into exile into Babylon which becomes Medo-Persia, and many return to re-establish worship and even resurrected independence at the time of the Maccabees.
But it was written in the Holy Book that they would be sifted among all nations. What does 'sifted' mean? Does it look like Jewish history? The wandering Jew, no sooner settling in a place than being expelled? Jews were expelled from Rome AD 19 & 41-53, From Alexandra 38AD. They were expelled from Judea their homeland in 73AD, 415 from Alexandria, 612 from Visigoth kingdom, 629 from their homeland in the Galilee and also Medina, 1012 from Mainz, from the Rhine and Jerusalem their homeland during the Crusades, 1254 from France and again 1306, 1322, 1359 and 1394, in 1288 from Naples leading to utter destruction of all Jewish presence in 1293, in 1290 from England, in 1294 from Berne, 1360 from Hungary, 1420 from Austria, 1442 from Bavaria, 1491 from Ravenna, in 1492 famously from Spain and 1496 from Portugal, 1499 from Nuremberg, 1526 from Braitslavia, 1551 Bavaria, 1593 from the Papal states of Italy, 1597 Milan, 1679 Yemen, 1683 Haiti, 1714 Bavaria, in 1791 forced into Russian Pale, in 1862 expelled from Tennessee, Mississippi & Kentucky, in 1917 Jaffa and from 1933-1957 expelled from most of Europe and in 1947 from Egypt, and in 1948 from most of the Arab world. And after the Holocaust Jews returning to Ukraine were killed by Ukrainians. In all this sifting, they were persecuted and forced to exit on pain of death or required to convert. The sifting would ensure any who did not have faith, trust or identity in the Torah would convert and assimilate. Only those who clung to the Torah would remain a separated distinct people.
The purpose of the sifting of Israel so that nothing would be lost was because the body politic was to be Resurrected!
Israel called to go up (Aliyah): National resurrection
Ezekiel in vision sees his nation as dead and as dried bones, then sees it revived to live again (Chapter 37). It was written that all nations would witness a regathering,
Hear the word of the LORD, O ye nations, and declare it in the isles afar off, and say, He that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him, as a shepherd doth his flock. (Jeremiah 31:10)
A shepherd rounds up even stubborn sheep that strays, and many shepherds today use dogs. Is there any sense at all that Jews have any choice in the matter? How do you read it?
I scattered them among the heathen (nations), and they were dispersed through the countries: according to their doings I judged them. When they entered unto the heathen (nations), whither they went, they profaned my holy name, when they said to them, 'These are the people of the LORD, and are gone forth out of his land.' But I had pity for mine holy name...Therefore Thus saith the Lord GOD; I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy name's sake, which ye have profaned among the heathen, whither ye went. I will sanctify my great name.. and the nations shall know that I am the LORD, saith the Lord GOD For I will take you from among the nations, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. (Ezekiel 36:19-24)
As my Hebrew teacher in Israel said to me – 'woe, we are chosen!' It was written before it happened.
Woe to the Nations
But woe also to the nations, as many people of the nations will die for the regathering.
For I am the LORD thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour: I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee. Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee: therefore will I give men for thee, and people for thy life. Fear not: for I am with thee: I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west; I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth; (Isaiah 43:3-6)
Do we comprehend it? Just as Egyptians died in Egypt at the Exodus, where many died not just the firstborn but many also of the plagues, so a plurality of people of the nations would die so that they give up the Jews to go to Israel. The Israelites are called to go back to Israel, whether they wish to or not. There is no cost too high to call them back. So we cannot fail to notice it, the matter of Jews returning to Israel is controversial. Danes of the Danish diaspora going back to Denmark pose no issue (not that many do, as the taxes are so high more Danes live outside Denmark than in it). Many will even say that Jews only came to Israel because of the Holocaust, ignoring that the other half of the people of the refounded Israeli nation came from expulsion from Arab lands in 1948 due to the anti-Jewish emotions at the time of the Israeli war of independence. Truly many men were given and the lives of many people were sacrificed for the life of re-formed Israel!
Just how many men given may be understood in that the millions who died fighting the First World War that achieved the end of the Empires of Europe and the utter end of the Ottoman Empire for what looks as the sole significant outcome of the founding of the basis for the homeland of the Jews in the new Middle Eastern order in the 1922 San Remo Convention that ratifies the Balfour Declaration! What other significant outcome was there? – was the blood soaked fields of Flanders of any import in the context of the European Union? Even the borders of the Middle East that emerged then have proven not to have endured. Show me another enduring significant outcome.
Just how many people are given for the life of Israel, might be understood in that the only enduring significant outcome of the second world war was the rise of America and Russia and the birth of Israel, where America and Russia might be polarised about the issue of Israel in the Middle East.
The Jews of Germany from 1918 to 1930s were the most assimilated and emaciated of all Jews in the world, so they would not go to Israel. They were told in writing in their Holy book, which any Rabbi could read, not to fear to go as Yahweh Elohim was with them when they were called to go. But they would not go. So the world went to war and a not insubstantial remnant went to Israel.
Less well known is the fate of the Jews of Ukraine at the hands of the Ukrainians. From Israel National News
The problem with expressing empathy for the Ukraine
The Ukrainian people played a willing and major role in the destruction of European Jewry before, during, and after the Holocaust.
Jews in the Ukraine today generally do not face acts of violence or public condemnations of Israel, although there are reports of looting and threats in Zhitomyr. Instead, “Antisemitism in Ukraine exists in its old ‘traditional’ and cultural form: the notion that Jews control all money, the media and government, they are greedy, murdered Jesus, and ‘suck our blood,’” said Samuel Kliger, AJC's Director of Russian and Eurasian Affairs. The Eastern Orthodox Church of the Ukraine tends to reinforce classical beliefs of anti-Semitism. It has never expunged the deicide charge from its doctrine and sells copies of the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion in gift shops.
For many Jews, the Ukraine evokes memories of pogroms, antisemitism and Nazi collaboration. Between 1.2 million and 1.6 million Jews were killed in the Ukraine during the Holocaust. Moreover, Ukraine has been reluctant to reckon with its role in the Holocaust, including the massacres of Jews by Nazis with the help of eager local Ukrainian collaborators. Almost a million Ukrainian Jews were killed between 1941 to 1944 and buried in thousands of mass graves, including 33,771 Ukrainian Jews who were systematically shot dead and executed by machine-gun fire in a two-day massacre in a ravine just outside Kyiv known as Babyn Yar.
This sordid chapter in Ukrainian history is left out of the public discourse, creating a general apathy about the Holocaust. (Ed. note: When I headed a youth village whose students were mostly Russian immigrants, not one of the highschoolers from Kyiv had ever heard of the Babyn Yar massacre).
Alongside that apathy, Ukrainian lawmakers have pushed to celebrate some Nazi collaborators as war heroes, trumpeting their anti-Communist battles while ignoring their complicity in Holocaust crimes. The Ukraine continues to resist joining the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the 32-country organization that coordinates international educational efforts. It also has not adopted the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism.
In the early 1920s, thousands of Jewish child refugees flooded into Moscow from the Ukraine, fleeing a terrifying series of pogroms. Legendary Jewish artist Marc Chagall remembered giving art lessons to some of the refugees at a Jewish orphanage outside the Soviet capital. He recalled the horrifying atrocities they spoke about — their parents murdered, their sisters raped and slain, and the children themselves chased out in the cold, threadbare and starving. Unlike the Holocaust, this earlier wave of anti-Semitic violence has largely been forgotten by history. Yet at the time, it was front-page news.
From 1918 to 1921, more than 1,100 pogroms killed over 100,000 Jews in an area that is part of present-day Ukraine.
One of the earliest recorded pogroms, perhaps the largest single mass murder of Jews in modern history up to that point in time was the pogrom of Proskuriv, a Ukrainian town on February 14, 1919 with 911 listed deaths which historians estimate is only one-third of the actual number of Jews murdered.
The Nikolaev Massacre was a massacre which resulted in the deaths of 35,782 Soviet citizens, most of whom were Jews, during World War II, on September 16–30, 1941. It took place in and around the Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv (also known by its Russian name, Nikolaev) and the neighbouring city of Kherson in (current) southern Ukraine
Untold numbers of Ukrainians were collaborators: According to German historian Dieter Pohl, around 100,000 Ukrainians joined police units that provided key assistance to the Nazis. Many others staffed the local bureaucracies or lent a helping hand during mass shootings of Jews. Ukrainians, such as the infamous Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka, were also among the guards who manned the German Nazi death camps. According to The Simon Wiesenthal Center (in January 2011) "Ukraine has, to the best of our knowledge, never conducted a single investigation of a local Nazi war criminal, let alone prosecuted a Holocaust perpetrator.”
My father, Joseph Jager, of blessed memory, a Holocaust survivor, was born in Košice, Slovakia. His family had originally emigrated from the Ukraine before he was born. After the war, he had heard from distant family members, that Ukrainian Jewish survivors who had returned from the concentration camps to their villages in the Ukraine were murdered by local Ukrainians after expecting to be given their homes back, now occupied by local Ukrainians.
In recent years, the Ukrainian government has not objected to Israel being singled out and condemned by the United Nations and has voted on numerous votes against Israel.
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This has a disturbing context. Many are trying to silence any investigation of Putin's allegation that he is fighting Nazis. A documentary is being censored that notes the role of the USA in funding and protecting Ukrainian Nazis in covert struggle against the Soviets from 1947. The pattern was spotted in Canada of all places where revealing photos of high profile connections to Ukrainian Neo Nazis are rapidly deleted
Al Jazeera notes the strong role of the Neo Nazis in being part of Ukraine's military particularly in fighting the Russian separatists.
Back in 2018 Max Blumenthal fretted that the US was funding the Neo Nazis battalions
Haaretz features activists that took Israel to Court because Israel in arming Ukraine was arming the Nazis
Ukraine was benefiting from Jewish life, when in more recent times in all the diaspora Jews are under pressure to leave due to all forms of anti-Semitism, the most significant perhaps being the Jews of France, where the pressure is from the French acceptance of Islamic men who will even kill themselves. The prosperity of the nation of Chile is to be taken away to raise and anti Semite to encourage Jews to leave. But the anti semitism in Ukraine was not heeded.
The call to leave Ukraine - Again
We know that Israelis understand the phenomena now as when Russia came to the doors of Ukraine the Israelis called to the not insignificant number of Jews of Ukraine to not repeat the mistake of the German Jews and to instead leave Ukraine. Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef, "Our brothers and sisters in Israel in Ukraine. At such times [when] the sounds of war are heard, it is fitting for every religious Jew to hasten his journey to the Holy Land." (jpost)
But very few not even a few hundred came. Israel talked of preparing an airlift.
However, the report stressed that despite the rising threat of war, there has been no significant rise in Ukrainian Jews seeking to immigrate.(unitedwithisrael)
At the time the call came from Israel for Jews of Ukraine to come up, Russia may not have invaded, the heart of the Jewish President might not have been hardened to reject, but rather negotiate.
But Jews would not make Aliyah.
Even Israelis working in Ukraine were resisting extraction.
But now people are fleeing and some few hundreds dying in a war in Ukraine daily that is displacing Jews (and even Ukrainians) to Israel. Ministers expect Israel will receive 100,000 Ukrainian refugees.unitedwithisrael Bennet said Israel is “a refuge for Jews in distress. This is our purpose. The State of Israel has done this more than once in its history and we will carry out this sacred task this time as well.”worldisraelnews
Some who fled to Moldova were already thinking to go to Israel. Jews are reluctantly departing from Odessa. Though Russia may value the city due to Catherine the Great, if the pattern we see extends to Odessa, if Jews hope to go back, I suspect the city will be destroyed enough so they will be prevented from going back even if they desire to do so. The Kharkiv Choral Synagogue, Kharkiv’s Great Synagogue, the largest in Ukraine and among the biggest in Europe has suffered damage from bombing already. (unitedwithisrael)
They say they are old and cannot go, but they may find they cannot stay either. Commenting on the departure of Bila Tserkva’s Jews, Bleich wrote: “Another Jewish community ceases to exist in Ukraine. (algemeiner)
In addition as a bonus even Russians are returning to Israel due to changes in conditions in Russia due to sanctions, reduction of freedoms andfear of where the situation is going. Whether Israel will benefit (or not benefit) from Oligarchs possibly arriving to reshape Israel may be debated.
In addition Goy Ukrainians as real refugees to Israel reduces the power of Arabs playing 'refugees' the PA calling it a disaster. Jews helped an Arab doctor fleeing Ukraine return to the PA with a much better attitude.
Some are saying they will go back and rebuild, but they cannot have thought – what will they go back to? What will they rebuild with? Russia has bombed numerous cities – all strategic cities- and the damage is widespread and includes essential infrastructure. It takes months to get power and water back on and years to rebuild buildings – will people wait or will they move where there is a job and their children learn to speak already another language and have friends. What do they rebuild cities with - US debt?
The destruction of Ukraine
One of the most perceptive reactions to the Russian invasion of Ukraine was Robert Israel Kabakoff's No tears for Ukraine. None.
Many Jews seem more upset by Russians killing Ukrainians over the past several days than they are about Ukrainians killing Jews for the last several centuries…. A festival of obscenity, murder, rape, butchery, burning, looting, destruction and robbery, targeting an unarmed, helpless, civilian, minority population, i.e., “the Jews,” again and again, a veritable national past time.
In my ledger, that account has not been settled, so it remains open.
Shall the children pay for the fathers sins? No (Ezekiel 18) – But if they have not repented of them then the central revelation of the character of the Mighty One (El) of Israel is “I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;” (Exodus 20:5)
No nation has ever prospered by evicting or persecuting their Jews. In recent times Britain suffered 70 years for the betrayal of the Balfour Declaration even to nearly losing nationhood in being chained to Europe. It is written that there will be an utter end to all nations that Jews were sent and sifted among.
Therefore fear thou not, O my servant Jacob, saith the LORD; neither be dismayed, O Israel: for, lo, I will save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and shall be in rest, and be quiet, and none shall make him afraid. For I am with thee, saith the LORD, to save thee: though I make a full end of all nations where I have scattered you, yet will I not make a full end of thee: but I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished. (Jeremiah 30:10-11)
These words are tough. The truth of a matter is not dependent on whether we may like it or not. These words have been translated into nearly every national language. They have been much read. Jeremiah is not an obscure prophet. Is there to be anything much left of Ukraine – even if the war stops tomorrow? Will there be a full end of Ukraine? According to Jeremiah – yes. Whether now or later we don't know.
When the Great Power of the Universe mentions Egypt the superpower of the day which was all-but destroyed and says of Israel “I will give men for you, and people for your life!” nations might well fear the power of the God of the Bible in what He does so that the nations know his power as a potter over the clay of all people of the planet (Isaiah 64:8, Jeremiah 18:6). The Bible is consistent People do not have absolute free will, let alone the chosen people, they have the ability to exercise will and chose God-given options. Paul might well have been speaking of Zelenskyy, who has been obtuse to the point of densness to any compromise for peace as Ukrainians are scattered and killed.
So then it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shews mercy. For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in you, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why have you made me thus? (Romans 9:16-20)
Apart from showing God's great power to mess up nations and empires and destroy them, why are Jews called back to Israel now?
After long years of scattering, it is a time of gathering.
It therefore is time to raise the faithful fathers of Israel to eternal life that they may inherit the land promised to them. But why did the God of Abraham make that promise of the land?
All the earth filled with The Glory
At a point when the God of Israel is unhappy a the great sin of Israel the great plan of the God of Israel is revealed to Moses. Moses says
“Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people according unto the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.”
Yahweh said, I have pardoned according to thy word: But as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD. (Numbers 14:19-21)
We are then told in detail what this glory is,
Because all those men which have seen my glory, and my miracles, which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tempted me now these ten times, and have not hearkened to my voice; Surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked me see it: But my servant Caleb, because he had another spirit with him, and hath followed me fully, him will I bring into the land whereinto he went; and his seed shall possess it. (Numbers 14:22-24)
The Glory is the actions fulfilling the promises to the Fathers in the lives of those with a good spirit that follow the God of Israel fully, until the earth is filled with resurrected faithful people of a good spirit who come from exile to follow the God of Israel fully. If the earth is to be filled with the God of Israel's Glory why bring Jews to Israel, apart from it being the land promised to the Fathers eternally? Is it just to gather a family together?
In that time shall the present be brought unto Yahweh of hosts of a people scattered and peeled, and from a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden under foot, whose land the rivers have spoiled, to the place of the name of Yahweh of hosts, the mount Zion. (Isaiah 18:7)
Where are Jews to be brought to? Zion. Israel, is the nation named after the fathers, but Jews know very well and indeed all the world knows very well the place of the name of Yahweh of Hosts, as they call the movement for Jews to return to Israel 'Zionism'. Jews are now being bought back as Israel is the place of the name of Yahweh of Hosts. He gives his Holy Land to whom He choses, even if they do not wish to go there.
Therefore thus saith the Lord Yahweh, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste (or be ashamed). (Isaiah 28:16)
For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: (Romans 11:25-26)
The foundation has been laid, the fullness of time of the nations is now complete and the sifted and peeled people have been brought so more than half of Jews are in Israel many on the now fruitful Mountains of Israel, and so more are at hand to come (Ezekiel 36:8). The nation is resurrected from those who have known exile and been refined in faith by experience. Now those from the North from Kievian Rus, Ukraine, are to be 'given up' (Isaiah 43:6) and brought to build up Zion.
When we see this then we know that soon the God of Israel will appear visibly in Power and Glory again in Zion.
But thou, O Yahweh, shalt endure for ever; and thy remembrance unto all generations. Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion: for the time to favour her, yea, the set time, is come. For thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof. So the nations shall fear the name of Yahweh, and all the kings of the earth thy glory. When Yahweh shall build up Zion, he shall appear in his glory. (Psalm 102:12-16)
