By JTA August 23, 2023

Andrew Lapin | Jewish Exponen

Ahead of the first Republican presidential debate, the candidate with the least political experience is making some of the biggest headlines — in part due to his views on Israel.

Vivek Ramaswamy, a 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur who has never held elected office, is seeing growing support for his long-shot candidacy. A recent poll placed him neck-and-neck in second place with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the crowded GOP field, and the RealClearPolitics polling average places him in third.

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Both candidates still lag far behind former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner. But Ramaswamy’s rising numbers mean he will share the center of Wednesday night’s debate stage on Fox News, and a recent memo from a pro-DeSantis Super PAC called on the governor to “take a sledgehammer” to Ramaswamy at the debate. DeSantis and the other hopefuls are expected to attack Ramaswamy’s many unconventional views, including a call to eventually end United States aid to Israel.

The Ohio-born businessman, whose net worth is estimated at more than $600 million, has based his campaign largely around tackling “wokeness,” a term that has become shorthand for conservative criticism of progressive values. But he’s also made headlines for more outré proposals, such as a pledge to eliminate the FBI and Department of Education, a call to require civics tests for young voters and a desire to learn “the truth about 9/11.”

Among his policies is a call to phase out U.S. aid to Israel by 2028, which separates him from the largely pro-Israel Republican establishment. Ramaswamy has also drawn attention for criticizing a bill signed by DeSantis that penalizes antisemitic harassment and has called to repeal a law banning religious discrimination in employment.

Before he became a presidential candidate, he was involved in a Jewish society at Yale University and benefited from a fellowship named after the brother of George Soros, the progressive Jewish megadonor.

Here’s what to know about Vivek Ramaswamy and the Jews.

He has floated ending U.S. aid to Israel.

In June, while campaigning in New Hampshire, Ramaswamy suggested that he would be open to ending aid to Israel as “part of a broader disengagement with the Middle East.” He later walked back those comments. But last week, he told actor and podcaster Russell Brand that he does, in fact, want to end U.S. aid to Israel in 2028, the year when the current U.S. commitment to provide $3.8 billion annually to Israel expires.

Ramaswamy said that decision would come as Israel receives recognition from more countries in the Middle East. Israel has signed normalization deals with several states in the region in recent years, a framework called the Abraham Accords, and is now pursuing a treaty with Saudi Arabia. Ramaswamy told the Jewish News Syndicate that he’d also like to spearhead Israeli accords with Indonesia and Oman.

“Come 2028, that additional aid won’t be necessary in order to still have the kind of stability that we’d actually have in the Middle East by having Israel more integrated in with its partners,” he said on a show Brand hosts on the video platform Rumble.

In advocating an end to the aid package, Ramaswamy has perhaps unintentionally aligned himself with the progressive left, whose members have increasingly supported conditioning or halting aid to Israel due to its treatment of Palestinians. Recently, New York Times columnist Nick Kristof argued that the aid dollars would be better spent helping poorer countries. And some voices on the right have also called for ending aid to Israel, arguing that it makes Israel beholden to the United States.

But those views are not shared by Ramaswamy’s most prominent Republican rivals. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has criticized his position on aid to Israel, while DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence have made support for Israel a cornerstone of their campaigns.

The Republican Jewish Coalition has also implored Ramaswamy to change course. Matt Brooks, the group’s CEO, wrote in an open letter that “it makes much more sense to keep Israel in the family of countries with an interest in buying and using American capabilities” — which the aid package requires.

On other Israel-related policies, Ramaswamy is more in line with his party’s mainstream. Alongside supporting the Abraham Accords, he praised Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and has attacked U.S. funding for programs benefiting Palestinians.

He says ‘donors’ are behind legislation combating antisemitism.

While Ramaswamy has called antisemitism “a symptom of something that is broken in our society,” he has spoken harshly about a law DeSantis enacted that penalizes antisemitic acts in Florida.

In June, he tweeted that DeSantis’ signing of the law, which criminalizes the distribution of antisemitic flyers on private property, was done “at his donors’ request.” After blowback from the conservative commentariat over his characterization of the law, he tweeted again about it — this time taking aim at “the censorship czars at Twitter” for appending a note to the tweet, which he partially blamed on “DeSantis megadonor David Sacks,” who is Jewish.

In a subsequent interview with Jewish Insider, Ramaswamy said the DeSantis bill didn’t pass his own “litmus test” because he saw it as “a viewpoint discrimination law.” He added that “bad speech” has to be countered with “free speech and open debate.” He pointed to a famous Supreme Court case permitting neo-Nazis to march in the heavily Jewish town of Skokie, Illinois, as an example of a bigotry-related issue that was “decided correctly.”

“I stand fiercely against bigotry and hatred and harassing speech,” he added.

He was in a Jewish leadership society at Yale.

Ramaswamy told JNS that he was one of the “key members” of Shabtai, a Jewish alternative to the “secret societies” at Yale University, where he attended law school. He said the society’s co-founder and rabbinical adviser, Rabbi Shmully Hecht, is a mentor of his.

Shabtai was founded at Yale in 1996 and receives extensive financial support from Israeli-American tech mogul Benny Shabtai, a major backer of Friends of the Israel Defense Forces. Though founded on Jewish values, the society has a diverse membership. It also counts Democratic New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who himself ran for president in 2020, among its alumni.

Ramaswamy describes his time with Shabtai as formative, and the group has touted him as an alum. Hecht did not respond to a request for comment.

He claims Ukraine’s Jewish president is mistreating Jews.

While Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky has earned admirers across the Western world for his conduct in his country’s war against Russia, Ramaswamy isn’t impressed.

The candidate told Jewish Insider that Zelensky — whose Jewish identity has been targeted by Russian propaganda — has himself mistreated Jews in Ukraine. Ramaswamy did not offer evidence to support that claim, which echoes claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin made to justify his invasion of Ukraine last year.

“I would just say that there are open questions about his treatment of religious minorities, including but not limited to Jews in Ukraine, that I think should be among the reasons we should stop short of holding him out as some sort of hero,” the candidate said. He did not provide examples when asked, though he said that Zelensky’s merging of all Ukrainian TV channels into a single station last year and his dissolution of political parties with ties to Russia would “create the risk for” antisemitism.

Ramaswamy is not the only Republican to criticize U.S. support for Ukraine, a stance that Trump and DeSantis have also questioned. He told Jewish Insider that he sees “protecting Israel” as one of the United States’ “far higher priorities.”

He wants to repeal a civil rights-era law forbidding religious discrimination in employment.

“Reverse racism is racism,” Ramaswamy recently stated in a list of “truths” he said were fundamental to his campaign. To that end, he has promised to repeal Executive Order 11246, a more-than-50-year-old law forbidding federal contractors from engaging in employment discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion or national origin. “Time to restore colorblind meritocracy once and for all,” Ramaswamy wrote in the New York Post.

Signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 as part of his flurry of civil rights legislation, the order has long been associated with affirmative action, a longtime bugbear of the right. But the order has also been drawn on by Jewish groups to protest employer discrimination against Jews. In 1966, the American Jewish Committee cited it to protest commercial banks that it said were virtually excluding all qualified Jews from working for them.

He reportedly paid a Wikipedia editor to remove a Soros family connection.

In 2011, Ramaswamy, the son of Indian immigrants, received a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans — funding to help immigrants and first-generation Americans earn college degrees. The fellowship is named for the brother of progressive Jewish megadonor George Soros, a frequent target of leading Republicans who features in a range of antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Shortly before he announced his presidential campaign, Ramaswamy reportedly paid a Wikipedia editor to scrub his fellowship from his entry on the site. He has since gone on to criticize Soros and his family from the campaign trail.

From <6 Jewish Things to Know About Vivek Ramaswamy> 

Eric Levine From <The Ramaswamy threat - JNS.org> | Jewish News Syndicate | Aug 22, 2023

Eric R. Levine is a founding member of the New York City law firm Eiseman, Levine, Lehrhaupt & Kakoyiannis, P.C. He is an essayist, political commentator and fundraiser for Republican candidates with an emphasis on the United States Senate.

Posted Aug 22, 2023 at 1: 19 PM

Many uber-wealthy people believe they are wise and well-informed on all subjects because they have achieved financial success. Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is a frightening example of this type of hubris.

Born in Cincinnati to Indian-American parents, the 38-year-old Ramaswamy is a perfect example of what can be achieved in America. He became a billionaire as a pharmaceutical executive, hedge fund manager and lobbyist. His success should be applauded.

However, this does not mean he knows anything about history or the importance of the American-led world order. To the contrary, his statements on foreign affairs show gaping holes in his knowledge, if not outright ignorance. His worldview, or lack of it, is a clear and present danger to the U.S.

In February, Ramaswamy tried to babble his way through an interview on world affairs with conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt. Eventually, he had to admit that he is “not familiar” with the nuclear triad. Hewitt pointed out that this has been the core of America’s nuclear strategy since the Cold War. It defeated the Soviet Union and keeps enemies like China at bay. If Ramaswamy wants to have his finger on the button, it would help if he knew where the button is.

Ramaswamy is also a conspiracy theorist. For example, he appears to think 9/11 might have been an inside job. In an interview earlier this month, he told conservative TV host Alex Stein that he does not believe the 9/11 Commission Report.

“I don’t believe the government has told us the truth … I’m driven by evidence and data,” he said. “What I’ve seen in the last several years is we have to be skeptical of what the government does tell us.”

Aside from being fanciful, this is an insult to the memory of those who lost their lives on that day. It is also a slap in the face to our men and women in uniform who defended our nation in the wake of the attacks.

It should be no surprise, then, that Ramaswamy’s policy positions on geopolitical threats are not just flawed, but so poorly conceived that they would lead to the end of the American-led world order.

Not since the 1930s has America faced an axis of evil like Germany, Japan and Italy. Today, however, China leads precisely such an axis with Russia, Iran and North Korea. This axis wants to replace the American-led world order with one dominated by totalitarian regimes. Whether willingly or through ignorance, Ramaswamy seems happy to oblige. His default option is to either appease our enemies or actually side with them.

Ukraine is a perfect example. Ramaswamy is happy to reward Russia for its illegal invasion of a sovereign nation and oversee the end of NATO. “Our goal should not be for Putin to lose,” he said. “Our goal should be for America to win. … I would freeze the current lines of control, and that would leave parts of the Donbas region with Russia. … I would also further make a commitment that NATO will not admit Ukraine to NATO.”

Referring to Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ramaswamy said, “As president, I’ll refuse to be bullied by an anti-democratic comedian-turned-leader, and it’s truly mystifying to me that the rest of the West is eating out of this Pied Piper’s hand every day.”

Ramaswamy fails to understand that America wins only if Putin loses. Moreover, Ukraine’s territory is not Ramaswamy’s to give away. Lastly, such a capitulation would sound the death knell for NATO. The eastern flank of NATO, led by Poland, will never agree to such appeasement. Perhaps Ramaswamy does not care.

The best evidence of Ramaswamy’s inability to understand foreign policy is his characterization of Zelenskyy as a “bully” and Putin as a victim. Anyone who cannot see the moral distinction between Zelenskyy and Putin is simply unfit to be the leader of the free world.

Furthermore, capitulation to Putin will convince China’s leader Xi Jinping that he can invade Taiwan with impunity. Ramaswamy has stated that he takes no position on such an invasion. He has said, however, that he will not lift a finger to prevent or repel it so long as China waits until 2028, when he thinks the United States will have achieved semiconductor independence. After that, Taiwan is on its own.

“Do not mess with Taiwan before 2028,” he said, “before the end of my first term … that commitment is only as far as 2028 … and we will not take the risk of war that risks Americans’ lives after that for some nationalistic dispute between China and Taiwan.”

Ramaswamy’s belief that America can achieve semiconductor independence by 2028 is a minority view if not an outright fantasy. He may be the only person alive who believes it.  But Taiwan’s significance to the United States transcends its semiconductor industry. Freedom of navigation is at stake.

The Taiwan Strait is the primary shipping route for commercial vessels going to and from China, Japan, the U.S. and Europe. It is also critical to the export of South Korean goods. Giving China the ability to choke off the straits at will would be an existential threat to the world economy. It would also force some of our most important allies to make accommodations with China at America’s expense.

Ramaswamy owes the American people an explanation of how betraying our allies and empowering our enemies benefits the United States. The answer may be simple: He does not know who our allies and enemies are.

His recent statement about cutting aid to Israel—one of America’s most reliable allies in the world—highlights this point. A strong Israel is essential to American interests. That is particularly true when Iran is ascendant and Russia and China are expanding their influence in the Middle East. Cutting aid to Israel would strengthen the axis of evil, weakening not just Israel but our Sunni Arab partners as well.

Clearly, a Ramaswamy presidency would usher in the end of the American-led world order. If that is what they want, Americans might as well reelect Joe Biden. Republican primary voters should pick a candidate who knows the difference between America’s friends and enemies and is willing to defend the former and defeat the latter.

The post The Ramaswamy threat appeared first on JNS.org.

From <The Ramaswamy threat | JNS | clevelandjewishnews.com> 

The 37-year-old ‘anti-woke’ crusader was unable to cite any specific examples to support his claim

By Matthew Kassel June 19, 2023

From <Jewish Insider Ramaswamy alleges ‘open questions’ over Zelensky’s ‘treatment of religious minorities,’ including Jews>

Vivek Ramaswamy, a long-shot Republican presidential candidate whose unorthodox views have drawn headlines, suggested without evidence on Thursday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had mistreated Jews and other religious minorities amid Russia’s invasion.

“I’m going to say some things that maybe are outside of the establishment-approved Overton Window here, but I think we have gotten into this weird habit of holding out Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelensky as some paragon of democratic ideals,” he told Jewish Insider in an interview. “I would just say that there are open questions about his treatment of religious minorities, including but not limited to Jews in Ukraine, that I think should be among the reasons we should stop short of holding him out as some sort of hero.”

The 37-year-old “anti-woke” crusader was, however, unable to cite any specific examples to support his claim. Instead, Ramaswamy criticized Zelensky for dissolving Ukrainian political parties with ties to Russia and combining national TV channels into one state platform under martial law. “That much I’m on firm factual footing on,” he said, insisting that such measures alone “create the risks for” anti-Jewish bigotry.

“The idea of banning political parties or consolidating state media into one arm, I think, is a risk factor that everyone who cares about democracy, including but not limited to those who are concerned about antisemitism, should worry about,” he said. Left unacknowledged was that Zelensky is himself Jewish and a frequent target of antisemitic conspiracy theories promoted by Russia. 

Attention-grabbing assertions are typical of the voluble Republican candidate now seeking the nomination in an increasingly crowded field. In recent weeks, Ramaswamy, an author and entrepreneur currently polling in the low single digits, has positioned himself among just a few primary rivals to have expressed skepticism of supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia.

He has pledged to cease U.S. funding for Ukraine and proposed a deal in which Russia would agree to end its military alliance with China and withdraw its nuclear weapons from Kaliningrad, among other concessions. Meanwhile, the agreement would “cede most of” the occupied Donbas region in eastern Ukraine to Russia and impose “a permanent moratorium on Ukraine joining NATO.”

While some critics have questioned the plan and accused him of promoting a policy of “appeasement,” Ramaswamy, who has never held elective office, characterized his approach as a kind of “prioritization” in conversation with JI. “Preventing China from going after Taiwan — or, for that matter, protecting Israel — are far higher priorities than protecting Ukraine. That’s the bottom line,” he said. “And I think that the top U.S. military threat right now is the Russia-China alliance.” Even if Ukrainians would unlikely be willing to recognize his proposal, he expressed confidence that the U.S. can successfully end the war “on terms that would actually cause” Russian President Vladimir Putin “to exit his alliance with China.”

In a statement outlining the plan, Ramaswamy predicted that his approach to the conflict “will become the key distinguishing issue” in the Republican primary, where most candidates have stressed their continued support for defending Ukraine. The exceptions include former President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who recently argued that protecting Ukraine from Russian aggression was not a vital national interest.

The Florida governor, whose remarks elicited fierce blowback from conservative foreign policy hawks, has frequently drawn criticism from Ramaswamy. Earlier this month, for instance, he took aim at a bill DeSantis had touted, on a recent trip to Israel, that criminalizes unwanted displays of “religious or ethnic animus” on private property as felony hate crimes. The legislation, which was largely motivated by rising incidents of antisemitism across Florida, received unanimous support from both chambers of the state legislature in April.

But according to Ramaswamy, the governor had signed a “hate speech” law “at his donors’ request,” he alleged weeks later on Twitter. “I respectfully disagree: the right answer to bad speech isn’t less speech. It’s more speech. That’s the American way.”

“I stand fiercely against bigotry and hatred and harassing speech,” Ramaswamy emphasized. “But the right answer to that is to defeat the bad speech on the merits through free speech and open debate, which I have no trouble doing.”

In opposing the legislation, Ramaswamy aligned himself with a small number of figures on the extreme right, including Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist and former congressional candidate in Florida who has attacked the bill as “unconstitutional.” Ramaswamy, for his part, said he had arrived at a different conclusion. “I did not make an argument about constitutionality,” he told JI on Thursday. “I was drawing a legitimate policy contrast from Ron DeSantis, which is, it’s just a fact that I’m a free-speech absolutist.” The government, he said, “should not be in the business of viewpoint discrimination.”

Still, he fell back on a constitutional argument to bolster his point. “I think the Skokie case was decided correctly,” he said, referring to the landmark Supreme Court decision allowing a Nazi demonstration in the Chicago suburbs 35 years ago — over the objections of Holocaust survivors who lived in the area. He made no distinction, however, between the Skokie verdict, which concerned a march on public land, and the bill DeSantis had signed, which addresses threats on private property. 

Ramaswamy clarified that his unfavorable view of the Florida bill should not be interpreted as an endorsement of hateful beliefs. “I stand fiercely against bigotry and hatred and harassing speech,” Ramaswamy emphasized. “But the right answer to that is to defeat the bad speech on the merits through free speech and open debate, which I have no trouble doing.”

His “litmus test” for evaluating the Florida bill is based on a simple formulation, he said. “If there’s something you can place — a book or a flier or anything — that has one set of views printed on it in a certain context, but not a different set of views, and it’s the subject of a government drawing the distinction between the two, that’s a hate speech regulation or a viewpoint discrimination law, and I stand against it.”

DES MOINES, IOWA – JUNE 03: Republican presidential candidate businessman Vivek Ramaswamy is introduced during the Joni Ernst’s Roast and Ride event on June 03, 2023 in Des Moines, Iowa. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

He acknowledged that there is “room for reasonable debate” and that he was not trying to engage in a “personal attack” against DeSantis — even as he has otherwise called the governor “uncourageous” and “sloppy” in his effort to compete with Trump’s top rival. The DeSantis team did not respond to a request for comment from JI.

As for his own approach to combating a national surge in antisemitism, “we need to find and revive our national identity,” Ramaswamy asserted. “I think something else has gone badly wrong when people start to resort to the old, tired trope of blaming one group of people who have been a punching bag for much of modern human history.”

The rise of anti-Jewish prejudice “is a leading indicator of a broader decay in a society,” he explained. “That deeper cancer in our country is that we are lost. We have lost our sense of purpose, we have lost our sense of identity, of who we are as Americans,” he added. “I think we need to go upstream and fill that void with something deeper — a vision of American national identity that dilutes this poison to irrelevance.”

To Ramaswamy, a model for his own personal behavior comes from the Jewish community itself. The Cincinnati native said he has long been affiliated with Shabtai, a Jewish leadership society at Yale University, where he received his law degree before founding the pharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences in 2014. His reverence for what he described as “open debate” and respectful disagreement was “one of the core tenets of what Shabtai stood for” and part of what drew him into the organization. “I became one of the most active members during my years at Yale and since then have been one of the biggest backers.”

The Hindu son of Indian immigrants said his experience connecting with Jewish community members at Shabtai events had contributed to a long-standing respect for what he described as “the shared values of the Jewish tradition,“ citing “faith in a true God and the family foundations that come along with that.” Ramaswamy said he particularly admired “the importance paid to tradition,” which underscored “that we have traditions for a reason.”

“You can take religious and even ancient traditions that originated somewhere other than the United States and make that come alive here in the U.S.,” he said. “That’s something that I think the Hindu American community does not, to date, do well, but has given a lot of inspiration to my wife and I and the way we raise our kids and the example we set.”

“The way I think about our commitment to Israel is it’s grounded in the most solid foundation, which is national self-interest,” Ramaswamy explained. “The bedrock of stability in the Middle East starts with Israel.”

He expressed hope that his candidacy would resonate with Jews from both parties. “The way I talk about domestic issues at home from meritocracy and nondiscrimination to foreign policy and America actually standing up with a spine,” he said, “should be, I hope, appealing to many Jewish voters.” 

In the context of his crusade against environmental, social and governance investing, Ramaswamy, the author of 2021’s Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam, claimed he has been a fierce opponent of boycott campaigns targeting Israel. “Companies should have no place engaging in selective political engagement here, which is clearly bigoted anti-Israel content masquerading as social responsibility,” he said of the ESG movement, which has faced allegations of anti-Israel bias. “I think that’s noxious.”

He said he would remain “an unapologetic supporter of Israel,” which he recalled visiting multiple times on business trips. “The way I think about our commitment to Israel is it’s grounded in the most solid foundation, which is national self-interest,” he explained. “The bedrock of stability in the Middle East starts with Israel.”

More broadly, Ramaswamy suggested that he would follow the example of Trump — whom he recently promised to pardon if elected — on Middle East policy. He commended the former president for “finally having the spine” to relocate the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. “That was a move that I applaud, that I stand behind, that I do not apologize for,” Ramaswamy told JI. He also praised “what Jared did with the Abraham Accords,” referring to Jared Kushner, a close friend as well as Trump’s son-in-law and former senior advisor. “These are major, major accomplishments.”

But Ramaswamy became circumspect when asked if he believed that Trump had helped fuel antisemitism by welcoming extremists into his movement — most prominently last November, when he dined with the artist Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, who has praised Hitler, and Nick Fuentes, an outspoken Holocaust denier, at his Palm Beach residence. “I can’t speak to the particulars of who he met and who he didn’t,” Ramaswamy said cautiously. “But I tend to think that actions speak louder than words.”

In addition to his administration’s record of accomplishments in the Middle East, Trump deserved recognition for working with “a diverse coalition that included Jewish leaders” during his four years in the White House, Ramaswamy said. “I think that you’d be hard-pressed to say that that’s the antisemitic president,” he reasoned. “It’s like, if the glove does not fit, you must acquit. And the glove does not fit, is what I would say, so you must acquit, is where I land.”

Still, he added a caveat. “I would make a lot of judgments that are different than Trump’s judgments,” he clarified. “That’s why I’m running for U.S. president.”

From <Jewish Insider Ramaswamy alleges ‘open questions’ over Zelensky’s ‘treatment of religious minorities,’ including Jews> 

Ukrainska Pravda | June 16, 2023·2 min read  Ukrayinska Pravda | Article

The chief rabbi of Ukraine, Moshe Azman, has responded to Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin, who has called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy "a disgrace to the Jewish people".

Source: Moshe Azman in a comment for UNIAN

Quote: "I can personally say that I am proud of President Zelenskyy for not running away and doing everything he can to help the Ukrainian people. And I’m not the only one. I think the whole world is proud of him."

Details: He added that there are no neo-Nazis in Ukraine. "In Ukraine there are decent people who are defending their homeland," Moshe Azman said.

Update: Well-known Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk also sprang to Zelenskyy’s defence in a post on Facebook.

Quote: "Today the Ruscist dictator called the President of our state a ‘disgrace to the Jewish people’. I am a citizen of Ukraine, I am a Jew, and in many years of talking with Jews from all over the world, I have only heard positive opinions of Volodymyr Zelenskyy."

Details: According to Pinchuk, everyone he has talked to says they are proud of the president, and Jews from different countries have expressed genuine admiration for him.

Quote: "This isn’t about his ethnicity – it’s about the fact that today, Zelenskyy is the embodiment of the fight for freedom. And freedom is one of the main values of the Jewish people."

Details: Pinchuk pointed out that the election of a Jew as president vividly demonstrates the "fundamental difference between free, democratic Ukraine and the anti-Semitic Ruscist empire".

Quote: "The Jews of Ukraine are part of the Ukrainian people. They are bravely fighting at the fronts, sacrificing their lives and contributing to bringing Ukraine’s victory closer, whatever our enemy’s ‘Jewish friends’ might say. He didn’t name them, but their names can probably be found on all the international sanctions lists."

Background: On 16 June, the president of the aggressor country, the Russian Federation, said that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was "a disgrace to the Jewish people".

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From <https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/hief-rabbi-ukraine-responded-putins-162417840.html> 

A video put a fresh spotlight on the chief rabbi of Ukraine, whose renown predates his humanitarian efforts since Russia’s full-scale invasion.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/05/world/europe/rabbi-ukraine-viral-russia.html

Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman, the chief rabbi of Ukraine, poses for a portrait in his office at the Brodsky Synagogue in Kyiv last month.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Time

By Cassandra Vinograd

• July 5, 2023

KYIV, Ukraine — It was a striking image: a bearded rabbi with a flak jacket over his tallit, hitting the ground to take cover as shells boomed around him.

Video footage of the moment Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman came under fire while on a humanitarian mission to flooded southern Ukraine on June 8 has been viewed more than 1.5 million times on Twitter. It put a fresh spotlight on the chief rabbi of Ukraine, whose renown predates both that moment and his humanitarian efforts since Russia’s full-scale invasion.

“People recognize me,” the rabbi said, eyes twinkling, from his office in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, on a recent afternoon.

Rabbi Azman, 57, sprang into action when Russia invaded in February 2022, working to help evacuate Jewish Ukrainians and recording appeals for help and a halt to the war. The bed that is still set up in his office at Kyiv’s Brodsky synagogue is a testament to the intensity of those early days, he said. The rabbi initially worked even through Shabbat, the traditional day of rest, and started filming video messages that went far and wide.

We are now in Kherson, we’re trying to evacuate people ... miraculously survived. Details later pic.twitter.com/oHcKcTcw0h

— Chief Rabbi Of Ukraine Moshe Azman (@RabbiUkraine) June 8, 2023

His role as chief rabbi has particular resonance in a war that President Vladimir V. Putin has falsely claimed is about “denazifying” Ukraine, a country whose current president is Jewish and whose Jewish community has historically suffered persecution.

Born in Leningrad, the rabbi emigrated to Israel in the 1980s to escape the former Soviet Union. After marrying a Ukrainian woman, he came to Ukraine in the early 1990s to help children affected by the Chernobyl disaster and later led the rehabilitation of Kyiv’s main synagogue.

When Russian-backed fighters launched a war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, Rabbi Azman helped evacuate civilians from the fighting. He later set up a village on the outskirts of Kyiv that he named Anatevka — like the fictional shtetl in the Broadway musical “Fiddler on the Roof” — for displaced Jewish families.

The rabbi’s work earned him national honors. Photographs of him shaking hands with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain and other notable people cover a wall in his office.

Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman, rear right, watches as Valentyna, 82, is resettled into her new room at the Anatevka Jewish Refugee Community.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

But some of his prominent connections have at times cast a shadow over his work.

He was a vocal supporter of Donald J. Trump and has a longstanding relationship with Rudolph W. Giuliani, whose attempts to persuade Ukraine’s government to launch investigations that he believed would benefit Mr. Trump were key to the impeachment inquiry against the former president. Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman — associates of Mr. Giuliani who were convicted on campaign finance violations — were at one point board members for the rabbi’s U.S.-based Friends of Anatevka charity.

When asked about the saga, Rabbi Azman becomes animated, insisting he has no interest in politics.

“I don’t vote in America,” he said, adding: “I work for Ukraine.”

The rabbi emphasized that he’s simply a “quiet guy” trying to reach a wide audience to support his humanitarian efforts, which he says have cost millions. He considers his work less a calling than “obligation,” one that took him to Kherson to help with the flood response and to draw attention to the devastation.

Although he no longer works on Shabbat, the rabbi maintains a packed schedule and posts frequent social media updates about his aid efforts and Russian atrocities. On a recent afternoon, he greeted an evacuee brought by ambulance to Anatevka.

Many people ask why he remains in Ukraine despite the dangers, he said.

“I thank God that he put me in the right time and the right place that I can save people, help people, 24/7,” he said.

Kate Anderson |  dailycaller.com

June 19, 2023 12:56 PM ET

Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said there were “open questions” about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s treatment of Jews and religious minorities in an interview published Monday with the Jewish Insider.

Ukraine has been criticized in the past for allowing soldiers to wear Nazi symbols and patches that were often worn by concentration camp guards during World War II, according to The New York Times. Ramaswamy said that people should “stop short” of calling Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, a “hero” due to concerns about his treatment of religious minorities, according to the Jewish Insider. (RELATED: REPORT: Russia’s Security Chair Says Russia Has ‘No Options Left’ Other Than ‘Physical Elimination Of Zelensky’)

“I’m going to say some things that maybe are outside of the establishment-approved Overton Window here, but I think we have gotten into this weird habit of holding out Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelensky as some paragon of democratic ideals,” Ramaswamy said. “I would just say that there are open questions about his treatment of religious minorities, including but not limited to Jews in Ukraine, that I think should be among the reasons we should stop short of holding him out as some sort of hero.”

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, speaks during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center on March 03, 2023 in National Harbor, Maryland. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Ramaswamy did not provide specific examples to back up his statements to the Jewish Insider, but a spokesperson for the 2024 presidential candidate pointed the Daily Caller News Foundation to Zelenskyy’s attempts in December 2022 to ban certain branches of Orthodox Christianity, according to the Times. Zelenskyy announced that his administration was working on legislation to make “it impossible for religious organizations affiliated with centers of influence in the Russian Federation to operate in Ukraine” and said that inquiries would be made into churches that had ties to Moscow.

Ramaswamy also criticized the Ukrainian president for removing political parties tied to Russia and forcing all national TV channels to join a state-sponsored TV service under threat of martial law, according to the Jewish Insider. He argued that that kind of behavior “create[s] the risks for” religious discrimination.

“The idea of banning political parties or consolidating state media into one arm, I think, is a risk factor that everyone who cares about democracy, including but not limited to those who are concerned about antisemitism, should worry about,” Ramaswamy said, according to the Jewish Insider.

From <https://dailycaller.com/2023/06/19/ramaswamy-open-questions-zelenskys-treatment-religious-minorities/> 

From <https://dailycaller.com/2023/06/19/ramaswamy-open-questions-zelenskys-treatment-religious-minorities/> 

June 19, 202312:56 PM ET

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Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said there were “open questions” about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s treatment of Jews and religious minorities in an interview published Monday with the Jewish Insider.

Ukraine has been criticized in the past for allowing soldiers to wear Nazi symbols and patches that were often worn by concentration camp guards during World War II, according to The New York Times. Ramaswamy said that people should “stop short” of calling Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, a “hero” due to concerns about his treatment of religious minorities, according to the Jewish Insider. (RELATED: REPORT: Russia’s Security Chair Says Russia Has ‘No Options Left’ Other Than ‘Physical Elimination Of Zelensky’)

“I’m going to say some things that maybe are outside of the establishment-approved Overton Window here, but I think we have gotten into this weird habit of holding out Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelensky as some paragon of democratic ideals,” Ramaswamy said. “I would just say that there are open questions about his treatment of religious minorities, including but not limited to Jews in Ukraine, that I think should be among the reasons we should stop short of holding him out as some sort of hero.”

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, speaks during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center on March 03, 2023 in National Harbor, Maryland. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Ramaswamy did not provide specific examples to back up his statements to the Jewish Insider, but a spokesperson for the 2024 presidential candidate pointed the Daily Caller News Foundation to Zelenskyy’s attempts in December 2022 to ban certain branches of Orthodox Christianity, according to the Times. Zelenskyy announced that his administration was working on legislation to make “it impossible for religious organizations affiliated with centers of influence in the Russian Federation to operate in Ukraine” and said that inquiries would be made into churches that had ties to Moscow.

Ramaswamy also criticized the Ukrainian president for removing political parties tied to Russia and forcing all national TV channels to join a state-sponsored TV service under threat of martial law, according to the Jewish Insider. He argued that that kind of behavior “create[s] the risks for” religious discrimination.

“The idea of banning political parties or consolidating state media into one arm, I think, is a risk factor that everyone who cares about democracy, including but not limited to those who are concerned about antisemitism, should worry about,” Ramaswamy said, according to the Jewish Insider.

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From <https://dailycaller.com/2023/06/19/ramaswamy-open-questions-zelenskys-treatment-religious-minorities/> 

by Julia Shapero - 08/24/23 5:45 PM ET  | The Hill

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign clapped back at conservative commentator Ann Coulter after she described Ramaswamy’s back-and-forth with fellow GOP hopeful Nikki Haley at Wednesday’s debate as “Hindu business.”

“Ann can tweet whatever she wants to,” Tricia McLaughlin, Ramaswamy’s communications director, said in a statement to The Hill. “Vivek has traveled this country and is very grateful for the warm support he has received from Christian voters across the country.” 

She added, “Vivek shares and lives by the same Judeo-Christian values that this nation was founded on — and that the way Vivek lives his family life offers a positive example for their own children and grandchildren.”

Coulter’s post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, came amid a fiery exchange between Ramaswamy and Haley at the first Republican presidential primary debate on Wednesday. 

After Ramaswamy said he did not support providing additional U.S. aid to Ukraine amid its war with Russia, Haley slammed the political newcomer’s lack of foreign policy experience.

“He wants to hand Ukraine to Russia, he wants to let China eat Taiwan, he wants to go and stop funding Israel,” Haley said. “You don’t do that to friends. What you do instead is you have the backs of your friends.”

“Under your watch, you will make America less safe,” she added. “You have no foreign policy experience, and it shows.”

Coulter, who was posting on X throughout the debate, said in a post during the exchange, “Nikki and Vivek are involved in some Hindu business, it seems. Not our fight.” 

While Ramaswamy is Hindu, Haley is not. The former South Carolina governor was raised Sikh and converted to Christianity. 

Coulter previously came under fire in February for making derogatory remarks about Haley’s Indian heritage.

Shortly after Haley announced her candidacy, the conservative commentator suggested that she “go back to [her] own country.” The Republican hopeful was born in the U.S. to Indian immigrant parents.

From <Ramaswamy team claps back at Ann Coulter ‘Hindu business’ tweet | The Hill> 

Candidate Hitler - Vivek Ramaswamy

Republican Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy: 

AntiSemitic, AntiAmerican, AntiWestern

Just like Hitler, VR appeals to emotions, hides is agenda in the veil of verbiage, boldly asserts Big Lies, Sloganeers relentlessly, and scapegoats Jews (Zelenskyy & Israel) and other vulnerable groups (Blacks, Immigrants, Liberals-Progressives), and promises to return American to some bygone era of evangelical purity and nationalistic pride and superiority!

⏩ Jewish Concerns about Vivek Ramaswamy

While attending a meeting held in a synagogue, a wise-lovely grandmother shared this bit of wisdom: 

“Those who are anti-Ukraine are also Anti-Semitic, Anti-American, and Anti-Western.”

⏩Vivek Ramaswamy-Policies & Politics   …