This ad has been around for a while and running frequently on Fox News. I never paid attention to it until this morning, because I was watching a debate among some legitimate legal experts about the birth-right citizenship issue.
KABOOM! Basically the ad directs donors who identify with the ethnic group behind the plea to be concerned about the victims of the Ukraine war with Russia who belong to one specific group (tribe, race, religion, whatever—pick your word) as if nobody else’s lives count. I know there are many, far too many, Americans who think like this, and the more Americans who do think like this, the weaker, more divided and more imperiled our nation, society, culture and democracy is.
The message is literally “Jews are suffering in the Ukraine, so please send money to help them. Let other groups take care of their own. They aren’t our problem.”
I am not picking on Jewish groups here, for a TV commercial calling for donations to poor black people or poor whites to the exclusion of everyone else equally in distress would be similarly unethical…and disgusting. So far, I’ve never seen such an ad. This thing compounds the offense by making the invalid appeal to emotion represented by playing the Holocaust card. The suffering of elderly Ukrainian Jews at the hands of Russia is particularly cruel today because of what Germany did 80 years ago?
Don’t insult my intelligence. I was a fundraiser for many years: I know the drill. This ad, however, is indefensible. Shame on The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews for creating it. Shame on Fox News for running it. Shame on anyone who gives the group a dime in response to it.
Yecchh.
Ethics Alarms 
Ukraine has a complicated history when it comes to Nazi Germany. Because of the Soviet Union’s harsh policies during the ’30s, including the brutal Holodomor, Ukrainians treated the German invaders as liberators. Many Ukrainians collaborated with the Nazis as they sought to identify, deport and murder Jews. Ukrainians sometimes made up death squads when German soldiers balked; sometimes Ukrainian citizens took the job of murdering Jews on themselves.
Now, there were collaborators in every country. I’m not accusing Ukrainians of being worse than any other or setting the blame for the Holocaust at their feet. But there is a reason why Putin considers Ukraine fascist and it goes beyond the leftist narrative common today toward anyone who disagrees. Yes, it was 80 years ago. To Eastern Europeans, though, that 80 years isn’t long enough to put aside the differences, antagonisms, resentments and prejudices that survived the war and, in some cases, were encouraged in Soviet bloc countries in the post-war era.
There was a gut-wrenching documentary a few years ago called “What Our Fathers Did” about the two grown, aged sons of Nazi war criminals. One of them had a terrible relationship with his father and that formed, in part, his hatred for his father’s actions. The other had a close, loving relationship with his father and he saw his father’s war service in more nuanced ways. At one point, he visited Ukraine and was feted by those who celebrated his father’s crimes while he was stationed there. So, yes, complicated.
I don’t know enough about this organization to know how trustworthy it is. It would appear that they want to help elderly Ukrainian Jews, some of them Holocaust survivors, who cannot afford to leave or even survive where they are.
Sure. But how are the Jews any better or worse off than any other Ukrainian citizens. My point is imagine a special Katrina fund aimed only at helping black victims of the hurricane in New Orleans “because SLAVERY.”
Oh, I don’t aim to suggest that there is still widespread antisemitism there or that they are being persecuted by the government. Within modern Christianity, there is a sometimes found a special concern for Jews. The desire to help is genuine even if it does take the form of focused charity. After all, in the ’30s, no one had yet been singled out for mass extermination in Nazi Germany and there were many groups of people who were being discriminated against, arrested and mistreated; yet, the West is still facing opprobrium for not making the Jews a special case and opening up borders to more of them. In my opinion, the hindsight bias is overly harsh. It now motivates some people to take extra consideration when it comes to Jews.
In war, one must do what one must to win. All the moralizing nonsense (I am learning of late) is fluff & stuff. We no longer need it. So let’s drop it. Napkins no longer needed and polite dining an event for pansies.
The Destruction of the European Jews (the title of Raul Hilberg’s 3 volumes, said to be the definitive history of unutterable evil) is simply put the business plan for efficient politicians who did what the plan required.
The Holodomor just the (slightly negative) outcome of pragmatic choices. To win battles, we must do what we must. Who feels bad about Holodomor or Holocaust? Poor babies! They must study their Machiavelli more closer. These are business choices.
The entire argument of “righteous nation” and a nation that observes and hold up those accepted standards that are supposed to govern nations, fell down to bits when the US invaded and captured Maduro. The function there being to secure resources. I am trying to explain how “the world” sees these things and how badly this looks.
I have no idea what any of that means or how it relates to Jack’s post. If it means “all’s fair in love and war,” then I get it, as it is purely exercising power for the sake of exercising power. Otherwise, my sophomoric understanding of the exercise of global imperial power is too simple to grasp the surrealism of your metaphors.
jvb
Would this assessment be mitigated if the advertisement were clearly targeting other Jews and Christians? There is a natural inclination to “take care of one’s own” before others – and this exists in an increasing set of concentric rings outward until “everyone” is included. I’m going to take care of my family before I take care of my neighbor. I’m going to take care of my neighbor before I take care of someone on the other side of town, etc. People will be more inclined to take care of someone across the world they share more in common with before they will someone across the world they have less in common with. This is a normal and healthy impulse.
Would this assessment be mitigated if it had been shown that Jews were being ignored or missed by other relief organizations that were instead taking care of other groups and the advertisement was clear about that?
The Holocaust—that is, “what Germany [and Ukraine, and Poland … ] did 80 years ago”—resides (still, just) in living memory, and the explosion of Jew-hatred worldwide since 7 October 2023 is like nothing the world has seen since then. That context should not be brushed aside. It makes your characterization especially troubling.
Strong criticism demands equally strong justification. I don’t see that standard being met here.
Jack, as like this has been around for (literal) decades. They appeal to wealthy upper middle class Christians, who believe helping Jews is an inherent, moral good. Modern dispensationalism teaches Jewish folks have a key role to play in the end times, thus ensuring their survival (and prosperity) until then promotes God‘s plan. historically, Christian groups have been the greatest source of private donation to the State of Israel over the last 50 years, and Jewish-Christian alliance/support groups abound.
Although the ad itself leans heavily into ethnicity, the subtext is that this counts as a tithe to the Almighty. In other words, it this does not mean to engage those who identify as Jewish or support only Jewish people, but rather at the bleeding, cash-bearing hearts of elderly, well-meaning Christians.
25 years ago, we had to go to extraordinary efforts to keep my grandmother off, calling this from group like this, as she began to lose her memory. This has less to do with racism or ethnic exceptionalism, and instead represents a scam perpetrated on older Individuals.