Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid an emotional tribute to Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust during a brief visit to Ukraine on March 22.
‘I swear here, on the earth of Babi Yar, that our people shall never be defenseless again,’ Netanyahu said during a memorial ceremony in Kyiv. ‘The memory of the victims lives in Jerusalem forever.’
Surrounded by hundreds of Ukrainian Jews, Netanyahu laid a wreath at the base of a large, menorah-shaped monument at snow-covered Babi Yar, a ravine where Nazi German forces killed more than 33,000 Jews over just two days in 1941.
Overall, about 100,000 people, most of them Jews, were killed at Babi Yar during World War II.
President Leonid Kuchma promised Netanyahu that Ukraine would continue to guarantee the rights of its Jewish minority. About 500,000 Jews currently live in Ukraine, although mass emigration, mainly to Israel, has continued over the last decade.
Netanyahu, accompanied on his first trip to Ukraine by Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon, also met Kuchma and Prime Minister Valery Pustovoitenko to discuss cooperation and other issues.
Speaking to reporters, Netanyahu said he and Kuchma had signed a ‘memorandum of agreement on important security matters’ that allows their defense ministries to explore ‘varieties of cooperation.’ He did not elaborate.
Foreign Minister Borys Tarasyuk, commenting on the memorandum at a press conference later in the day, was also vague as to its details, saying only that it was ‘of a general character’ relating to ‘legal regulation of cooperation between the two countries in the military-technical field.’
During his visit, Netanyahu also issued a harsh warning to Palestinians, saying Israel was prepared to respond forcefully to a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood.
‘The Palestinian Authority and its leaders better dare not unilaterally declare a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital,’ Netanyahu said.
‘Israel will respond in the harshest way possible to such a violation of the Oslo agreements, which actually derails the peace process,’ the premier said.
Netanyahu, who is campaigning for reelection on May 17, said the Palestinians were unlikely to see it as to their advantage to push on with peace talks ahead of the Israeli election.
‘If we’re elected, they’ll conceivably have to concede more and receive somewhat less, maybe a lot less, and if our opponents win – which won’t happen – they’ll expect to get a lot more and give less.’
Speaking to reporters after his meeting with Netanyahu, Kuchma said Ukraine ‘supports Israel’s efforts to reach a peaceful settlement of the Palestinian problem.’
Netanyahu’s comments lent weight to charges made earlier by critics that his trip to Ukraine was merely an election campaign gimmick. Jews from the former Soviet Union are a strong constituency in Israel which Netanyahu is anxious to woo in the run up to the election.
After his trip to Ukraine, Netanyahu flew on to Russia, which like Ukraine is the homeland of thousands of Jewish immigrants to Israel. There he met Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, who assured the Israeli leader that Russia hadn’t allowed any leaks of missile or nuclear technology to Iran.
Netanyahu, whose government has long voiced concern about such leaks, said that reports of Iranian successes in the field had been overplayed.
‘According to our knowledge, which contradicts official Iranian statements, Iran doesn’t have missiles capable of hitting Israel,’ he told reporters after talks with Primakov.
Last November Iran unveiled the Shahab-3 missile, saying it has a range of 1,300 kilometers – enough to reach Israel.
After the stop in Russia, Netanyahu visited the former Soviet republic of Georgia before returning to Israel on the morning of March 23.
