Never is Now. We Must Do Everything to Help Ukraine.
The barbaric atrocities unleashed by the Russian government upon Ukraine have left me, my family and others in the community shaken with pain, anger and disbelief.
I was born in Ukraine, immigrated with my family to Atlanta as a child in the late 1980s and have been a proud citizen of the U.S. for decades, as well as a practicing attorney for nearly 20 years.
The barbaric atrocities that the Russian government has unleashed upon a sovereign, democratic, independent Ukraine and its citizens over the past two weeks have left me, my family and others in the former Soviet immigrant community shaken with pain, anger and disbelief, but also filled with profound pride for the Ukrainian people.
I am appealing to every member of the Atlanta Jewish community to educate yourself on the crisis and to reach out to your elected representatives to let them know that their constituents fully support America’s unwavering commitment to help Ukraine. Please encourage others to do so, too. More on concrete action we can take below.
We are living through unprecedented times.
We are witnessing a genocide being committed, in real time, on the screens of our smartphones and TVs. We are all eyewitnesses to genocide.
All evidence points to deliberate killing of innocent children, women and men by the Russian army, with the apparent goal of annihilation of those who refuse to allow their democratic country to bow to the rule of a vicious neighbor with imperialist aspirations.
Russian troops have been indiscriminately bombing Ukrainian residential buildings, hospitals, blood banks, evacuation routes, TV and cell towers and life-sustaining infrastructure of every type. Entire towns and villages have been leveled. Some areas have been deliberately cut off for days from electricity, heat, water, outside communication lines and food and medical supply lines. Bombs, fleeing refugees, destruction, starvation, death. Genocide. How is this possible in 2022?
It is up to each of us, and especially to those for whom genocide is not an abstract concept, to use every tool at our disposal to ensure that civilization rather than barbarism wins in this apocalyptic conflict. The alternative simply cannot be.
As citizens of a representative democracy, we have a vote and we have a voice.
As human beings, and especially as members of the Jewish community, we are responsible to speak out when witnessing genocide.
We are fortunate to live in the free world. We can assemble on the sidewalks of our cities – as my family and hundreds of others in Atlanta have done for the past two weekends, to show our support for our cause, under the protection of the men and women of the Atlanta Police Department.
What a contrast from scenes in Moscow and other Russian cities, where police in riot gear drag off screaming citizens simply for uttering “no war” in public spaces.
This is what the fight for Ukraine represents: the right of every person to be protected by its government of democratically elected representatives, rather than to be annihilated or bombed into submission by a conqueror.
I encourage you to read up on the Budapest Memorandum, a 1994 agreement according to which Ukraine gave up what was then the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world in exchange for security assurances (but not security guarantees) from the U.S., UK, and Russia.
Unwavering support from the U.S. and from our Jewish community is critically important. Ukraine is pleading for the West to help secure a no-fly zone, or at least to provide airplanes to allow the Ukrainian military to enforce a no-fly zone to stop indiscriminate Russian bombings of civilians.
Here is concrete action we can take right now, and encourage others to take:
Please contact the White House and your U.S. senators and representatives. Please ask them to support the use of all means at the disposal of the U.S. government and military to support the Ukrainian government and military in whatever it needs in its continued fight for existence. Please let our elected representatives know that their constituents fully support our country’s unwavering backing of Ukraine in its struggle in what has become a proxy war of the entire civilized world, with Ukraine as the tip of the spear, against a fascist Russian regime.
Here is how to do it:
Contact President Biden and Vice President Harris:
www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Find and contact your U.S. Senator:
www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm
Find and contact your U.S. Representative:
www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
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