Ukrainian book blasted as anti-Semitic

A Ukrainian Jewish lawmaker condemned a book published last year by the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences as anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli. Alexander Feldman said “Religion and Nationality in Public Life of Ukraine and the World,” published by the academy in 2006, contains anti-Semitic passages. One article in the book accuses Israeli and Russian ambassadors to Kiev of “meddling in Ukrainian state affairs” and says the “activities of the Jewish cultural and religious communities are aimed at direct estrangement of Ukrainian Jews from Ukraine and their orientation to their ethnic homeland, Israel.” In a letter this week to Boris Paton, president of the National Academy of Sciences, Feldman asked the academy not to allow a “transformation of Ukrainian academic publications into a mouthpiece of anti-Semitism and xenophobia.”