Wearing a kasket cap instead of a kippah in public is a typical Jewish look – this young man could pass as a teacher of national-religious yeshiva, and yet – he is one of the key people in a complex defense system of Maidan and the barricades on Hrushevskoho Street.

Against the backdrop of global events in which hundreds of thousands people are involved, the problems of anti-Semitism and the safety of the Jewish community naturally become relevant.

Those who fabricate a purported surge in anti-Semitic attacks and present a movement of Ukrainians from different ethnic, religious and social backgrounds as some kind of extremist mob have their own very dangerous motives. The facts are against them.

Two months ago, the citizens of Ukraine, who have snatched a few breaths of the air of freedom over the last twenty years, went out to a square with one demand: to stop the country from becoming a dictatorship and to return hope for a brighter future to its people. Since then they have been standing at Kyiv's Maidan and many other squares all over the country. It is not just Ukrainians who are making the stand, but also Russians, Armenians, Belarusians, Crimean Tatars. And the Jews are standing as well.

We Jews cannot forget millennium-long atrocities and persecutions and we shall never forget about the Holocaust. But we also remember our struggle for freedom and independence. Zionism is a Jewish national movement or Jewish nationalism that proved to have been capable of reviving the Jewish national state on its biblical land.

If the opposition gives no real reasons for accusations of anti-Semitism, they can be initiated

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency has long outstayed its welcome. It would be more productive for genuine peace in the region if the office of the High Commissioner for Refugees took over the function of assisting the Palestinians