Netanyahu and Gantz join Ukraine’s president speaking at Kyiv Jewish Forum

World leaders and senior diplomats addressed Jewish representatives at last week’s Kyiv Jewish Forum as, over two days, participants discussed the most pressing topics in the Jewish world.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz were among the high-profile speakers, alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Elan Carr, US special envoy on antisemitism.

Britain’s Lord (Jonathan) Mendelsohn discussed the threats from the far-right and far-left, while former champion boxer Vitali Klitschko, now Kyiv mayor, discussed a new memorial and learning centre at Babi Yar, the site of a notorious Nazi massacre of the city’s Jews in 1941.

Also speaking was Natan Sharansky, the rights activist who now chairs the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, while Jewish leadership in the  fight against Covid-19 was discussed by Euro-Asian Jewish Congress chair Aaron Frenkel, GPG chief executive Marina Yudborovsky and World ORT chair Robert Singer.