Does anti-Semitism play a role in the emigration of scientists and engineers from Ukraine? Here's one quote:

One woman at the Kharkiv [visa] office also revealed the presence of anti-Semitism as a major factor, commenting to Komsomolskoye Znamia that: "We were not afraid of economic difficulties....  We are leaving rather because of national convictions.  For a long time we could not make up our minds.  But when a swastika was daubed on the door of our apartment, we realized that we were defenseless."     Earlier this year, a young schoolteacher wrote a letter to Sobesiednik, which stated that she had been seriously offended when her classmates asked her in the 1970s why she was not leaving with them for Israel.  The woman, from eastern Ukraine, has a husband who specializes in micro-electronics and a 7-year-old daughter.  They lived "well," she stated, but in April 1989, there were rumors among Jews that a pogrom was imminent.  These rumors resurfaced in the spring of 1990, at which time the Russian Pamiat Society declared that since Jews had been the main participants in the crimes of the Stalin era, they must now take their punishment.     After the events in Baku and Fergana, the woman recognized that pogroms were plausible.  (David Marples, The "fourth wave": a look at Jewish exodus from the USSR, The Ukrainian Weekly, September 23, 1990, p. 2)

CUI BONO a swastika being daubed on the door of a Jewish apartment?  There is only one apparent party that gains � Israel.  All you have to do to get an expert in micro-electronics to suddenly feel oppressed within Ukraine is to daub a swastika on his door.  Do it just once, and you've changed those people's perception of Ukraine for life.  They won't be able to wait to get away after that.  Or spread rumors of a pogrom.  Economics by itself is often not enough to get them to leave � the people above reported that they "lived well" and in any case were "not afraid of economic difficulties."  They needed extra prods to get them to leave the land of their birth, and of the birth perhaps of their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents.  They needed extra prods to go and live in a desert and to learn to speak Hebrew and to worry that the bus you are on may explode and to be placed on the side of the soldiers shooting Palestinian children who were throwing stones at them.  They needed extra prods, and they got those extra prods � swastikas painted on their doors and rumors of imminent pogroms.  As a result, Israel gained one expert in micro-electronics, and Ukraine lost one expert in micro-electronics.  Israel developed a Silicon Waddi paralleling the American Silicon Valley, and Ukraine became an economic basket case.  Try to discuss these events, and you are smothered by accusations of anti-Semitism and by the request that discussion be returned to politics.  But does not the discussion of the mechanism by means of which one country plunders another constitute a discussion of politics?

As we have no evidence as to who is responsible for these painted swastikas and these rumors of pogroms, all we are left with is our CUI BONO speculation.  And as we see the attempt to terrify Jews with the spectre of anti-Semitism � particularly Ukrainian anti-Semitisim � as an almost-weekly occurrence here in the West, then it is difficult to find any chain of reasoning which would lead us to conclude that similar efforts were not being mounted also in Ukraine.

Why particularly in Ukraine?  Why has Ukraine been singled out for such special Jewish attention?  Why didn't Israel extradite � or kidnap � some Dutch collaborator to stand trial for war crimes in Israel instead of the Ukrainian John Demjanjuk?  Why the desperation to put a Ukrainian on trial when the only Ukrainian to be found was clearly innocent?  Wasn't there anywhere in the world in the 70's or 80's someone more clearly guilty of war crimes than the hapless John Demjanjuk?

The answer may be that Israel needed a Ukrainian because Ukraine held a large number of highly-educated Jews who on account of Ukraine's poor economic performance were susceptible to being frightened into coming to Israel.  That may be why for decades we have heard incessantly, and continue to hear to this day, about Ukraine's one Waffen SS division, but nothing about The Netherlands' four Waffen SS divisions � because the Jews of The Netherlands are too well off to find Israel attractive so there is less to be gained by terrifying them.  That may be why we don't hear about Belgium's two Waffen SS divisions, or about France's one Waffen SS division.

That's part of the outline � details and data will follow.