Julia Ioffe writes:

Almost as soon as news of Vindman’s planned testimony broke on Monday night, Trump’s allies seized on Vindman’s birthplace and language abilities as proof of his disloyalty to the United States. John Yoo, architect of the post-9/11 torture program, even went so far as to accuse Vindman of “espionage” on behalf of the Ukrainians. It was an assertion repeated by a former Republican congressman who is now a CNN commentator.

Of course, what they meant was that Vindman was not loyal to Trump, something the President himself confirmed this morning on Twitter when, without any evidence, he dismissed Vindman as a “Never Trumper.” According to public records, both Vindman and his identical twin brother Yevgeny, a lawyer for the NSC, were once registered Democrats, but Zwack says he never knew of Vindman’s personal political leanings in the two years he served with him. Of course, the President’s defenders had no issue with Soviet-born Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two men arrested earlier this month for allegedly funneling Russian money to Republican candidates. Nor did they criticize Flynn, who regularly worked for foreign governments and pleaded guilty of lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to Washington.

While Trump has a history of attacking anyone who questions his power, there is a particularly insidious history to questioning the loyalty of Jewish émigrés. According to a source who knows the family, Vindman’s grandfather died fighting for the Soviet Union in World War II. After the war was over and the state of Israel was founded, Stalin unleashed a bloody and ruthless campaign against Soviet Jewry. He called them “rootless cosmopolitans,” a wandering people who had no real roots in the Russian soil, and therefore no loyalty to the Soviet state. The campaign continued even after Stalin died, with harsh quotas imposed in universities. Politically sensitive jobs were closed to Jews because their loyalty could not be trusted. In everyday life, Soviet Jews, whose ancestors had been in living in Russia for centuries, were told to “go to your Israel” or to return to their “historic homeland.”

This constant harassment and discrimination, combined with Western pressure, triggered a mass exodus, with millions of Jews leaving the Soviet Union because it had decided that they were second-class citizens and not to be trusted. The Vindmans were part of that exodus.

All three Vindman brothers—Leonid, Yevgeny, and Alexander—did ROTC and joined the U.S. military. It is a highly unusual career path for Soviet Jewish immigrants of my generation. Having tasted both state-sponsored violence and the Soviet lack of gratitude for the hundreds of thousands of Jewish men and women who fought valiantly on their country’s behalf, Soviet Jews are understandably wary of military service. The Vindman brothers apparently didn’t share this skepticism. “The brothers went to SUNY Binghamton, followed in [their older brother’s] footsteps, loved the discipline, loved the ideals—they really did,” photographer Carol Kitman, a family friend, told me. “That became their life.” [Continue reading…]