Why Israel?

dailybeast  |  Intimations of pressure on Israel to provide Ukraine military support, including from the Israeli public, which largely identifies with Ukraine, are met with explanations about Israel’s unique situation vis-à-vis Russia, and the blank wall of realpolitik.

“Israel is stuck between its interest in ongoing military coordination with Russia, and, on the other side, Israel is small nation allied with the West, particularly with the United States, to whom we owe a lot,” Professor Gideon Rahat, a Hebrew University expert on Israeli politics and public opinion, told The Daily Beast.

“Israeli leaders have to maneuver between those two. Of course, public opinion is untethered from these interests. With ex-Ukrainians pretty dominant in the public sphere, worried for their families, and when you see how the dictator Putin is about to take over another country, most of Israel see themselves as part of what we used to call, in Cold War days, the free world.”

Bennett was accompanied to Moscow by Ze’ev Elkin, his Ukrainian-born minister of housing and infrastructure, whose brother fled their native city of Kharkiv, under Russian bombardment, at the same moment the Israeli and Russian leaders sat in Moscow discussing the war, with Elkin translating.

Israel has also demurred from imposing sanctions on Russian oligarchs, some of whom are dual citizens. After praising Israel's willingness to help mediation efforts, a U.S. diplomat in Jerusalem said on Wednesday that "we would like to see our allies and partners imposing strong sanctions, Israel falls into the category of our allies and partners."

“We didn’t invite Putin into this region,” said Yaakov Amidror, a retired Israeli army major general who served as former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's national security adviser, alluding to the collapse of then-President Barack Obama’s “red line” regarding the use of chemical weapons in Syria, just across Israel’s border. Israel, Amidror said, in an interview, is as vulnerable as Ukraine is, to no less tenacious an enemy than Putin— Iran, whose leaders regularly promise to eliminate Israel.