The meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukraine’s President Volodimir Zelensky is drawing some unhealthy interest. Both men are Jewish and it’s an old anti-Semitic stereotype that all Jews are involved in some kind of conspiracy. So perhaps those two will wink at each other and do some kind of a deal, Jew to Jew, that will somehow be good for Ukraine.
Whether or not the existence of that secret bond among Jews was ever even remotely true, it is certainly not the case today. Certainly not between Ukraine and Israel. Netanyahu is an Israeli and Zelensky is a diaspora Jew. Israel is dear to many diaspora Jews, but Zelensky is, above all, a Ukrainian.
Israel came into being as a creation of Ashkenazi Jews—many of whom were in fact Ukrainian Jews. Four of the first five Israeli prime ministers, including Golda Meir, were born in Ukraine. With Polish Jews so completely exterminated by Hitler, most of today’s Ashkenazi Jews are probably descendants of those who lived on the Ukrainian territory in 1880.
Because it emerged from the tragedy of the Holocaust, Israel has always positioned itself as a protector of Jews everywhere, pledging to them: Never Again.
However, things are changing. The international world order is developing cracks. Liberal democracy, which was declared victorious at the end of the Cold War, is in retreat. International institutions, which protected peace and allowed small countries to protect their independence and prosper, are under attack from right-wing populists.
This has implications for both Ukraine, which is fighting for its life as an independent nation, and for Israel, which has emerged as a regional military superpower in the Middle East whose existence, at least for now, is no longer under a realistic threat. Once more, as in the 1970s, those nations may find themselves on the opposite sides.
Israel is now seven decades old—enough for three generations to have grown up as Israeli-born and, more to the point, to have developed a national identity that is totally separate from that of the diaspora. Their experience, too, is very different from that of diaspora Jews, and it has formed them accordingly.
Diaspora Jews have an identity of their own; their attitudes have been characterized by Jewish universalism. They interpret Judaism in a way that views the oppression of any group as a transgression against fundamental Jewish values. This is why Jews have been at the forefront of most struggles for equality and human and civil rights since at least the 1848 European revolutions.
Moreover, North American Jews, who number around 6 million (almost as many as live in Israel), are overwhelmingly liberal. The same is mostly true of European Jews and, increasingly, of Jews in Eastern Europe, even though when the immigrate to Israel, North America, and Germany those same people tend to revert to right-wing, Soviet-style authoritarianism.
When Zelensky signed a decree last week simplifying the process of obtaining Ukrainian citizenship by victims of political oppression in Russia, he was above all sticking a finger into Vladimir Putin’s botox, but it was in a small measure an outgrowth of Jewish universalism.
American Jews actually tend to influence the attitudes of diaspora Jews in general. Not surprisingly, since half of the 20 million “broader Jewish” population in the world (which includes products of mixed marriages, converts to other religions, etc.) live in the US. And, while religious and Jews and Israel-firsters voted for Trump in 2016, only 24% of all American Jews did.
Trump is highly unpopular in Western democracies, but not in Israel. In Israel, his approval ratings are among the highest in the world. The fact that anti-Semitism has been given a boost by Trump’s nativist rhetoric and a mutual love affair with the KKK no longer seems to bother the Never Again crowd.
The Netanyahu government and the country that keeps re-electing him have all but abandoned Jewish universalism. For them, might is right and whenever their country’s actions are criticized, as should be normal in a democracy, they accuse their critics of anti-Semitism or, if they happened to be Jewish, of self-hatred.
As to Netanyahu himself, he likes to sidle up to right-wing thugs, such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban, whose anti-Semitism is on daily display. He seems to want to be a member of the new Axis of Evil being built by the world’s least savory authoritarians, Trump and Putin. They, along with China’s Xi Jinping, want to create a world in which the strong dictate their will and the weak fall in line. Trump has abandoned America’s traditional role as a protector of democracy and human rights, which is just fine with Putin and Xi.
Given Ukraine’s history and Moscow’s ambitions, it is not a future that will favor an independent Ukraine.
This has nothing to do with being Jewish and everything with realpolitik and nationalism of the most basic, tribal kind. Obviously, Israel is not going to antagonize a much more powerful Moscow simply because Russia is an aggressor and embattled Kyiv needs and deserves the support of the world’s democracies.
That said, realpolitik may yet play to Ukraine’s advantage. Thanks to Putin, Russia is once again a player in the Middle East, for the first time since the 1970s. However, the situation in the region is now very different. Instead of a unified Arab front supported by the Soviet Union and threatening Israel with extinction, the situation is much more fluid. Israel is now a regional superpower and it is facing a splintered Muslim world, more radicalized and at war with itself.
Russia has thrown its weight behind an alliance between Bashar al-Assad in Syria and the ayatollahs in Iran, which is confronted by the Saudi-led coalition of Sunni Muslim states with tacit support from Israel. It’s a complicated cauldron of transactional alliances, marriages of convenience and fake friendships. If Moscow cozies up to Tehran too much, it may serve Israel to play the Ukrainian card by threatening Putin with closer cooperation with Ukraine, including supplying it with sophisticated modern weapons.
It could be useful for Ukraine—as long as the government in Kyiv keeps in mind where such friendship is coming from.
