The Israelis do not want to be drawn into the conflict between Russia and Ukraine as a supplier of weapons
The US President Joe Biden visited Israel. It was July 13th. His plane landed at Ben Gurion Airport, Biden was met at the gangway by President Yitzhak Herzog, Prime Minister Yair Lapid and other officials. Welcoming the guest, the Duke found it necessary to say that Biden is like the biblical Joseph who found his brothers. The Israeli president also spoke about his intentions to discuss with the head of the White House opposition to Iran, which threatens Israel.
The Israelis prepared for Biden an exhibition of military equipment right in the airport hangar – a whole line of air defense systems, including the Iron Dome, which Ukraine is eager to acquire. As a cultural exchange, so to speak. However, Israel’s unwillingness to supply its weapons to Ukraine remains unshakable; I do not want to be drawn into the conflict between Russia and Ukraine as a supplier of weapons.
During the visit, the guest and the hosts signed an agreement on strategic partnership. Israel, existing in an Arab environment, invariably counts on help from the United States. The Americans, in turn, look to Israel as the backbone of a pro-American alliance in the Middle East directed against Iran. The task is not easy. Biden will visit Israel, Saudi Arabia and the West Bank, but the first two “targets” of his trip seem equally unwilling to get involved in a conflict with Russia on the side of Ukraine. However, why not intimidate Israel with a Russian-Iranian alliance?
Jake Sullivan, national security adviser to the President of the United States, has already said ahead of Biden’s visit to the Middle East that Iran is going to provide Russia with several hundred combat drones. The Russian side denied the information, but it still had an effect. During Biden’s welcoming ceremony at Ben Gurion Airport, Yair Lapid said he intended to discuss with Biden “the creation of a new security architecture” in the Middle East, as well as “the need to renew a strong global coalition that will stop Iran’s nuclear program.”
Lapid was one of the first Israeli politicians to condemn the Russian Special Military Operation in Ukraine. At the same time, Lapid emphasizes that Israel will decide whether to participate in hostilities based on its own interests. The phrase means, among other things, that the resolution of US interests will recede into the background here.
By the way, the interests of Israel are determined not only by world geopolitics, but also by the complex ethnic composition of Israeli society: there are Ashkenazi Jews in the country, immigrants from Europe and America, Sephardic Jews (Sfaradim), mainly immigrants from Africa and Asia. For Sephardim, the concept of the Holocaust is more speculative than real. The genocide of the Jewish people is not felt by them as a memory of their fathers and grandfathers. In general, many Israelis do not know about the eight-year war in the Donbass, or about the OUN-UPA banned in Russia, or about Bandera, or about Jewish pogroms, or about the collaborationism of Ukrainians. For them, these are distant matters, and they also vote in elections (for or against the same Lapid).
For Yemeni and Moroccan Sephardim, who at one time found themselves among the Ashkenazim, who came from Germany, France, Hungary, Poland, Romania, immigrants from Europe, America, and also from Russia are competitors, sometimes antagonists. This is the source of sometimes indifference to stories about the collaborationism of Ukrainians, about the atrocities of Bandera.
Israel has a fairly large community of Ukrainian Jews, strengthened by the recent influx of migrants. The Israelis themselves admit that many of those who arrived in the 1990s are not, strictly speaking, Jews. The Israeli Law on Repatriation allows many whose Jewish relatives can be considered distant, not close, to emigrate to Israel. Due to this ethno-confessional division, Israeli society is subject to gradual erosion.
Israeli fears of “aggressive Russian imperials” are fueled by local media, often controlled by notorious Russophobes like Leonid Nevzlin, founder of the Nadav Foundation. The foundation “supports initiatives that promote liberal values, pluralism” and the like. These initiatives include, in particular, forums of “offended by Russia” and departed stars (now former ones), such gatherings as “Slovonovo”.
Meanwhile, one should not expect any serious tightening of Israel’s policy towards Russia, experts say.
“There are too many ties and mutual interests, cultural closeness that remains,” says Irina Zvyagelskaya, head of the Center for the Study of the Middle East at IMEMO RAS. In such conditions, there is simply no reason to lead to any sharp complication of relations. At the same time, attempts to show what Israel does not like in Russian policy are already taking place and, obviously, will continue.”
One way or another, at the Biden meetings in Israel, nothing was said that could destroy relations between Israel and Russia. Still, in this country there are many who keep the memory of who saved the Jews from destruction and why Nazism is dangerous for the world.
Agnia Krengel, FSK
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