Diaspora Jews support Ukraine as Israel falls in behind Russia

Two weeks ago, Israel joined Iran, North Korea and Belarus in opposing a UN resolution which named and condemned Russia as the aggressor in the war in Ukraine.

Its central reason in following these pariah dictatorships was because Donald Trump’s America had done so. This was how Netanyahu’s government commemorated the third anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine.

Last July, Israel was only one of seven countries which attended Putin’s inauguration as Russian president for the fifth time. The Biden Administration, the Europeans and the rest of the world did not regard the election as free and fair. In March 2018, Israel’s official response to the Novichok poisoning of the Skripals in Salisbury by Russian Military Intelligence was regarded as half-hearted by the British.

Although the UN vote will be explained away as dealing with the reality of a Trump-shaped globe, it was also the culmination of Netanyahu’s drift towards a remaking of Israel in his image. It commenced with the plans for “judicial reform” which provoked widespread protest in Israel. It has continued with the incitement against the Attorney-General Gali Baharov-Miara, who has insisted on the preservation of the rule of law.

The opposition to the UN resolution marked a formal shift from Israel’s position as a non-aligned actor and potential mediator to one lauding the Kremlin and its rewriting of history. Netanyahu had heard his master’s voice in the White House and dutifully obeyed. Moreover, there has not been a scintilla of protest that the US Special Hostage Envoy, Adam Boehler, has been speaking directly to Hamas without informing Netanyahu.

This is a profound difference between Netanyahu and his two predecessors as prime minister, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, who were in office when Russian soldiers murdered civilians in Bucha. In a radio interview in Israel, Bennett said then “we are shocked by the terrible sights at Bucha – awful scenes – and we strongly condemn them. The suffering of Ukrainian citizens is immense, and we're doing everything we can to assist”. 

Israel's Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, went further and stated that “Russian forces committed war crimes against a defenceless civilian population. I strongly condemn these war crimes.”

At the same time as the vote at the UN, Netanyahu’s government broke a long-standing taboo and moved towards a cooperation with European far-Right parties, many of whom have not exactly had a liking for Jews both in the present – and certainly not in the past.

Second comings are not a Jewish precept. In history, Jews have always been suitably stiff-necked to challenge monarchs and their minions. From the Stalinist Soviet Union to apartheid South Africa, a disproportionate number of Jews preferred the status of dissident to that of one who was welcomed in the corridors of power.

Many Jews have continuing concerns that Trump will undermine democratic norms and broadly understood Jewish values. Jewish teachings and the Hebrew Prophets argue that morality outstrips any transaction. The collective is more important than the individual. Recognising the other and welcoming the stranger at the door is central to Jewishness. 

Trump has often mentioned his angst that American Jews overwhelmingly espouse liberal causes. It was for this very reason that nearly 70% of American Jews did not abandon their principles and voted for Kamala Harris – a greater percentage than that of American Muslims despite Trump’s cultivation of Dearborn, a town with a population of Americans of Arab heritage.

The common cause between Jew and Muslim is that Trump will not allow into the United States of America neither the inhabitants of bombed Gaza nor the persecuted minority of Iranian Jews.

Trump’s frustrations with American Jews have often boiled over. In 2022, he said that: “wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of (Trump’s record on Israel) than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the US.” (Washington Post, October 17, 2022)

Trump hoped that his Jewish daughter would bring a widespread Jewish approval of his actions but it has proved hard for Trump to dislodge the memory of the past. Diaspora Jews identify with the Ukrainian cause because they remember how they were left alone in the 1930s by the Great Powers. They therefore object to flirting with the closet antisemites of the far Right because they make “nice” with Israel.

They remember that Jews always suffered persecution in Tsarist Russia and discrimination in the Soviet Union. They remember that Sergei Lavrov, Putin’s Foreign Minister, argued in 2022 that Hitler had possessed “some Jewish blood” and explained that somehow “the Nazis of Kyiv” were deliriously happy to be led by a Jewish president.

Trump would dearly like to replace Zelensky and instal a more compliant Ukrainian leader. This explains Trump’s labelling Zelensky “a dictator” amidst his comments about the absence of democratic elections – albeit in wartime. In this, Trump matches Putin’s eagerness to get rid of Zelensky. The Kremlin’s resort to antisemitism in the past may not preclude new anti-Jewish inuendo in the future. Zelensky’s Jewishness is seen as a vulnerability that could be exploited.

Jews also remember that the post-war order in 1945 not only created NATO but a rules-based society where laws were to be obeyed and neighbouring countries not to be invaded. Jewish leaders were fundamental to this work because they had witnessed the rise of the Nazis and the resulting destruction of six million Jews.

Figures such as the Polish-born Hersch Zvi Lauterpacht, an international lawyer, drafted early versions of the International Bill of Human Rights as well as the Israeli Declaration of Independence. The British Zionist leader, Maurice Perlzweig, created the modern NGO at the UN. The Lithuanian-born, Jacob Robinson helped structure the UN Commission of Human Rights.

The world has undoubtedly moved on since 1945 but the values that this post-war generation of Jews has championed remains rooted. In contrast, Trump and Putin have moved backwards to embrace the politics of the Great Game in Europe of the Victorian era.

Trump has a penchant to first sow a deliberate chaos which creates an instability in the minds of observers – and then to row back. In view of their history, Jews do not want a new instability, a new uncertainty, perpetrated by today’s imitators of the intimidators of the past.

Volodymir Zelensky’s role in 2025 is very much one in the Jewish tradition. It will not be appreciated by those who renounce universalism as an integral ingredient in Jewishness. It will not be understood by oligarchs who believe that all human endeavour can be reduced to a transactional fix.

Trump’s defenders say his aggression is what is needed to ensure a breakthrough in any stalemate. The end therefore justifies the means. Ezra Cohen, a one-time acting Defence Minister in Trump’s first administration, even argued on the BBC last week that standing on principle might lead to nuclear war.

For many Europeans, however, Trump’s behaviour represents the decline of the New World and the resurrection of the Old. Europe first, America last.

This coming week, Jews around the world will celebrate the Festival of Purim. Purim was banned by Hitler but even during the war and in the midst of terrible Jewish suffering, Jews stuck to principle and to tradition. Purim was celebrated by children in the Lodz and Wielopole Ghettos, Poland, by Hasidim in Érmihályfalva, Hungary and by the Steinbok family in Chernivtsi in Ukraine.

We should remember them and their acts of defiance at Purim during darker times.