An Angry Putin Becomes a Problem for Israel

 Henry Srebrnik, [Halifax] Chronicle Herald

Often, when there’s trouble somewhere in the world, Jews find themselves in the middle of it. However, when it comes to the current war in Ukraine, this time it could have been avoided.

Writing of Vladimir Putin’s “warm and conciliatory gestures” toward the Jewish state, in Everybody Loves Israel, an article published Nov. 7, 2016 in Mosaic, an online magazine of Jewish ideas, religion, politics, and culture, Arthur Herman, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, noted that Israel was the first foreign country Putin visited after his re-accession to the Russian presidency in 2012, “going so far as to don a kippah on his visit to the Western Wall in the company of Berel Lazar, Russia’s chief rabbi.”

In Russia, Herman continued, “Putin makes a point of attending Jewish functions, including the opening of a Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow, to which he contributed $50 million in state funds and personally donated a month’s salary.”

In his June 2012 visit to Israel, Putin remarked that he felt he was “among friends,” adding that the ties between Israel and Russia were ones of “deep friendship, not something that will pass, and that will endure in the future.”

Putin attended the inauguration in Netanya of a new monument commemorating Red Army soldiers who fought against Nazi Germany in the Second World War. For the Russian soldiers who liberated the Nazi concentration camps, then Israeli president Shimon Peres told Putin, “the Jewish people owe a historical ‘thank you’ to the Russians.”

Prior to his June 2016 trip, Putin dramatically announced that he was restoring to Israel an old tank, a Magaḥ-3, captured by Syrian forces in the 1973 Yom Kippur war and subsequently donated by Syria to Moscow’s military museum.

Putin and then Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu met many times, and they spoke on the phone 11 times in 2018 alone.

Such behaviour would have been unimaginable from any of the tsars or Communist party secretaries who preceded Putin. But now there is increasing chilliness between Moscow and Jerusalem. What happened?

The Washington administration put strong pressure on the weak interim Israeli government led by Prime Minister Yair Lapid to take sides in the Ukraine war.

The result? An angry Putin, who feels his relatively proisraeli policies have gone unappreciated, is closing down the Jewish Agency in Russia — the organization that has helped countless Jews from around the globe immigrate to the Jewish homeland.

Jerusalem should have realized this would lead to trouble for the still substantial Russian Jewish community, which number some 150,000 people. “Putin wants the respect he deserves from Israel,” a senior Israeli diplomatic source told the Al-monitor news agency. “He is unwilling to overlook Israeli declarations that deviate from the semi-objective, or at least polite stand adopted by former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.”

Last month, Russian authorities petitioned a Moscow district court to halt its activities, claiming the organization, which facilitates and encourages Jewish immigration to Israel, had violated local laws. Belatedly, Israeli President Isaac Herzog called Putin on Aug. 9 at the request of Lapid and in co-ordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to negotiate a compromise with Moscow.

Earlier in the month, Israel’s ambassador to Russia, Alexander Ben Zvi, met in Moscow with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov to discuss the Jewish Agency’s future in Russia. The issue remains unresolved; a court hearing is set for Aug. 19, during which the judges may ban the agency’s activity.

So now Israel finds itself at odds with Russia, as it has increasingly supported Ukraine, all the while seeking to maintain freedom of movement in Syria’s skies, which are largely controlled by Moscow.

Also, thanks to NATO’S role in the war, Russia is being driven into the arms of Israel’s existential enemy, Iran, which wants to destroy the “Zionist entity.” The Iranian-russian strategic relationship has grown following a visit by Putin to Tehran last month. Iran started transferring armed drones for Russian use against Ukraine. Putin also launched an Iranian satellite into orbit, reportedly on the condition that Moscow can gain Tehran’s support for Russian operations in Ukraine.

So if there’s a new war in the Middle East, which side do you think Moscow will be on? It won’t help a beleaguered Israel. And, brave as he is, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy won’t be able to, either.

The bottom line: Israel lives in a hostile neighbourhood and needs all the friends it can get, especially major powers. True, this is realpolitik, but unlike Canada, the country must protect itself daily against enemies. It doesn’t have the luxury of pursuing a moral course that may not serve its national security interests. So, when it came to this war, Israel should have kept a low profile and stayed out of it.