You don’t have to go far into Israel’s socio-political landscape to find something that links the country to the nations at war today. Natan Sharanski, a human rights icon of sorts, former minister and for nine years head of the Jewish Agency, was born in Donetsk, in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine.
Current Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman was born in Moldova, the small Ukrainian neighbor who was also under the umbrella of the Soviet Union, and founded Yisrael Beiteinu, the far-right party that for years was seen as a political stronghold for Russian-speaking immigrants. . Evgueni Sova, a member of the Knesset —Israel’s Parliament — by the same acronym, was born in Pervomaisk, 300 kilometers south of Kiev.
The political role played by Russian-speaking Israelis reflects the wave of migration from the former Soviet republics to the State of Israel in the 1980s and 1990s. of the territory today corresponding to Ukraine.
A movement that, according to the latest figures, has not stopped. Of the 27,000 immigrants Israel received over the past year, 28% were from Russia, the largest share — another 11% were from Ukraine.
​”The immigration of the 1980s and 1990s is that of the Iron Curtain, when people fled for freedom, and Israel is an alternative due to Jewish identity and immediate citizenship”, says Michel Gherman, coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Center for Jewish Studies at UFRJ “Today there is a sense of the need to escape, with Putin taking increasingly clear autocratic positions.”
Experts say that the social capital of the portion of the population of Russian descent has weight because it dialogues with Israeli memory and identity. “Israel is a country founded on a very high ethnic and religious specificity”, says Tanguy Baghdadi, a master in international relations.
The massive presence of egresses from Russia or from Moscow’s orbit, while not fully explaining the cautious approach that Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has taken since the beginning of the Ukrainian War, helps to understand it. The Israeli leader tried to put himself as a mediator in the conflict and criticized the invasion, but he did not impose sanctions and he did not frequently criticize the Russian authorities.
The stance is also shaped, of course, by geopolitical elements, the main one being on the country’s northern border: Syria. Putin’s Russia acts as Israel’s intermediary, in an unwritten agreement, so that Tel Aviv can contain the advance of Iranian-backed groups such as Hizbullah in its neighborhood. .
The importance of this factor was expressed by the government itself. On the fourth day of the Russian invasion, Israel’s foreign ministry said it had a “moral, historical and ethical obligation to support Ukraine”, but soon cited that a working group was already studying the possible implications for Russian-Israeli relations.
“Israel effectively has a security border with Russia, which is the most important military power in Syria, and our cooperation mechanism with them assists in our battle against the Iranian entrenchment on our northern border,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. exteriors.
The figure of Natan Sharanski, the politician and human rights activist, helps to understand the common past. The Ukrainian spent nine years in a Soviet forced labor camp in Siberia, accused of spying for the US, until in 1986 he was released in a prisoner exchange and went to live in Israel. He is a harsh critic of the current invasion led by Vladimir Putin.
One of Israel’s most critical stances came after scenes of hundreds of bodies on the streets of the city of Butcha emerged after the departure of Russian troops. At the time, Chancellor Yair Lapid, who could soon become prime minister through a ruling coalition deal, said it was “impossible to remain indifferent”. “Intentionally harming the civilian population is a war crime,” he said.
“The issue of the mass grave moves a lot with the imagination of Israeli society. That’s why Israel reacted more harshly”, says Gherman, also an advisor to the Brazil-Israel Institute.
The historian says diplomatic squabbles with Israel in the war also help to understand the growing anti-Semitism in Russia. The main episode occurred this month, when relations between the countries frayed after Chancellor Sergei Lavrov said that “Hitler also had Jewish origins” and that “the Jewish people have long claimed that the greatest anti-Semites are the Jews themselves”.​
Lavrov was not the only member of Russian diplomacy to make such comments. Shortly afterwards, a foreign ministry spokeswoman told state news agency Sputnik that Israeli mercenaries were fighting alongside the Azov battalion, a neo-Nazi group partially incorporated into the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Israel emphatically condemned the statements.
The first part of Lavrov’s speech, says Gherman, rescues Soviet anti-Zionist thinking from the Stalin era. “It’s a Jewish conspiracy idea, as if the Jew is on both sides of the war.
The second element, the “anti-Semitic Jew”, is more recent. “Dialogues with Aleksandr Dugin’s Perspective [filósofo e guru de radicais russos, visto como ideólogo da expansão do paÃs], more contemporary, that there is the Jew of good and evil; that of the Eurasian vision and that of the European vision.”
Thus, adds the professor, the episode helps to elucidate the ideological dimensions of the war waged by Putin in Eastern Europe. Israel, by the way, said that the Russian president apologized for the statements made by his foreign minister. The Kremlin has not confirmed the claim to this day.
