Zelensky’s Ahistorical Speech to Israel’s Knesset By David Harsanyi
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/03/zelenskys-ahistorical-speech-to-israels-knesset/
Israel surely sides with Ukraine today. But for the record: Ukraine was one of the most violently antisemitic nations in Europe during WWII.
T witter personality Adam Kinzinger recently demanded that American aid to Israel be conditioned on its actions regarding Ukraine. “If we don’t want to directly attack Russia, then our leverage is in the world uniting in sanctions and assistance for the people of Ukraine,” the congressman went on. “This includes everyone, and Israel doesn’t have a special exemption.”
Kinzinger was reacting to Volodymyr Zelensky’s ahistorical speech to the Knesset. “Why hasn’t Israel seriously sanctioned Russia? Why aren’t you putting pressure on businesses?” asked the Ukrainian leader, who warned that Russians were engaged in their own “final solution.” “Ukrainians made their choice 80 years ago. We saved Jews, and that’s why there are Righteous Gentiles among us. People of Israel, you too now have a choice. Thank you!”
No one can blame Zelensky, in a struggle to save his nation, for attempting to create an emotional and historic bond between Ukraine and other besieged people. It is almost surely the case that the Israeli government is rooting for the Ukrainians. But his speech was a distortion of history. If Israel treated Ukraine as Ukraine did its Jewish citizens during World War II, then the Jewish state would be sending weapons to the Russians.
Early in the conflict, Ukrainian officials claimed, and numerous Western outlets reported, that the Russians had struck a memorial to commemorate the World War II massacre at Babi Yar, where, over two days in 1941, at least 34,000 Jews were stripped of their possessions and clothing, led into ravines, shot, and dumped into mass graves. The Jews of Babi Yar were often herded, guarded, and shot by Ukrainian police, militia, and collaborators. Ukraine was one of the most violently antisemitic nations in Europe, before and after German occupation.
“We want to live. Our neighbors want to see us dead,” Zelensky said, repeating a famous quote from former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, who was born in Kyiv. The problem with Zelensky’s allusion is that Meir’s family was forced to flee Ukraine for the United States in the early 1900s over her family’s persistent, and well-founded, fears of pogroms, which had been popular since the 1880s. In the years between the first and second world wars, tens of thousands of Jews were massacred by Ukrainians, not Germans.
The situation has clearly improved in recent years — after all, Ukraine now has a Jewish president (though the idea that this alone makes Ukraine immune from ancient bigotries is as silly as contending that Pakistan is a bastion of women’s rights merely because Benazir Bhutto was prime minister). But that does not give Zelensky or anyone else license to distort history. One should also note that Putin’s pretext for the invasion — that he wanted to “denazify” Ukraine — is transparently preposterous.
None of this is to say that Jews should hold grudges against modern Ukraine for its (not so ancient) history or that many of its citizens do not deserve the help of the free world in their struggle for survival against a nefarious power. The aggressor in this conflict is Russia.
The Jewish state condemned the invasion, is sending humanitarian aid, and has attempted to facilitate a peace agreement. What Ukraine wants, and why its leaders and allies are constantly making references to Jewish history, is Israel’s Iron Dome technology, which it claims would protect it from Russian missile strikes.
As Lahav Harkov has pointed out, the system would probably not do much good:
In light of its sensitive position, Israel has declined to send any military aid to Ukraine. The calls for Israel to give Ukraine an Iron Dome show a lack of understanding of this war, the missile-defense system, or both. It defends against much cruder rockets and missiles than the ones Russia is using. Plus, Israel doesn’t have enough to cover its own small territory, transporting Iron Dome batteries from one location to another at wartime, so how can it cover a country that is 27 times larger?
Even if the Iron Dome would be useful, Israel would most likely not share the technology. For one thing, there is a high likelihood that the technology would fall into Russian hands. For another, Israel neighbors Syria, where Russia operates with impunity. Israel can’t afford a belligerent Kremlin undermining its efforts to stop a potentially nuclear terror state of Iran from arming its proxies in Syria, Lebanon, and elsewhere or from building anti-aircraft defense systems near its borders. American aid, when given, should not be contingent on pulling our allies into conflicts that threaten their civilians and their very existence.
Contra anti-Zionist rhetoric, Israel does not have mythical powers, and world events do not hinge on its decisions. It’s quite small, and it works, above all things, to protect its interests, as all other nations do. It has no historical responsibility to Ukraine. And it doesn’t have the luxury of engaging in performative moralizing.
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