Answering Zelensky's Question to Israel

"Why aren't we getting weapons from you?" is the question that the beleaguered Ukrainian President Zelenskiy addressed to Israel, adding "It's fine to be a mediator, but not between Good and Evil".

Comparing the Russian offensive against his country to the German Nazis' "final solution" of exterminating the Jews, Zelenskiy wondered why is Israel reluctant to sell the Iron Dome defense system to Ukraine. Zelenskiy is himself a Jew. "Everybody knows that your missile defense systems ... can definitely help our people, save the lives of Ukrainians, of Ukrainian Jews," he said.

"We can ask why we can’t receive weapons from you, why Israel has not imposed powerful sanctions on Russia or is not putting pressure on Russian business."

The answers to these questions have been obvious for many decades, even though no one would admit them. Israel loves the Assad regime in Syria, and Syria is Russia's protégé. Despite the decades of a so-called enmity between Syria and Israel, the two countries have worked together in close cooperation over a range of issues. They cooperated over Lebanon, each one of them occupying parts of the country without ever confronting one another. They cooperated over the Golan Heights which was occupied and annexed by Israel without Syria ever trying to recuperate them. They cooperated by destroying Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization during the 1970s and 1980s. Nowadays, Israel mounts daily attacks against the Iranian organization Hezbollah's supply lines across Syria into Lebanon, without the Syrians fighting back or complaining at the UN. Syria and Israel never fought each other directly after the 1973 war, yet they had agreement after agreement over waging war via proxies in their small neighbor Lebanon while maintaining a quiet border on the Golan for 50 years. In Syria itself, the 12-year old civil war has seen Russian forces establish themselves in Syria and defend the Assad regime by driving millions of refugees, bombing and destroying entire cities, and causing massive loss of civilian life.

Israel does not want to help Ukraine because it needs Vladimir Putin's continued cooperation over Syria. If Israel helps Ukraine, Putin might retaliate by denying Israel's freedom of operation over Syria, by entering into a direct confrontation with Israel across Syrian territory, and perhaps even stirring up and escalating tensions across the Israeli-Syrian border.

In sum, the Assad regime is the dear friend of both Israel and Russia, and Israel does not want to jeopardize its love affair with Assad by alienating Putin in Ukraine.