Without even waiting for the bombs to fall silent, Volodymyr Zelensky has already drawn the outlines of the future Ukraine. “In the future, our entire people will constitute our great army; we will not be the Switzerland of the future [NDLR : sous entendu, un pays neutre]but a bigger Israel, with its own attributes,” the president declared on April 5, less than two months after the start of the war.
A single objective: “to survive, like Israel”
Of course, Ukraine is not the Jewish state. The first is a European country of 44 million souls, 80% Orthodox; the other is a small nation in the Middle East with 10 million people, mostly of the Jewish faith. But kyiv and Jerusalem have the essentials in common: each lives on a daily basis with a serious neighborhood problem. Surrounded by enemies since its creation in 1948, Israel has forged itself in wars against Arab countries and the defense of its territory. Ukraine remains threatened by Russia.
No wonder, then, that Zelensky sees Israel as a model for the future. And he is not alone: the idea is also gaining ground among the population, when national security is mentioned. “No one knows when this conflict will end, but Ukraine is doomed, like Israel, to face a permanent danger of war, predicts Veronika Kobzistaja, a 28-year-old young woman who started a company producing clothes in kyiv. for the Ukrainian army, so we have to learn to live with this threat.” Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk sums up the general state of mind: “Our primary goal is to survive, like Israel”, she tells L’Express.
Even in the event of victory, Russian and Belarusian threats will force kyiv to place the army at the heart of its social project. “Israel’s security doctrine is based on its ability to defend itself, without letting others fight their own battles for it, underlines the former United States ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro. The tragedies of Jewish history have engraved this lesson in the Israeli national mind, and the traumas of Ukraine, forced to fight alone against a much larger aggressor, lead it on this same path. To build this defensive autonomy, Israel devoted, in the 1970s, up to a third of its national budget to military expenditure!
National security, an imperative that dictates the functioning of Israel
In kyiv, the leaders also intend to unite the Ukrainians around the idea of a people in arms. At the end of June, Zelensky sketched out the establishment of compulsory military service “Israeli style”. “The vast majority of young Israelis serve in the army, then start their career in the field of security in the broad sense, points out diplomat Daniel Shapiro. Citizens unite in this way and together bear the sacrifices necessary for their security. .”
The logic of the Israeli state is built around this imperative. During elections, the vote is not decided on questions of economy, ecology or taxation but on the ability to resist external attacks. “For a country to remain powerful even in turbulent times, it is necessary to set up an economy that will not be penalized by war, argues Yonatan Freeman, professor of international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Also, the Israel’s economy is based on services and new technologies, which allows it to continue to function even in times of conflict. Ukraine, on the other hand, will have to strengthen its technological sector but also build an education system oriented towards resilience, which requires a close link between military and civilian innovation.”
Already in the 1960s, Singapore had imitated this model… with the discreet help of the Israelis. “At the time, the main threat against Singapore was Malaysia, with which Israel had no connection, specifies Yonatan Freeman. Conversely, with Russia, our economic and political relations are important, which makes it unlikely official Israeli aid to the Ukrainian army. However, it is not impossible that private Israeli security companies are already involved in such a process…”
This article is from our special issue “We Ukrainians”on newsstands August 24, in partnership with BFMTV