On this Sunday, March 20, Volodymyr Zelensky’s virtual world tour passes through Jerusalem. The Ukrainian president addresses the deputies of the Knesset by videoconference with a fighting spirit and a sense of formula now proven. But this discourse takes on a particular tone. Himself of Jewish origin, Zelensky focuses most of his speech on the responsibility of the Jewish people and the State of Israel towards Ukraine.
He begins by quoting “a great woman from kyiv”, namely the mythical Golda Meir, who participated in the creation of Israel, of which she was Prime Minister. “We intend to stay alive. Our neighbors want us dead. This is a matter that leaves little room for compromise.” The rest borrows from Nazi terminology. Russia would implement a “final solution”, a direct reference to the plan to exterminate the Jewish people. And to conclude: “The Ukrainians made their choice, eighty years ago. They saved the Jews. That is why the Righteous among the nations are among us. People of Israel, now you are facing the same choice.
As soon as the connection was cut, the Israeli deputies, from the extreme left to the extreme right, let their anger explode. “I respect the President of Ukraine and wholeheartedly support the Ukrainian people, but the terrible history of the Holocaust cannot be rewritten, a genocide was committed partly on Ukrainian soil. This war is terrible, but the comparison with the atrocities of the Holocaust and the final solution is outrageous,” lamented Yoaz Hendel, the very moderate communications minister from the centrist Bleu Blanc party.
Memory controversy
An aggravating circumstance, Zelensky evokes Jews saved by Ukrainians, whereas the history of the Holocaust retains above all the bloodthirsty zeal of the collaborators. While the Yad Vashem memorial actually recognizes 2,673 Ukrainian Righteous – a relatively low figure compared to that of France – several tens of thousands of Nazi auxiliaries actively participated in the mass murders in which more than a million perished. jews.
In his landmark book on the Jewish genocide, historian Saul Friedländer writes: “In the small towns of eastern Galicia [NDLR : région d’Ukraine]most of the anti-Jewish outbursts of the first days of the occupation occurred without apparent German intervention.” As for Golda Meir, whom Zelensky cites, she evokes in her memoirs the Ukraine of her childhood essentially to denounce an omnipresent anti-Semitism there. In kyiv , the riots against the Jews continued until September 1945, even though the Communists were already in power.
This memorial controversy reinforces Israeli reluctance to support Ukraine. Since the beginning of the conflict, the government of Naftali Bennett has been playing the tightrope walker. Under American pressure, the Jewish state agreed to condemn Russia at the UN, but it refuses to join in the sanctions imposed by the Western camp. “We have our own interests, which do not necessarily coincide with those of Ukraine or those of the Americans,” recognizes Evgueni Sova, an Israeli deputy of Ukrainian origin.
Iranian threat
Obsessed with its security in the Middle East, Israel is above all worried about the Iranian threat. Since 2015, Russia has been assisting Syria militarily and controlling its airspace. Each raid carried out by the Tsahal air force against pro-Iranian positions on the spot is closely coordinated with Russian army officers. “It works well on a daily basis, and we are not going to ruin this confidence to fly to the aid of Ukraine”, explains Evgueni Sova.
Israeli intelligence specialist Ronen Bergman revealed in the New York Times that Israel refused to sell the notorious Pegasus spyware to Ukraine and “imposed a virtual arms embargo” on that country. By sparing Russia without however breaking with kyiv, Israel is nevertheless trying to impose itself as a mediator in this fratricidal war. While Naftali Bennett is the only leader to have physically met Vladimir Putin since the start of the war, Volodymyr Zelensky expressed his “gratitude” to him for his diplomatic efforts. Without going back to the annoying past.