In Ukraine’s vulnerability, a reminder for Israel

A Ukrainian serviceman, seen through a camouflage mesh, stands at a frontline position in the Luhansk region, eastern Ukraine, Saturday, Jan. 29, 2022. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Two years ago, I flew to Kyiv to interview Volodymyr Zelensky, the former comedian who, however implausibly, had become Ukraine’s thoroughly serious president.

He impressed me with his declared determination to honestly grapple with Ukraine’s Holocaust history, speaking at length of the vast number of Jewish victims, including at Babyn Yar — where 33,771 Jews were shot dead in a Kyiv ravine in September 1941, in the largest single massacre of the Holocaust up to that point.

He talked comfortably about his own Jewishness, and with obvious respect, even love, for Israel — evidently inspired by our country, its revival, its survival, its achievements. “The Jews managed to build a country, to elevate it, without anything except people and brains,” Ukraine’s president marveled. “The Jewish people in Israel is a unique people, a unique population… And despite being under the threat of war, they enjoy every day. I’ve seen it.”

And he spoke, far more warily, about Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin.

Putin “once said that Ukraine is not a country,” I recalled to Zelensky. “Does he still think that Ukraine is not a country?”

Replied the president, “I don’t know what he’s thinking about. He didn’t tell me. I think he understands my attitude: Ukraine is an independent country. We are a big country, the biggest in Europe. I think he understands. What he thinks about it? That’s in his head.”

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, interviewed by The Times of Israel in his office in Kyiv, on January 18, 2020. (Press service of the Office of the President of Ukraine)

My heart goes out to Ukraine’s president today, bracing for a possible Russian invasion, defiant, championing his country’s sovereignty and integrity, massively outgunned, uncertain of the potency of international support.

And I note something else he said in our interview, his possibly envious, certainly admiring observation that “there are many countries in the world that can protect themselves, but Israel, such a small country, can not only protect itself, but facing external threats, can respond.”

This past weekend, I had another interview, closer to home — with Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, who has been walking the tightrope between expressing principled opposition to a Russian invasion and ensuring the well-being of Israelis and Jews in Ukraine, on one hand, and trying, on the other, not to alienate a Russian president with whom Israel has a complex, critical relationship — both because of Moscow’s Middle East presence and influence, and because of Russia’s significant Jewish community.

“This is very 20th century, one country invading another,” said Lapid of the crisis, initially taking the dispassionate historical view. “We thought we were beyond this.”

But soon enough in our conversation, he reflected on the Israeli implications.

I put it to him that it seemed like the world was doing nothing to protect a sovereign country, and his direct response was Israel-centered: “I’m looking at Ukraine and saying, thank God for the IDF and for our ability to defend ourselves… I think Israel needs to remember this: Israel needs to be able to protect itself, by itself.”

Tommy Lapid reporting from Adolf Eichman’s trial in Jerusalem, 1961. (Government Press Office/Israel National Photo Collection)

He then recalled the last speech his father, Tommy Lapid — the journalist, commentator and government minister, a Holocaust survivor whose father was murdered in a Nazi concentration camp — gave as the chairman of the advisory board of Yad Vashem. “‘You know what the world is going to do if Israel is destroyed?'” Lapid remembered his father saying. “‘They’re going to send a nice letter.’ And he was right. And maybe they’d give some nice speeches in the UN.”

If we thought the danger of despotic regimes remaking the world map was “very 20th century,” along comes Russia to slap us back to our senses. And if we thought the oft-declared imperative that Israel be able, always, to defend itself, by itself, was mere outdated rhetoric, the vulnerability of Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukraine, and his admiration for our country, underlines its critical relevance.

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid (Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/File)

“When I think about Ukraine, I think probably the first association is Babyn Yar,” Lapid told me on Saturday night. “There will be no Babyn Yar in the State of Israel. Whatever the rest of the world may do or may think.”

“So that kind of brings us on to Iran,” I said.

“Yes,” agreed the Israeli foreign minister, laughing wryly. “It brings us on to Iran.”