‘I wouldn’t mind if the West gets its butt kicked’: The Israelis siding with Putin

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Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began last week, most Israeli leaders across the political spectrum have either expressed full support for Ukrainians or cautiously supported a neutral approach for strategic reasons, fearful of harming the country’s interests in Russia-controlled Syria.

A minority on the right, however, has gone as far as to express a measure of sympathy and identification with Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s justifications for Russia asserting a historic claim to Ukrainian territory.

“People in Russia suit Putin’s rule. Kyiv is Russia’s birthplace. Kyiv for Putin is like Bethlehem and Hebron,” said Maj. Gen. (ret.) Gershon Hacohen, a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, in a recent interview on Kan public television.

Hacohen questioned the assumption that Israel needed to stand with the “Free World” and be on the “right side of history.”

“Is the European Union on ‘the right side of history’ when it opposes me when it comes to Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], building for the Palestinians and pouring money into anti-Zionist NGOs?” he said. “I have to ask myself: what is the right side of history for me?”

While condemning the brutality of Putin’s invasion, some right-wing commentators – similar to their U.S. counterparts, most famously Fox News host Tucker Carlson – positively contrasted the Russian leader’s strength with what they see as the weakness of leaders in Western Europe and the United States, and their failure to offer a counterbalance to his aggression over the years.

Noam Fathi, a right-wing journalist and broadcaster, as well a fierce advocate of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, tweeted that it was NATO and the West who were “standing on the ‘stupid side of history,'” since “it’s the NATO countries who repeatedly provoked Putin, blatantly violated agreements with him … and today they are scratching their heads asking why civilians are being bombed.”

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Later, appearing on the “The Patriots” show on the right-wing Channel 14, Fathi said he had been “lynched” online for expressing those views.

Both Hacohen and Fathi compared NATO’s thinking to that of the Israeli left.

There are those who see the Russia-Ukraine conflict in “black and white, with an aggressor and a victim – just like [they say] there is here in Israel,” Hacohen said.

Just as the United States had for years pushed back against the Soviet Union’s involvement in Latin America, Putin had a right to stand up for his sphere of influence, he argued.

“We tell schoolchildren here that there is an alternative Palestinian narrative and you have to learn it. Well, there is a very serious Russian narrative: Kyiv is the birthplace of Russia, and it was the Russians who built Odessa,” Hacohen said.

Yair Netanyahu with father Benjamin in Jerusalem District Court in January.Dana Kopel

Supporters of Netanyahu in his Likud party – led by his youngest son, Yair Netanyahu – have been relentless in their social media criticism of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, and particularly of Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, for what they called an imprudent decision to side strongly with Ukraine in the conflict.

They said Israel’s leaders were ignoring the need to maintain a good relationship with Russia in view of Israel’s strategic interests in Syria and need to continue to rein in Iran. Israel and Russia have had an agreement since the latter sent troops and air defenses to help Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2015 that reportedly gives Israel freedom of action in the skies over Lebanon and Syria.

On the day of the Russian invasion last Thursday, following Lapid’s sharp condemnation of Putin, Yair Netanyahu tweeted in Russian that Lapid “doesn’t represent the majority of Israeli citizens.”

On the same day, prominent pro-Netanyahu journalist Shimon Riklin wrote that he “really wouldn’t mind if the West gets its butt kicked.” If that happened, he said, perhaps “the West’s fans here in Israel who cry with emotion when they talk about France, Germany, England [and] America will wake up from this fake admiration, turn their backs to the sea and start looking toward Jerusalem.”