Ep. 92: Israel was right to stick with Trump at the UN
12:10 Share

Hello and welcome to Jonathan Tobin Daily. I'm JNS Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Tobin. Thanks for joining me for another discussion on the most pressing issues in the Jewish world. Please like, subscribe, and give us good reviews when you listen to the show. Now let's get started. It was a confrontation Israel would have rather avoided. But when push came to shove at the UN General Assembly this week, the Jewish state knew what it had to do.

Faced with a choice between taking sides with Ukraine, the European Union, and most of the international community, or standing with the Trump administration, Jerusalem didn't hesitate to back Washington. For doing so, it's not only getting bashed by some familiar critics, but former friends as well.

The dilemma was caused by an EU resolution reaffirming the world body's condemnation of Russia for its illegal invasion of Ukraine's borders on the third anniversary of the war that started on February 24, 2022. The measure also demanded that Moscow withdraw immediately from territory it seized from the former Soviet Republic in 2014.

The United States, which had begun an effort to negotiate an end to the brutal conflict that has taken one million lives on both sides, opposed the resolution. Rather than being, like most of what happens at the United Nations, a meaningless gesture of virtue signaling, the Trump administration correctly viewed the resolution as an effort to derail its diplomatic initiatives.

It preferred a simple call for an end to the war, rejected by Ukraine and its supporters, while not outrightly blaming Russia. So what could Israel do when the General Assembly voted? It supported the U.S. position on both resolutions. It voted against the EU proposal in one instance, and again, following Washington's lead, abstained on the other, since European amendments had transformed the American resolution's meaning to undermine President Donald Trump's policy on the war.

As a result, Israel and Netanyahu came under fire for siding with Trump, Hungary, and Russia, in addition to an unsavory list of allies of Moscow like Iran and North Korea. For never-Trump diehards like former Republican bigwig turned Democratic Party cheerleader William Kristol, Israel's actions was a disgrace in which they were accused of siding with Russian President Vladimir Putin against democracy and decency.

Kristol was once an ardent supporter of Israel and regarded former President Barack Obama's efforts to appease Iran as an emergency. But his rage at Trump's takeover of the GOP was so great that by 2020 he was openly supporting a return to those same dangerous anti-Israel policies if it meant defeating him. Well, it's hard to take people like Kristol seriously anymore. He wasn't alone in excoriating Israel on this point.

Some Americans have embraced the cause of Ukraine as the most important issue in the world, dwarfing all other concerns, including the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and the subsequent surge in anti-Semitism throughout the globe. For them, the choice on the war between Russia and Ukraine is a binary one between good and evil. For many, that extends to any discussion about Trump, Putin, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Standing with Trump against Zelensky's demands for a continuation of former President Joe Biden's policy backing the war for as long as it takes is now treated as a de facto endorsement of Putin by many in the corporate liberal media.

For those who demonize Trump, along with Putin, lumping Israel in with them isn't a stretch. The American political left has turned on the Jewish state, falsely accusing it of being a settler-colonial-anapartheid state that commits genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The barbarous actions of Hamas and the Palestinians are termed justified resistance rather than evidence of depravity and hate.

They already judge Israel by a distorted set of double standards they would never apply to any other country or people. Even so, Netanyahu would have been happy to avoid being depicted as having discarded morality so as to retain a stance as Trump's sidekick. Despite Trump's false claim that Ukraine started the war, there is no rational alternative to an effort to end a conflict that cannot be won by either side.

and negotiated settlements that won't give either Kyiv or Moscow all that they want is the only way to stop the killing and the enormous strain of American resources to continue a costly stalemate. But there is also no denying that backing Trump on this issue only heightens the growing isolation of the Jewish state.

That is particularly true in Europe, where, outside of friendly outlier nations like Hungary, hostility for Israel is a function of the growing strength of a bizarre red-green alliance of leftists and Muslim immigrants. The European Union is horrified by Trump's effort to end the war, as well as by the administration's willingness to note that for all of its talk about democracy, free speech is on the way and on the continent. Being caught in the middle between Russia and Ukraine is nothing new for Israel.

Since the war started, it has come under pressure to take an active part in Ukraine's defense. Jerusalem denounced the invasion of Ukraine, took in refugees from the war, and also provided considerable aid to Kiev. But it refused to give it any of its precious Iron Dome air defense batteries or completely break off relations with Moscow. At the time, Russia's military presence in Syria, as well as the safety of those Jews who remained in that country after most had left in the last 35 years,

provided a rationale for Jerusalem's caution. Zelensky also undermined his own case when, in a virtual address to the Knesset, he falsely claimed that Ukrainians stood with the Jews during the Holocaust when, in fact, they were among the most ardent and brutal collaborators with the Nazis. Any other world leader making such an egregious claim would have been denounced as a Holocaust denier. But so great was the regard for Zelensky that it was largely ignored.

The same was true when it comes to how Ukraine votes in the United Nations. As Israel ambassador to Ukraine said in 2023, Kiev votes against Israel more than 90% of the time and has come down on the side of anti-Semitic discrimination at the world body more often than not. How then can Ukraine's fans condemn Israel's voting?

The collapse of Russia's Syrian ally coupled with Israel's victory over Hezbollah and Iran means that Israel no longer has to worry as much about Moscow's military might next door. Though Trump's victory in the 2024 elections returned a strong ally to the White House, the new administration's flexing of its diplomatic muscles in the last month provides another reason for Israel to keep Ukraine at arm's length.

Trump's various statements about Hamas and the war have brought moral clarity to the issue as well as comforted Israel. But as his Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff travels to the region seeking to keep the ceasefire hostage release deal alive, in addition to beginning efforts to expand the 2020 Abraham Accords, Netanyahu knows full well that Trump is in charge in the region, not Israel.

Washington's positions are close to those of Israel, though not on every issue. That's especially true when it comes to Iran, where the president seems to prefer sanctions and negotiations to a military strike on its nuclear program. Indeed, given the stakes involved in gaining the release of the hostages and what may be an inevitable return to the war on Hamas so as to ensure it doesn't retain power in Gaza, Jerusalem has as much need to stick close to Trump as it ever has.

claims that he would betray Israel, the drop of a hat, fly in the face of his record as a steadfast ally of the Jewish state. Still, the idea that Israel should regard Ukraine's interests as having a greater priority than its own life and death struggle is risible. In that light, voting with the United States to oppose meaningless UN resolutions meant to make it harder to negotiate peace in Ukraine seems like a small and entirely defensible price to pay for firming up the alliance with Washington.

That's true even if it means voting with Russia and its despicable allies. Trump is often criticized for his transactional approach to foreign policy rather than one that is based on or pretends to be rooted in moral issues and human rights concerns. But after the failure of Obama and Biden's policies to deter Russia or Iran, the need for a more sober approach to these conflicts based on realpolitik concerns is warranted.

It's not just that Biden's weakness encouraged aggression. Disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq should have cured Americans of any lingering belief in exporting democracy. After all that, it should be obvious that a pragmatic approach to the world and the need to maintain a balance of power as opposed to one that claims to be defending some great moral principle is likely to do less harm and avoid needless conflict.

Regardless of whatever arguments Moscow may put forward, the Russians are guilty of starting and pursuing an illegal and indefensible war against Ukraine. Yet, a continuation of Biden's support for the unattainable goal of Ukraine defeating Russia still sounds good to Western armchair strategists committed to obsolete Cold War strategies.

It also appeals to those who not only think Russia is evil, but have drunk the Kool-Aid about Ukraine being the avatar of the struggle for democracy, rather than just another corrupt and largely undemocratic former Soviet republic. In his first term, Trump was encouraged to listen to the grown-ups who came out of the foreign policy establishment, rather than his own instincts.

He eventually learned that was a mistake and achieved a great deal, especially in the Middle East, by ignoring those establishment voices. He may still be too impulsive to have earned blind trust when it comes to charting a new course for the United States abroad. But putting down his peace initiative as merely appeasing Putin or recycling the long-since-debunked Russian collusion hoax conspiracy theories is not a credible or reasonable response to his positions.

Under the circumstances, allowing no daylight between the United States and Israel is not only a wise strategy for Jerusalem, it is one that puts it on the side of a far more effective policy to defend the interests of the West as well as the Jewish state than anything Trump's critics might support. Thanks for listening. Please remember to tune in every day for Jonathan Tobin Daily Edition and every week for Think Twice, my full-length JNS TV program.

Whether you're listening to us on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Music, or any of the other podcast platforms or on the JNS YouTube channel, please like and or subscribe to JNS, click on the bell for notifications, and give us good reviews. Please write to us at thinktwice at jns.org and let us know where you listen or watch the show and what you think about it. And remember, keep reading and thinking for yourself.