It was reported recently that Benjamin Netanyahu will soon be speaking to the only Jewish political leader who rivals him for global attention: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky told Israeli news channel i24: “He has what I need, and I have what he needs.”

The conversation, apparently sought by Israel’s prime minister, has some clear goals. Bibi wants the expertise that Ukraine has developed in countering Iranian drones, an increasingly central part of Russia’s arsenal in its war of aggression against its neighbor. Israel’s missile defense technology is unmatched, but Ukraine offers something different; battlefield experience dealing with mass swarm attacks of Iranian-made drones, and low-cost anti-drone technology. Meanwhile, Ukraine has long sought access to Israel’s peerless defensive military technology.

But away from the tech and the hardware, there are other reasons why Israel and Ukraine should be allies. Many of us have long made the case that it is these two countries who stand on the frontline of a civilizational battle. Two democracies fighting sworn enemies of democracy – Islamist in one case, authoritarian nationalist in the other. But it’s not incidental that Russia uses Iranian drones, or that North Korea has provided actual soldiers for the fight against Ukraine. Russia, China, Iran and North Korea form a loose axis of autocracy, united not by a shared ideology but by a shared desire to weaken the West and to oppose its liberal democratic values. For that reason, there should have been a united Western front against both Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the long-simmering war on Israel by Iran and its proxies that boiled over on October 7, 2023 and has been bubbling away ever since.

Unfortunately, much of the left is infected with an anti-Zionism that can be traced back to the Soviet Union’s fraudulent campaign against “imperialism”, while on the populist right, there exists an affection for Vladimir Putin as a “strong” nationalist who defends “Christian values”. The former has led to overtly anti-Israel positions by European governments, especially in Ireland and Spain; while the latter means that not only is Viktor Orban’s Hungary effectively a Russian fifth column in the EU, but that MAGA ideologues like Steve Bannon – not to mention the clearly beyond-the-pale Tucker Carlson – are firmly in Russia’s corner in the war with Ukraine. And President Trump himself has been repeating Putin’s talking points and blaming Zelensky for the lack of a ceasefire  – even now in fact, with Ukraine providing anti-drone support for America’s Gulf allies and Russia backing Iran. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that Trump simply wants to end the war in Ukraine as quickly as possible, and the quickest way to do that is by essentially giving Zelensky an ultimatum: go along with what Putin wants or we stop supporting you. Which makes perfect sense if (uniquely for an American President) you don’t have any affinity for an embattled democracy over an aggressive dictatorship.

But it’s not just that Ukraine and Israel are two democracies facing down democracy’s enemies. They both represent a model for the West going forward: democracies that are unapologetically patriotic, and with citizens ready and able to take up arms in defence of the nation. This kind of liberal nationalism has been lost in most of Europe, where national pride is too often the preserve of the far-right, and multi-culturalism has shifted from a laudable appreciation of minorities to a squeamishness about standing up for the values and traditions of the majority. In the United States, patriotic liberalism used to be core to both Republican and  Democratic parties, but today the GOP has abandoned (small ‘l’) liberalism for populist nationalism – more Pat Buchanan than Bill Buckley; while the Dems seem to have substituted the muscular liberalism of a Bill (or Hillary!) Clinton for the self-flagellation and masochism  of the “progressives’.

Zelensky has long understood the Israel-analogy. Back in 2022, he described the future, post-war Ukraine as he saw as a “big Israel”. Former US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro described well what this might mean:

…within Israel itself, a constant focus on security hasn’t prevented the upholding of core democratic institutions and practices. Zelenskyy seems aware of this tension, which will require constant maintenance, but also that democracy is a prerequisite: ‘An authoritarian state is impossible in Ukraine,’ he said.

…within Israel itself, a constant focus on security hasn’t prevented the upholding of core democratic institutions and practices. Zelenskyy seems aware of this tension, which will require constant maintenance, but also that democracy is a prerequisite: ‘An authoritarian state is impossible in Ukraine,’ he said.

But for Ukraine and Israel to be the kind of model I’m advocating, we will need to see a very different Israeli government emerge from this year’s election. The current coalition seems determined to move Israel out of the liberal democratic camp, closer to authoritarianism; ironically modelled on the “illiberal democracy” of the avowedly anti-Ukraine Viktor Orban. (Russia is currently helping to finance Orban’s re-election campaign, in which Zelensky is absurdly being portrayed as the main source of Hungary’s problems.). So whatever transpires from Netanyahu’s conversation with Zelensky this week, it won’t be Netanyahu who will be able to take this relationship forward in a way that could really bring the two countries together.

Ultimately, the relationship between Israel and Ukraine is about more than shared threats or military cooperation; it reflects a deeper alignment of democratic values under pressure. Both countries stand on the frontlines of a wider struggle against authoritarianism, but their ability to serve as a model for the West depends on their commitment to those same liberal principles at home.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)