Is Putin Turning his back on Israel?
And the divergence between the West and the Global South grows.
It was probably inevitable. Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin were obviously attracted to one another, but in the end, Putin and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were an ideal match.
Where has all the magic gone? “More than three days after the start of the incursion by Hamas, there has been no message of condolence from the Kremlin, even though Mr. Putin previously published such notes of sympathy in the wake of terrorist attacks in Israel,” notes Anton Troianovsky in the Times. It gets worse. “Mr. Putin appears stung that Israel and Jewish leaders around the world are not backing his false narrative about Ukraine’s being run by ‘Nazis’ … In June, Mr. Putin claimed that his ‘many Jewish friends’ had told him that Mr. Zelensky was ‘a disgrace to the Jewish people.’ In this, Putin most clearly resembles America’s foremost aggrieved anti-Semite.
As a result, Putin’s first comments on the Israel-Hamas War are not particularly surprising. He called the war "a clear example of the failure of US policy in the Middle East" for not "taking the core interests of the Palestinian people into account.” Russia’s “elected” President is taking advantage of the horrific situation to raise his profile in the region. Putin here basically conjures up a novel way to criticize the United States, which is declining in influence in the region, even as he aspires to heights far above his station. In the process, Putin appears to hev turned against Israel, with which it was once geopolitically aligned — at least, somewhat, in the Syrian theater.
The pendulum swings. That Putin made these comments at an impromptu meeting with the Prime Minister of Iraq, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, in Moscow, is also quite newsworthy. And we cannot fail to note here that the Iraq War cost the United States about three trillion dollars. So, Mission Accomplished, I guess?
Putin’s comments and the meeting took place hours after President Biden’s dramatic Joint Statement on Israel, in which The United States, France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom all pledged unity and mutual coordination in Israel’s defense. But Putin, ever cunning, capitalized on an opportunity to insinuate himself into a flashpoint of a region on the side that just happens to be favored in global sentiment by the Global South …
Further, on Sunday, the United Nations Security Council met behind closed doors and failed to make a joint statement condemning Hamas. Gee, which members of the 15-member Council voted against condemning Hamas? “You could probably figure out one of them without me saying anything,” senior US diplomat Robert Wood told Al Jazeera. I’ll bet one rhymes with “Prussia.”
Iran is geopolitically necessary to Putin for many reasons, not the least of which are the kamikaze drone shipments and their aid in evading Western sanctions. This bromance — what else could it be? — has been brewing for longer than Grolsch beer. But now it would appear, now, with a certain finality, that Putin’s very flimsy “relationship” with Prime Minister Netanyahu on the Syria issue has altogether unraveled. Ayatollah Khamenei said today, of course, that Iran was not behind the attack.
That having been said, the divergence between the West and the Global South grows. Clearly, Putin is running for President of the Global South, or, at the very least, strategically increasing the gulf between the West and the Global South. From Alexandra Sitenco of International Politics and Society:
Already in its ‘Foreign Policy Concept’ at the turn of the century, Russia announced its aim to establish a multipolar international relations framework and to put an end to Western hegemony. One consequence of Russia’s attack on Ukraine is the increasing evidence of a geopolitical divergence between the West and the Global South. While the West is largely standing beside Ukraine, supporting it with arms deliveries and imposing sanctions on Russia, the reactions of many countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Arab World have been hesitant. The United Arab Emirates, for instance, has emphasised that taking sides would increase violence rather than promote a political solution. In view of this, the new version of the Russian Foreign Policy Concept, published on 31 March 2023, prioritises the expansion of relations with the Global South.
The similarities of the international reaction between the Israel-Hamas war and the Russia-Ukraine War are striking. Indonesia, Nigeria and Brazil were soft in their condemnation of Hamas, while at the same time critical of Israel for its Gaza retaliation. Bangladesh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned both sides, equally. Vietnam called for both sides to “exercise restraint.” Malaysia’s foreign ministry went so far to declare: “Palestinians have the legal right to live in a state of peace within its own recognised borders based on pre-1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.” Curiously, India, which is the world’s largest consumer of Israeli military and cyber weapons systems, stood in solidarity with Israel. Hmm.
Sarang Shidore of Responsible Statecraft breaks down Global South reaction:
If we were to project these reactions on a spectrum of the degree of alignment to U.S. and Israeli positions on the crisis (admittedly a challenging task due to the complexity of the issues involved and the early stage of the responses), India and Kenya seem to be at the end closest to the U.S. and Israel. They are followed by Singapore and Nigeria. Brazil, Mexico, and Vietnam appear to be next.
At the other end of this spectrum, and thus relatively the least aligned with Israeli and U.S. positions, lie Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, and South Africa.
One can imagine that a lot of this has to do with President Biden’s phone skills and the excellent relationships with world leaders that date back to his years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I cannot begin to relate how happy I am in this pandemonium Joe Biden — and not Donald Trump — is President of the United States. We would probably be in as hot war with Iran right now, if the other guy had won. Then again, that might still be the case, so long as Benjamin Netanyahu remains in office. But, one wonders, what does Netanyahu think about what can only be properly construed as Putin’s icy indifference? "Israel has stayed largely on the sidelines since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February so as not to damage its strategic relationship with the Kremlin," Isabel Debre of the Associated Press wrote last year. So meaningful.
And yet, what a spectacular miscalculation it was! Netanyahu showed deference to the Kremlin — in its war against a nation led by a Jewish President and Prime Minister — even as its ally, Iran, was refining its drone technology that, ultimately, may have been used to cause untold damage against population centers in Israel.
“For the past several years, Republicans have successfully made the case to some Asian American voters that Democrats are on the wrong side of two key issues: public safety and education … Just as New York’s Asian American communities aren’t a monolith, the issues that matter to Asian voters aren’t uniform. But public safety and education have been winning issues for Republicans with many Asian voters following a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes and a Democratic mayoral administration that tried to reform the screening test for specialized high schools and phase out gifted and talented programs.” (CityandState)
“Like all journalists who have spent time in both Israel and the Palestinian territories, I have seen both sides. One is Israel, an amazing and vibrant little country, built by survivors of industrial-scale modern genocide and their descendants. Israel absolutely deserves to survive and thrive. The other side is the occupied territories with descendants of people ejected from ancestral homes, now herded into ever smaller slices of barely arable land.” (Nina Burleigh/American Political Freakshow)
“As John McCain liked to say, ‘It’s always darkest just before it’s pitch black.’ Hamas has already killed six times as many people as were murdered on 9/11 (as a proportion of the Israeli population) and the war is worsening by the hour. Hezbollah is making trouble on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, the West Bank is rising in sympathy with Hamas and the Israeli Defense Force is laying siege to Gaza in advance of its first occupation there in 18 years.” (Jonathan Alter)
“Fifty years ago last Friday, Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated attack on Israel, sparking the fighting that would come to be known, variously, as the Yom Kippur War, the Ramadan War, and the October War. The offensive quickly became a huge global news story—one that, as a trio of academics wrote for Journalism Quarterly two years later, brought an ‘extremely large number of media people from around the world’ to Israel, enabled by technological advances in transport and satellite communication, that made it possible to cover the war in ‘great depth and intensity.’” (Jon Allsop/CJR)
“Digital consumers ‘have young, contemporary and in some cases authoritative voices they seek out, who don’t live in any traditional place. When they have a choice, the people they look for have personality, attitude, they’re funny or snarky, or they lead in very niche interests like mountain climbing or butterfly collecting,’ says Frank Sesno, a former CNN executive who is director of strategic initiatives at the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs. ‘Trying to do something like this around news and information is a very challenging thing and it’s going to require a level of creativity that doesn’t typically exist in a newsroom.’” (Variety)