Joining the US, Israel voted against a UN motion condemning Russia, this being the first time the country voted with Moscow and against Kyiv since 2022. This interesting development, is not so significant in itself (Israel and the US votes were subdued and the motion is largely symbolic anyway), but it does mark an interesting shift in Israeli-American relations

One may recall that Israel had been struggling to maintain a certain pragmatic neutrality with regards to the conflict in Ukraine. Back in June 2023,  Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in an interview, explained why his country blocked the transfer of Iron Dome batteries to Ukraine: “we’ve expressed our sympathy [to Ukraine, but] there is a limit: limitations we have and concerns and interests that we have… our pilots are flying right next to Russian pilots over the skies of Syria in order to block the attempts of Iran to establish a second Hezbollah front in Syria.”

Despite that, the Jewish state has even thus far turned a blind eye to Ukraine’s ongoing glorification of Nazi collaborators since the 2014 Maidan revolution – which is remarkable in itself, considering how sensitive the matter is to Israelis for obvious reasons and also considering that the issue of far-right Ukrainian nationalism has even hampered Kiev’s bilateral relations with Greece and Poland, as well as other neighbours (not just Russia).

Writing for the Forward back in 2019, Lev Golinkin, for example, denounced the neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic specter haunting Ukrainian ultra-nationalism: “Maidan also had a well-organized neo-Nazi contingent which provided crucial street muscle to the uprising”. He added: “neo-Nazi gangs from Maidan grew into paramilitary formations such as the Azov Battalion, which were eventually incorporated into Ukraine’s National Guard. As I and others have written in these pages, these groups have been steadily proliferating and have acted with impunity since Maidan.”

Considering the record, how can one explain Israel’s sudden shift, which broke its neutrality? The US has long flirted with the idea of retreating from its attrition proxy war and shifting the “burden” of Ukraine onto Europe so as to be able to pivot to the Pacific, and Trump apparently wants to get it done quickly enough, as is his style.

According to an unnamed Israeli official quoted by the Jewish Insider, “there was a lot of pressure from the US, they really insisted. It came at all levels, at the UN, in Washington, and in Israel.” He adds: “We preferred to avoid this situation. We had no choice, but to take a side. Israel could have abstained, but I think because we asked a lot from [the Trump administration] in recent weeks and days, the decision was to go all the way with them.”

Donald Trump’s take on international relations today could be summarized along the following lines: “they are ripping us off!”, which is pretty ironic, considering that one could argue it is quite the other way around, and remembering how Washington has always weaponized the dollar (with the so-called “dollar bomb”, as I wrote before).

Be it as it may, Trump’s response to this state of affairs (the way he sees it, anyway), has been a brute display of force – a variation of the “big stick” philosophy, but this time without any of the “speak softly” part. Trump’s “repeated threats to impose costly tariffs on close allies either to coerce concessions on other issues or solely because they are running trade surpluses”, as political scientist Stephen Walt describes them, are a good example of this.

Be it with regards to cross-border issues or with regards to burden-sharing within NATO, the new US President’s “blackmail” approach, time and again, has consisted in making threats (Mafia-style) and then sending the bill – his demands pertaining to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals being a case in point. In a curious use of the so-called “madman theory”, this often involves some degree of bluffing and bravado (or “trolling”), but part of it is quite serious, thereby making American partners, allies and adversaries scratch their heads about how to make sense of such trumpisms. It is a quite effective weaponization (both in the domestic and international sphere) of that all-American institution called bullying.

But here I digress. The point is that, in spite of the “special” relationship the US has had with the Jewish state (a factor of which includes the “Israel Lobby” as scholars John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt call it), it would not be much of stretch to assume that an approach similar to the one described above is being employed on Israel, albeit in a less public manner. This is not so much about the issue of Ukraine itself but about rebalancing the American-Israeli relationship.

Consider Trump’s preposterous Palestine proposal earlier this month. The Republican basically announced that Washington could conquer, occupy and “own” Palestine, right to Netanyahu’s face. Rather than taking this statement at face value, one might instead think of it as yet another “who is the boss” bullying-like reminder to an ally. Israel is not only  the largest cumulative recipient of American foreign aid, having received $150 billion up to February 2022; the US also has the upper hand militarily.

Since 1979 Israel and Iran have been waging a kind of “secret war”, and in July 2022 I asked whether this could not turn into a full-fledged war “soon”. Since the events of October 7, 2023, this scenario has gotten closer to becoming reality, as I wrote elsewhere. The Jewish state has indeed been trying to drag the Americans into a wider Middle Eastern war. One may recall that in August 2024, John Mearsheimer, the prominent US scholar of international relations, wrote that the previous Biden administration “desperately” wanted a ceasefire in Palestine, whereas Netanyahu’s government was “committed to making sure the negotiations for a ceasefire fail”.

Moreover, the US political scientist argued one of the goals of Washington, under Biden, was to avoid an escalation into a regional war involving Lebanon and Iran. The US after all has “a deep-seated interest” in some degree of stability in the Middle East, while Netanyahu, on the other hand, was (and is) “willing to set the region ablaze,” as Alon Pinkas, Israeli diplomat, described it last year. In this complex game, the American superpower has been supplying Netanyahu with the fuel for the fire while paradoxically also being the one who does not want to see a fire out of control.

While there is no indication that Trump will end or damage the American-Israeli “special relationship”, it is clear he will seek to obtain leverage. The Israel-Hamas cease-fire agreed to last month illustrates this: albeit it took place before Trump’s inauguration, it is largely credited to Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Special Envoy for the Middle East.

It seems Trump is willing to send Israel the bill, so to speak. Washington will continue to support Israel’s occupation of Palestine, even under global condemnation – but within certain limits. Should Tel Aviv go too far, the US will still help, but there will be a price to pay, and Trump’s provocative remarks about Washington occupying Palestine are a reminder that such a price might turn out to be too high.

Israel’s new stance on the issue of Ukraine could therefore be seen as part of this larger context, and as the outcome of a quid pro quo agreement, whose full content remains unknown. In any case, it further increases the isolation of Ukraine. Perhaps Israel might even stop turning a blind eye to Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem and thus join countries such as Poland and Hungary, who have already voiced their concerns about it.

As for Trump, the greatest challenge will be to keep his Israeli allies “in line” even when Netanyahu is bent on setting the Middle East ablaze. Should Washington embark on any such larger war, it would be a disaster with global repercussions.

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