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The Gaza War Led Russia to Embrace Hamas, and Use It as Leverage Against the West
Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi during a meeting in Moscow, Russia, Dec. 7, 2023. Photo: Sputnik/Sergei Bobylev/Pool via REUTERS
When the Israel-Hamas war broke out in October 2023, Russia had been involved in its “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine for a year and a half. Given the challenges Russia has faced during the war, Putin has sought allies in the so-called “Global South,” and has sought to portray Russia’s war against Ukraine as a war against NATO and what Moscow described as Western neo-colonialism. This overall policy perspective has shifted Russia from its once close bilateral relationship with Israel, which it sees as part of the Western camp, to an increasingly pro-Hamas position.
Interestingly enough however, despite Russia’s rising anti-Israeli (and antisemitic) rhetoric, Israel’s two main goals in its dealing with Russia — the freedom of action for the Israeli air force in Syrian airspace and the continued emigration of Russian Jews to Israel — continued to be achieved. Indeed, Israel expanded its activity in Syria, flying missions all over the country and even bombing the annex of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, an action that was to lead to a serious confrontation between Israel and Iran.
Putin was initially silent during the first few days of the Israel-Hamas war, as the Russian leader was probably assessing its costs and benefits for Russia. On the benefit side, the war diverted US and Western attention from the war in Ukraine, and Putin may have hoped that it would divert US weapons that would have gone to Ukraine to Israel, although Republican Congressional opposition in the US to aid to Ukraine was to serve the same purpose.
In addition, since the Palestinian issue was popular in the Global South, with the exception of the Modi regime in India which remained pro-Israeli — and since US President Joe Biden immediately came out in support of Israel and transferred weapons to the Jewish State — Putin may have hoped that the war would weaken the US position in the Global South.
On the other hand, however, since Iran was an ally of Hamas, there was a danger of a conflict between Israel and Iran, especially when Hezbollah started firing rockets into northern Israel in support of Hamas. In any case, when Putin did publicly respond to the war a few days after the war started, he did not blame Hamas but called the war “a clear example of the failure of US policy in the Middle East which has never defended the interest of the Palestinians in peace talks.”
While Putin did acknowledge Israel’s right to self-defense, saying it had suffered an “unprecedented attack,” he then compared the Israeli invasion of Gaza to the Nazi siege of Leningrad. After Putin’s statement, Russia introduced a UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution calling for a cease-fire and the release of hostages (some of whom were Russian citizens). The US, however, vetoed the Russian UNSC resolution because it did not mention the Hamas attack. Several months later, it was Russia that vetoed a similar US UNSC resolution because it did mention the Hamas attack. Russia also provided humanitarian aid to the Palestinians in Gaza.
In another effort to demonstrate that Russia had a role to play in the conflict, Putin offered to host a meeting of foreign ministers to bring an end to the war, stating that “we have very stable and trade relations with Israel and we have (had) friendly relations with the Palestinians for decades.” The Russian leader, however, got no support for his planned meeting. Putin then had a belated condolence call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in mid-October, but followed it with a formal invitation to a Hamas delegation to visit Moscow — less than two weeks after the Hamas attack on Israel — thereby appearing to legitimize both the organization and the attack. Needless to say, the Israeli leadership was furious with the visit.
It is possible that the pro-Hamas tilt in Russian foreign policy together with the rising tide of antisemitism in the official Russian press, which was often directed against President Zelensky of Ukraine, who is Jewish, may have encouraged near-pogroms in the North Caucasus soon after the visit of the Hamas delegation. Rioters stormed the airport at Makhachkala, Dagestan, as a flight from Israel was arriving; a Jewish community center was set afire; and a hotel was put under siege as rioters sought to discover if there were any Jews among the guests. While Putin blamed the mob’s actions on Ukraine, the actions of the rioters had to be problematic for him as they served to undermine his description of the Russian Federation as a place of inter-faith and inter-ethnic harmony.
Meanwhile, Russia’s anti-Israeli rhetoric was growing, as the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, stated on November 2 that Israel, being an “occupying state” did not have the right to self-defense, under international law. There appeared to be a slight improvement in Russian-Israeli relations in December, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking at the Doha forum, stated that Hamas had carried out a “terrorist attack” — but followed up this statement by commenting “at the same time it is unacceptable to use this event for the collective punishment of millions of Palestinian people with indiscriminate shelling.”
In looking at the reasons for the change in Moscow’s tone about Hamas, it is possible that Lavrov was appealing to the leadership of the Arab States in attendance who viewed Hamas negatively. This was especially the case of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Putin also made another telephone call to Netanyahu, this time according to Russian sources, to discuss the crisis caused by the Hamas attack. According to the Israeli version of the call, Netanyahu criticized Russia’s UN representatives for their “anti-Israeli positions,” and the Israeli leader also voiced “robust disapproval” of Russia’s “dangerous cooperation” with Iran. According to the Russian version of the call, Putin highlighted “the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.”
In January 2024, Russian-Israeli relations took another turn for the worse, as during a meeting on Syria at Astana, Kazakhstan, the Russian special representative for Syria, Alexander Lavrentyev, stated, in reference to South Africa’s lawsuit at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide, that Israel’s actions in Gaza represent a “real crime” which “can even be interpreted as genocide.” In addition, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova criticized Germany for defending Israel at the International Court of Justice, given Germany’s actions in World War Two, and she went on to compare Germany’s defense of Israel with its support for Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Russia was stepping up its efforts to woo the Global South. Taking a page from the old Soviet playbook, when the USSR was wooing the Third World with the Soviet Afro-Asian Peoples Solidarity Association, Putin created, through his United Russia Party, an organization called “The Forum of Supporters for the Fight Against Neocolonialism and the Freedom of Nations.” Meeting in Moscow in mid-February, the organization expressed solidarity with the Palestinians.
Putin also sought to exploit the growing crisis in Gaza to once again urge Palestinian unity between Hamas and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. To do this, he convened a Palestinian unity conference in Moscow at the end of February. Even though it did not appear that Hamas and Fatah were ready to agree to unify — so deep were their differences — neither group felt able to resist Moscow’s invitation. For Hamas, which was getting battered by Israeli attacks, Russia offered important diplomatic cover, especially in the UN, while the Palestinian Authority, which had been sidelined by the ongoing conflict in Gaza, may have seen the Moscow meeting as a means of improving its diplomatic position. In any case, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas did not want to alienate Russia by refusing to participate in the meeting.
Despite the failure of many such “unity” conferences in the past, Putin may have hoped that the rapidly deteriorating situation in Gaza would propel the two major Palestinian groups toward unity. Indeed at the start of the conference, Lavrov offered to the Palestinian groups the services of Russian Deputy Foreign Minister and special envoy to the Middle East, Mikhail Bogdanov, as well as the head of the Oriental Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vitaly Naumkin, to provide “advisory services” to help mediate the discussions. Unfortunately for Moscow, however, the meeting turned out to be a failure despite the final communique calling for unity. Еven the pretense of unity was shattered two weeks after the conference when Hamas attacked Abbas’ choice for the Palestinian Authority’s new Prime Minister, Mohamed Mustafa, a close confidant of Abbas, asserting that the choice was made without consulting it, despite the meeting in Moscow. For its part, the Palestinian Authority attacked Hamas for not consulting it, “when it made the decision to undertake the October 7 adventure which brought down upon the Palestinian people a disaster even more horrible than that of 1948.” Moscow sought to put the best possible light on the continuing Hamas-Fatah conflict by praising the appointment of Mustafa, while also hoping that he would “enjoy the support of the entire Palestinian population.”
As Moscow was trying to forge Palestinian unity, its relations with Israel continued to deteriorate. The Russian deputy UN ambassador, Maria Zabolotskaya, cast doubt on the report by Pramila Patten, the UN Secretary General’s special representative for sexual violence in conflict, about rapes by Hamas fighters during their attack on Israel on October 7. Zabolotskaya, who had questioned Patten’s report on rapes by Russian soldiers in Ukraine, attacked the report on Hamas, calling it a “half-truth which in no way gives a universal picture of what is happening.”
In April, Russia faced its most serious crisis of the war. Up until this time, Moscow had been protecting Hamas at the UN, denouncing Israeli activities in Gaza, and blaming the US for the war in Gaza, all the time trying to improve its position in the Global South at the expense of the United States. In April, however, Iran and Israel directly attacked each other, raising the possibility of a wider war that could have pulled in the United States and caused a US-Iranian war, which would pose very difficult problems of choice for Moscow, given its close tie to Iran on which it continued to depend for drones and missiles. Consequently, Russia sought to play down the conflict (as did the US) and seemed satisfied by April 19 that it did not escalate into the wider Middle East war, which it may well have feared.
In looking at Moscow’s response to the escalation between Israel and Iran there are several things to note. First, as might be expected, Russia criticized Israel for its attack on the embassy annex while blaming the US as well. Then, when Iran retaliated with its major attack on Israel, Moscow urged Israel to stay calm. The Russian warnings did not succeed in preventing the Israeli retaliatory attack on Iran which destroyed a SAM-300 complex that was guarding an Iranian nuclear installation at Natanz. However, Moscow must have been relieved that the Iranian leadership played down the Israeli attack and saw no need to escalate further. Still, the relative ease with which Israel had destroyed the Russian-built SAM-300 complex had to be of concern to both Russia and Iran because it underlined Iran’s vulnerability. Nonetheless, following the Israeli attack, tension eased, and it appeared — at least in the short run — that a more general Middle East war had been avoided, a situation that Moscow welcomed.
Despite the easing of tension, Russian-Israeli relations continued to deteriorate in April. In early April, Russia supported the Palestinian Authority’s request to obtain full membership in the UN — much to the displeasure of Israel — and even when the US vetoed the Palestinian request, Moscow promised to continue the effort to obtain full UN membership for the Palestinians. A new low in the Russia-Israel relationship was reached on April 19 when Russia urged the UN to sanction Israel for its failure to comply with a UNSC resolution (on which the US had abstained) that called on Israel for a cease-fire during Ramadan. As might be expected, given Russian policy since the war broke out, Russia also condemned the US for its aid to Israel. The Russian call for sanctions against Israel is a useful point of departure to draw some preliminary conclusions about Russian policy toward the Israel-Hamas war.
First, the deterioration of relations between Israel and Russia during the war has been significant. Not only did Moscow legitimize the Hamas attack on Israel by inviting a Hamas delegation to Moscow only two weeks after the Hamas attack, but it also protected Hamas by introducing UN Security Council Resolutions to end the war that made no mention of the Hamas attack while vetoing a US UNSC resolution that mentioned Hamas. It also supported the South African effort to bring genocide charges against Israel at the International Court of Justice, downplayed Israeli claims that Hamas had sexually assaulted Israeli women during its October 7th attack, and called on the UN Security Council to sanction Israel for its actions in Gaza. Still, while Russian invective against Israel, sprinkled with a large dose of antisemitism increased, Russia continued to allow Israeli war planes to fly through Syrian air space to attack Iranian and Hezbollah positions in that country, and it also continued to permit Russian Jewish emigration to Israel. In trying to explain Russian behavior, one can point to Moscow’s desire to maintain high-tech trade relations with Israel, and also its possible concern that with Assad’s still shaky control over Syria, Israel might move to help Assad’s enemies.
Second, at least by default, Russia has benefited in the Global South from the continued flow of US arms to Israel during the war, a policy that was unpopular in the Global South (except in India where the Modi regime is closely allied to Israel) where the Palestinian issue has resonated. By supplying humanitarian aid to Gaza and backing the Palestinian positions at the UN, Moscow could claim an improved position in the Global South, even as it sought to conflate its war in Ukraine with the Palestinian struggle against Israel. Still, the Russian position was not without its problems. Hamas is unpopular with the leaderships of a number of Arab states which Moscow has been courting, such as Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, and the clash between Israel and Iran in April 2024 had the potential of escalating into a full-scale war that would have threatened Russia’s ally Iran, especially if the US got directly involved in the conflict.
A third preliminary conclusion that could be drawn from this study is that Russia has had little influence over the events that transpired after the Hamas attack of October 7th. Thus its call for an international conference to settle the war proved unsuccessful; the key diplomatic efforts to achieve a cease-fire were undertaken by the US, Egypt, and Qatar, not Russia; despite a major diplomatic effort, Moscow was unable to forge a reconciliation between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, and Russian was even unable to extract all the Russian citizens who were held hostage by Hamas despite all that Russia had done diplomatically for the Palestinian organization. Finally, despite Moscow’s warnings, Israel attacked Iran directly, an event that also showed the vulnerability of Russia’s SAM-300 system.
In sum, in the first six months of the war, it can be said that while Russia may have gained politically from the war — because of the close US-Israeli relationship — its influence in the conflict was quite limited and the deterioration of Russian-Israeli relations may yet change the Israeli position on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Prof. Robert Freedman is one of the leading U.S. authorities on Israel, the Middle East, and American foreign policy. He is a former President, the Hebrew University in Baltimore, and currently is a Visiting Professor at Johns Hopkins University. His has advised policymakers in State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Israeli Defense Ministry and the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and has been a commentator on major American news outlets. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
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Down and Out in Paris and London
The Oxford Circus station in London’s Underground metro. Photo: Pixabay
JNS.org – In my previous column, I wrote about the rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl in Paris at the hands of three boys just one year older than her, who showered her with antisemitic abuse as they carried out an act of violation reminiscent of the worst excesses of the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in southern Israel. This week, my peg is another act of violence—one less horrifying and less traumatic, but which similarly suggests that the writing may be on the wall for the Jews in much of Europe.
Last week, a group of young Jewish boys who attend London’s well-regarded Hasmonean School was assaulted by a gang of antisemitic thugs. The attack occurred at Belsize Park tube station on the London Underground, in a neighborhood with a similar demographic and sensibility to New York’s Upper West Side, insofar as it is home to a large, long-established Jewish population with shops, cafes and synagogues serving that community. According to the mother of one of the Jewish boys, an 11-year-old, the gang “ran ahead of my son and kicked one of his friends to the ground. They were trying to push another kid onto the tracks. They got him as far the yellow line.” When the woman’s son bravely tried to intervene to protect his friends, he was chased down and elbowed in the face, dislodging a tooth. “Get out of the city, Jew!” the gang told him.
Since the attack, her son has had trouble sleeping. “My son is very shaken. He couldn’t sleep last night. He said ‘It’s not fair. Why do they do this to us?’” she disclosed. “We love this country,” she added, “and we participate and we contribute, but now we’re being singled out in exactly the same way as Jews were singled out in 1936 in Berlin. And for the first time in my life. I am terrified of using the tube. What’s going on?”
The woman and her family may not be in London long enough to find out. According to The Jewish Chronicle, they are thinking of “fleeing” Britain—not a verb we’d hoped to encounter again in a Jewish context after the mass murder we experienced during the previous century. But here we are.
When I was a schoolboy in London, I had a history teacher who always told us that no two situations are exactly alike. “Comparisons are odious, boys,” he would repeatedly tell the class. That was an insight I took to heart, and I still believe it to be true. There are structural reasons that explain why the 2020s are different from the 1930s in significant ways. For one thing, European societies are more affluent and better equipped to deal with social conflicts and economic strife than they were a century ago. Laws, too, are more explicit in the protections they offer to minorities, and more punishing of hate crimes and hate speech. Perhaps most importantly, there is a Jewish state barely 80 years old which all Jews can make their home if they so desire.
Therein lies the rub, however. Since 1948, Israel has allowed Jews inside and outside the Jewish state to hold their heads high and to feel as though they are a partner in the system of international relations, rather than a vulnerable, subjugated group at the mercy of the states where we lived as an often hated minority. Israel’s existence is the jewel in the crown of Jewish emancipation, sealing what we believed to be our new status, in which we are treated as equals, and where the antisemitism that plagued our grandparents and great-grandparents has become taboo.
If Israel represents the greatest achievement of the Jewish people in at least 100 years, small wonder that it has become the main target of today’s reconstituted antisemites. And if one thing has been clear since the atrocities by Hamas on Oct. 7, it’s that Israel’s existence is not something that Jews—with the exception of that small minority of anti-Zionists who do the bidding of the antisemites and who echo their ignorance and bigotry—are willing to compromise on. What’s changed is that it is increasingly difficult for Jews to remain in the countries where they live and express their Zionist sympathies at the same time. We are being attacked because of these sympathies on social media, at demonstrations and increasingly in the streets by people with no moral compass, who regard our children as legitimate targets. Hence, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that while the 2020s may not be the 1930s, they certainly feel like the 1930s.
And so the age-old question returns: Should Jews, especially those in Europe, where they confront the pincer movement of burgeoning Muslim populations and a resurgent far-left in thrall to the Palestinian cause, stay where they are, or should they up sticks and move to Israel? Should we be thinking, given the surge in antisemitism of the past few months, of giving up on America as well? I used to have a clear view of all this. Aliyah is the noblest of Zionist goals and should be encouraged, but I always resisted the notion that every Jew should live in Israel—firstly, because a strong Israel needs vocal, confident Diaspora communities that can advocate for it in the corridors of power; and secondly, because moving to Israel should ideally be a positive act motivated by love, not a negative act propelled by fear.
My view these days isn’t as clear as it was. I still believe that a strong Israel needs a strong Diaspora, and I think it’s far too early to give up on the United States—a country where Jews have flourished as they never did elsewhere in the Diaspora. Yet the situation in Europe increasingly reminds me of the observation of the Russian Zionist Leo Pinsker in “Autoemancipation,” a doom-laden essay he wrote in 1882, during another dark period of Jewish history: “We should not persuade ourselves that humanity and enlightenment will ever be radical remedies for the malady of our people.” The antisemitism we are dealing with now presents itself as “enlightened,” based on boundless sympathy for an Arab nation allegedly dispossessed by Jewish colonists. When our children are victimized by it, this antisemitism ceases to be a merely intellectual challenge, and becomes a matter of life and death. As Jews and as human beings, we are obliged to choose life—which, in the final analysis, when nuance disappears and terror stalks us, means Israel.
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Hamas Says No Major Changes to Ceasefire Proposal After ‘Vague Wording’ Amendments by US
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S., June 28, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz/File Photo
i24 News – A senior official from the terrorist organization Hamas called the changes made by the US to the ceasefire proposal “vague” on Saturday night, speaking to the Arab World Press.
The official said that the US promises to end the war are without a clear Israeli commitment to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and agree to a permanent ceasefire.
US President Joe Biden made “vague wording” changes to the proposal on the table, although it amounted to an insufficient change in stance, he said.
“The slight amendments revolve around the very nature of the Israeli constellation, and offer nothing new to bridge the chasm between what is proposed and what is acceptable to us,” he said.
“We will not deviate from our three national conditions, the most important of which is the end of the war and the complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip,” he added.
Another Hamas official said that the amendments were minor and applied to only two clauses.
US President Joe Biden made the amendments to bridge gaps amid an impasse between Israel and Hamas over a hostage deal mediated by Qatar and Egypt.
Hamas’s demands for a permanent ceasefire have been met with Israeli leaders vowing that the war would not end until the 120 hostages still held in Gaza are released and the replacement of Hamas in control of the Palestinian enclave.
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Sacred Spies?
A Torah scroll. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
JNS.org – How far away is theory from practice? “In theory,” a new system should work. But it doesn’t always, does it? How many job applicants ticked all the boxes “theoretically,” but when it came to the bottom line they didn’t get the job done?
And how many famous people were better theorists than practitioners?
The great Greek philosopher Aristotle taught not only philosophy but virtue and ethics. The story is told that he was once discovered in a rather compromised moral position by his students. When they asked him how he, the great Aristotle, could engage in such an immoral practice, he had a clever answer: “Now I am not Aristotle.”
A similar tale is told of one of the great philosophers of the 20th century, Bertrand Russell. He, too, expounded on ethics and morality. And like Aristotle, he was also discovered in a similarly morally embarrassing situation.
When challenged, his rather brilliant answer was: “So what if I teach ethics? People teach mathematics, and they’re not triangles!”
This idea is relevant to this week’s Torah portion, Shelach, which contains the famous story of Moses sending a dozen spies on a reconnaissance mission to the Land of Israel. The mission goes sour. It was meant to be an intelligence-gathering exercise to see the best way of conquering Canaan. But it resulted in 10 of the 12 spies returning with an utterly negative report of a land teeming with giants and frightening warriors who, they claimed, would eat us alive. “We cannot ascend,” was their hopeless conclusion.
The people wept and had second thoughts about the Promised Land, and God said, indeed, you will not enter the land. In fact, for every day of the spies’ disastrous journey, the Israelites would languish a year in the wilderness. Hence, the 40-year delay in entering Israel. The day of their weeping was Tisha B’Av, which became a day of “weeping for generations” when both our Holy Temples were destroyed on that same day and many other calamities befell our people throughout history.
And the question resounds: How was it possible that these spies, all righteous noblemen, handpicked personally by Moses for the job, should so lose the plot? How did they go so wrong, so off-course from the Divine vision?
Naturally, there are many commentaries with a variety of explanations. To me personally, the most satisfying one I’ve found comes from a more mystical source.
Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, in his work Likkutei Torah, explains it thus: The error of the spies was less blatant than it seems. Their rationale was, in fact, a “holy” one. They actually meant well. The Israelites had been beneficiaries of the mighty miracles of God during their sojourn in the wilderness thus far. God had been providing for them supernaturally with manna from heaven every day, water that flowed from the “Well of Miriam,” Clouds of Glory that smoothed the roads and even dry cleaned their clothes. In the wilderness, the people were enjoying a taste of heaven itself. All their material needs were taken care of miraculously. With no material distractions, they were able to live a life of spiritual bliss, of refined existence and could devote themselves fully to Torah, prayer and spiritual experiences.
But the spies knew that as soon as the Israelites entered the Promised Land, the manna would cease to fall and they would have to till the land, plow, plant, knead, bake and make a living by the sweat of their brow. No more bread from heaven, but bread from the earth. Furthermore, they would have to battle the Canaanite nations for the land. What chance would they then have to devote themselves to idyllic, spiritual pursuits?
So, the spies preferred to remain in the wilderness rather than enter the land. Why be compelled to resort to natural and material means of surviving and living a wholly physical way of life when they could enjoy spiritual ecstasy and paradise undisturbed? Why get involved in the “rat race”?
But, of course, as “holy” and spiritual as their motivation may have been, the spies were dead wrong.
The journey in the wilderness was meant to be but a stepping stone to the ultimate purpose of the Exodus from Egypt: entering the Promised Land and making it a Holy Land. God has plenty of angels in heaven who exist in a pure, spiritual state. The whole purpose of creation was to have mortal human beings, with all their faults and frailties, to make the physical world a more spiritual place. To bring heaven down to earth.
While their argument was rooted in piety, for the spies to opt out of the very purpose of creation was to miss the whole point. What are we here for? To sit in the lotus position and meditate, or to get out there and change the world? Yes, the spies were “holy,” but theirs was an escapist holiness.
The Torah is not only a book of wisdom; it is also a book of action. Torah means instruction. It teaches us how to live our lives, meaningfully and productively in the pursuit of God’s intended desire to make our world a better, more Godly place. This we do not only by study and prayer, the “theoretical” part of Torah but by acts of goodness and kindness, by mitzvot performed physically in the reality of the material world. Theory alone leaves us looking like Aristotle with his pants down.
Yes, it is a cliché but a well-worn truth: Torah is a “way of life.”
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