Prior to his address to the UN Security Council yesterday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters that he aspired Ukraine would become a "big Israel":
I think all our people will be our great army. We cannot talk about 'Switzerland of the future' — probably, our state will be able to be like this a long time after. But we will definitely become a 'big Israel' with its own face.
We will not be surprised that we will have representatives of the Armed Forces or the National Guard in all institutions, supermarkets, cinemas, there will be people with weapons. I am sure that our security issue will be number one in the next ten years.
Aside from Zelenskyy's Jewish heritage, I think he looks at Israel as a model because Russia seeks to eliminate Ukraine's national identity and very existence as a nation. For Ukraine to survive it must become to Russia what Israel became to the Arab world until the Arab world grudgingly decided it could live with Israel.
That Zelenskyy would so strongly identify with Israel definitively bursts the bubble of those who seek to tie Ukraine's plight to those of the Palestinians which was a tenuous argument in the first place.
Ukrainians don't seek to eliminate Russians as Palestinians seek to eliminate Jews. I cannot see the Ukrainian government wantonly massacring Russian civilians much less naming schools, soccer fields and streets after those who do so.
Should international sympathy for Israel grow in the coming years, Israel might very well have Zelenskyy to thank for it.
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