TEL AVIV, June 26. /TASS/. The Ukrainian embassy in Israel on Sunday said the Jewish state had chosen close cooperation with Russia over support to Ukraine.
"The Embassy of Ukraine to the State of Israel emphasizes with regret that the current Israeli government has chosen the path of close cooperation with the Russian Federation. This is evidenced by a series of rather controversial events that occurred in the first half of 2023, which coincided with the almost complete lack of Israeli humanitarian support to Ukraine," the embassy said in a statement.
The statement listed a few events to make its case, including a "futile visit by an Israeli foreign minister to Ukraine in February of this year," and a series of interviews by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, such as the most recent of them that ran in the Jerusalem Post on June 22.
In that interview, the Israeli prime minister reiterated that his country wasn’t going to provide weapons to Kiev for security reasons, such as the concern that they will fall into the hands of Iran and be used against Israel. In the same interview, Netanyahu said that Israel already was already seeing Western anti-tank weapons, which was originally supplied to Kiev, near its borders.
"As their primary purpose, all the relevant statements made by the Israeli prime minister have always been aimed at justifying Israel's complete inaction in providing defensive assistance to Ukraine over the past year and a half. Initially the arguments were built around Israel's special relations with Russia in Syria and the fragile status of the Jewish population in the Russian Federation. At the same time, completely fictitious and speculative allegations appeared in the last interview, suggesting the transfer of Western arms from the battlefields in Ukraine to the Syrian and Iranian regimes," the embassy said.
According to Ukrainian diplomats, against the backdrop of hostilities in Ukraine, "the Israeli leadership, hiding behind the demagogy of its neutrality (although it is no longer hiding it at all), is actively building relations with the Russian Federation."
"In reality, on the ground, the so-called neutrality of the Israeli government is considered to be a clear pro-Russian position. <...> We call on the Israeli government to change its position and support Ukraine with defensive means, to support freedom and a democratic world order. We expect Israel to stand on the right side of history," the embassy said.