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Answering Israel's Ukraine Critics

(Mosaic) Evelyn Gordon - Criticism of how Israel has responded to Russia's invasion of Ukraine has intensified, while becoming progressively more untethered from the facts. Regarding Israel's refusal to give Ukraine its Iron Dome defensive anti-missile system, beyond the practical issues there's a moral one. Numerous countries have anti-missile systems. Israel is one of very few that regularly uses its system to defend itself from neighbors that periodically launch missiles at it. Its supply of Iron Dome interceptors is already badly depleted due to last May's rocket barrages by Hamas, which is why Congress recently approved a special allocation to help it purchase more. Consequently, giving Ukraine some of its limited stock of Iron Dome batteries and missiles would leave Israel's own population vulnerable. And no government has a moral right, let alone a duty, to protect another country at the expense of protecting its own citizens. By contrast, less immediately threatened countries could give their anti-missile systems to Ukraine without endangering their own populations. None of them have. Yet there has been no public outcry over their refusal to provide missile defense systems to Ukraine. There's one sanction on Russia that Israel genuinely does flout: the aviation boycott. That's because Russia has a large Jewish population and thousands have expressed interest in moving to Israel due to the war. Israel cannot and should not ban flights from a country with which it's not at war as long as there are Jews who need to leave.
2022-03-28 00:00:00
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