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David Isaac

David Isaac

Explore Senior Israel Correspondent David Isaac’s expert analysis on Jewish history, politics, and current events at JNS.

Countries closer to Russia, such as Poland and the Baltic States, always had a firmer grasp of the danger, “but if you look at the Netherlands, Portugal, Luxembourg, there’s still this sense that Russia is far away,” says Bruno Lété, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
Anila Ali, the board chair and president of the American Muslim and Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council, and one of the co-founders of the Mukhayriq Initiative, said: “I feel like the Jews are our natural allies.”
Yulia Dor, deputy director general of Nativ, an Israeli government agency assisting immigration efforts, estimates that the Jewish state could see as a many as 50,000 immigrants from Ukraine.
“If you stop planning and building in Judea and Samaria, it’s not only for now; it creates problem for years,” says current CEO of the Yesha Council, Yigal Dilmoni.
Half of the country’s consumable wheat products and a third of its animal feed are supplied by Russia and Ukraine, according to numbers from the Ministry of Agriculture.
The lesson to be learned from the Europeans is that energy security comes from “diversity and diversity alone. You can’t be too dependent on just a single country, even if it’s your friend at that time,” said assistant professor Elai Rettig at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan.
“There is much work to do to bring the region together—to pull the countries that are present today closer together,” said Eitan Na’eh, Israel’s ambassador to Bahrain.
The fact that Arab leaders are meeting at a kibbutz in the Negev is “an Israeli dream come true. Even 10-15 years ago, it would have been considered prophetic,” said Hillel Frisch, of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security.
“We’ve seen time and again where these social-media companies don’t take a strong enough stance and lift the restrictions. I don’t think they care enough to understand what the issue really is,” said Douglas Sandoval, campus advisor at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).
It’s hard to envision an agreement that would give Russian President Vladimir Putin a win and at the same time satisfy Ukraine, said Steven Horrell, a nonresident senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for European Policy Analysis.
Before the British parliament, the embattled president of Ukraine talked of World War II and Shakespeare. Before the U.S. Congress, it was Pearl Harbor and 9/11. But despite being Jewish, Volodymyr Zelenskyy was less successful in his appeal to Israel’s government.
Prior to the war in Ukraine, energy issues were judged by a single yardstick: their environmental impact. What the West is coming to realize is that energy is also about national security and deterrence, said Aykan Erdemir, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.