Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman left little doubt last week that there’s a cogent reason behind Israel’s silence on the Russian-Ukrainian dispute. Israel wasn’t inadvertently remiss. It consciously chose not to take sides in one of the more acerbic East-West confrontations since the Cold War.
This neutral stance, however, didn’t earn Israel instant accolades. The US State Department, for example, is far from pleased. Its spokeswoman Jen Psaki told the press that “we were surprised Israel did not join the vast majority of countries that voted to support Ukraine’s territorial integrity in the United Nations” on March 27. Israel pointedly stayed away from the vote which called on all states and international organizations not to recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Continue reading