Israel & Russia Relations

Russia & Israel Seven Decades On

4-19-18, Ben Cohen -- Amid all the diplomatic maneuverings in the months that led up to the creation of the State of Israel 70 years ago, none are more curious than those undertaken by the Soviet Union.
 
It’s fair to say that Soviet support was a necessary condition for the emergence of an independent Jewish state in what was then British Mandate Palestine. As WW2 came to an end the Zionist leadership certainly understood this; both Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion courting Soviet foreign ministry. Until the middle of 1947, the Soviets remained firm opponents of partitioning the country into Jewish and Arab states.
 
The principal reason behind this brief flash of Soviet support for Israel was geopolitical. The USSR had come to the end of the war without a coherent policy towards the Arab world, but with a basic distrust of the pan-Arab pretensions of the newly-formed Arab League… [snip]
 
Then Israel became firmly in the camp of the United States and the Soviet Union as the principle backer of Arab rejectionizm. Israel’s embassy in Moscow had been shuttered for more than 20 years [it reopened in 1991]. Israel’s present-day relations with Russia are complicated by many of the same issues that prevailed during the Cold War—foremost, its continued investment in Syria.
 
Russia continues in the sphere of international politics. Seventy years after Israel’s creation, Russia remains the world power that is closest to the Jewish state’s most implacable enemies, providing them with diplomatic and military sustenance—and keeping those old memories alive.
 
*Excerpted - Ben Cohen writes a weekly column for JNS on Jewish affairs and Middle Eastern politics. His writings have been published in Commentary, the New York Post, Haaretz, The Wall Street Journal and many other publications.  More here: ​More here

In 1991 Israel Reopens Moscow Embassy - latimes
10-25-1991, MOSCOW — After twenty-four years, in 1991, Israel renewed diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. It was severed during the 1967 Middle East War, formally reopening its embassy in Moscow. Ambassador-designate Arye Levin unveiled a bronze plaque with the words "Embassy of the State of Israel" in Hebrew and Russian at the entrance of the mission across the Moscow River from Red Square. He said: "We took this down 24 years and four months ago. Now we are returning it to its proper place."