The Sabbath Summit

The moment the news hit the wires that Prime Minister Bennett and President Putin were meeting at Moscow, we got on the blower with Hillel Halkin, among the least flappable and most sage journalists with whom we’re acquainted. Our stoic scribe called Mr. Bennett’s decision to break the Sabbath to fly to Moscow to meet with the Russ leader an “amazing development.”Hence this editorial. What amazed our friend is that of all the government leaders in the world to whom Mr. Putin could talk, he’s chosen Mr. Bennett. Our friend was struck by the fact that, when he sent us a note, it had been 15 minutes since Israel TV announced the two leaders had been sitting for two-and-a-half hours and were still going at it.Mr. Putin, our friend noted, “has always been said to have a soft spot for Jews, and by extension for Israel, which is something that is supposed to go back to childhood experiences.” Mr. Halkin couldn’t vouch for the story, though he’s personally heard it said from persons who have reason to know. In any event, Russia has been prepared to give Israel room to maneuver in Syria.Syria, remember, is a near satellite of Russia and there are Russian bases in Syria close to targets the Israelis have struck. “There has obviously been a very close degree of Israeli-Russian collaboration in the matter,” Mr. Halkin writes to us in a note. He goes on to speculate that “there’s an element of trust here on Putin’s part” and suggests that Mr. Putin “knows Israel has been honest with him.”That, our friend suspects, is one reason that Mr. Putin wanted to meet with Mr. Bennett in the first place. The Russ leader has met with President Macron of France. Yet President Zelensky has since last month been urging Israel to mediate the crisis. That was reported last month by Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster, which just reported that Mr. Zelensky had no advance notice of today’s parley.It would not be too much to say that Mr. Bennett’s expedition to Moscow is taking on the aspect of what used to be called “shuttle diplomacy.” Mr. Bennett reportedly let American leaders know on Friday that he was planning the visit to Moscow. Reuters reports that after the meeting, he promptly spoke with Mr. Zelensky. And he was en route to meet Chancellor Scholz in Germany. Whatever might come of this, it illuminates in a constructive light Israel’s alleged fence-sitting in recent days and rebuts all the snide suggestions that Israel was putting its own parochial interests above the Ukrainian cause. It’s clear now that Mr. Bennett took Mr. Zelensky’s request seriously. He couldn’t have played such a role had Israel taken a more anti-Russian public stance.Finally, it’s nice to see Israel emerge as a potential asset in other countries’ search for peace. We’d like to think that Washington and Moscow might listen to Jerusalem’s objections to the negotiations with Iran, too; hard to imagine that didn’t come up in Moscow. In any event, Israel has long since proved its prowess at war. Nice to see others turn to it, in this age of the Abraham Accords, for its prowess at peace.________Correction: Of government is what Prime Minister Bennett is head; his position was misstated in the bulldog.

The Sabbath Summit

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