A hero for us all

IN two weeks’ time, Jews the world over will be celebrating Purim, when a lone Jew stood up to defend her people against a power-crazed tyrant.

One doesn’t need to look to the biblical Book of Esther though to find such heroic characters. Jewish history is replete with individuals who are possessed with courage and conviction, and who have risen from humble origins to take on mighty empires and resist oppression.

David the shepherd who fought Goliath and the Philistines, Judah the priest who triumphed over Antiochus and the Greeks … and, as of the past few days, Volodymyr the comic who refused to bow to Putin.

Just a couple of years ago, Ukraine’s President Zelensky was making people laugh with what was occasionally quite lowbrow humour. But fast forward to March 2022 and Volodymyr Zelensky has effectively become the leader of the free world.

As global powers wring their hands, fearful of poking the Russian bear as it emerges from its slumbers, it has fallen to the grandson of a Red Army soldier who fought the Nazis and whose father and brothers perished in the Holocaust, to defy a Kremlin eyeing up the opportunity to rebuild an empire that crumbled three decades ago.

Among those with more reason to wring its hands than others is Israel, torn, on the one hand, between being on the right side of history and, on the other, of antagonising Vlad the Invader, the somewhat strange bedfellow of recent Israeli PMs who, when it comes to Syria, turns the old adage “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” on its head.

Somewhat perplexingly, for the Jewish State, it’s more a case of “The friend of my enemy is my friend,” hence the ambivalence towards condemning the Russian incursion.

But while Naftali Bennett may be hesitant, Yair Lapid seems a little less reluctant to barrack for Team Zelensky.

This though is a war of weapons not words and, in the face of Russian aggression, support from the sidelines seems unlikely to sustain Ukraine. Which begs the question, where will the bear look to feast next?

One can but hope the courage and fortitude of Zelensky and his fellow countrymen and women will pay off, and curb Putin’s and the bear’s appetite.