It was reported recently that Benjamin Netanyahu will soon be speaking to the only Jewish political leader who rivals him for global attention: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky told Israeli news channel i24: “He has what I need, and I have what he needs.”

The conversation, apparently sought by Israel’s prime minister, has some clear goals. Bibi wants the expertise that Ukraine has developed in countering Iranian drones, an increasingly central part of Russia’s arsenal in its war of aggression against its neighbor. Israel’s missile defense technology is unmatched, but Ukraine offers something different; battlefield experience dealing with mass swarm attacks of Iranian-made drones, and low-cost anti-drone technology. Meanwhile, Ukraine has long sought access to Israel’s peerless defensive military technology.

But away from the tech and the hardware, there are other reasons why Israel and Ukraine should be allies. Many of us have long made the case that it is these two countries who stand on the frontline of a civilizational battle. Two democracies fighting sworn enemies of democracy – Islamist in one case, authoritarian nationalist in the other. But it’s not incidental that Russia uses Iranian drones, or that North Korea has provided actual soldiers for the fight against Ukraine. Russia, China, Iran and North Korea form a loose axis of autocracy, united not by a shared ideology but by a shared desire to weaken the West and to oppose its liberal democratic........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)