Ofri Ilany in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz today.

In February 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, IDF Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen took part in a panel discussion about the event on Israel's Kan Television. In contrast to the line then dominant in the media, Hacohen voiced a forcefully pro-Russian stance. Kyiv, he pointed out, was the cradle of Russian civilization, adding that international borders were not sacred and that President Vladimir Putin's rule was legitimate in the eyes of the Russian people .

No less provocative was the historical case on which he grounded his support for Russia. "Israel was built by Russian Jews, like my grandfather, who came from those regions," Hacohen said. "It's a toughness that brought us [David] Ben-Gurion, among others… The Mapai experience was not enlightened and not liberal," he said, referring to Ben-Gurion's ruling party, forerunner of Labor. Just like Putin, he said, "Ben-Gurion thought about constant expansion in the region, because the coastal strip of Tel Aviv is only a gateway into the Land of Israel."

Hacohen's take on the subject was swallowed up in the flow of chatter among television panelists. But it deserves a second look, because it reveals a truth. Hacohen's political analysis is roughshod and dark – but his historical argument is correct. Israel was indeed established by Russians, and the forceful, violent and anti-liberal political culture of the Russian Empire is part of its DNA.

And that is our disaster.

Historians, sociologists and journalists frequently discuss the question of where Israel's cult of force comes from. It's a brutish mentality that has currently brought us to an unprecedented moral nadir – cruel, indiscriminate mass slaughter of Palestinians.

The widespread view in the left and center tends to pin the blame for this on religious messianism, but the Zionist tendency toward expansion and settlement started when Israel was ruled by secular leaders, some of whom advocated scientific socialism. One view sees Zionism as a colonialist, racist movement from as early as the time of Theodor Herzl, even though in "Altneuland," the novel written by the founder of political Zionism, the Arabs have full equal rights.

In practice, the calamitous turning point of Israel's political culture occurred when the Zionist movement was taken over by the Russian political sect, particularly those from the Second Aliya (the 1904-1914 wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine). Russian culture possesses noble aspects and achieved intellectual and cultural summits. But at the end of the 19th century and start of the 20th, Russia underwent dramatic political upheavals that engendered a brutal political culture that scorned tolerance and enlightenment.