The Glenn Show: Haim Shweky – An American-Israeli at the Ukrainian Front

My guest this week will be familiar to avid readers of this newsletter. Haim Shweky is a writer and sometime soldier who’s given us a first-person account of the situation on the ground in Ukraine. He’s written about volunteering in Ukraine, running reconnaissance missions at the front, and the geopolitical stakes of the war. Haim and I have had a correspondence going for a while now, but this is the first time we’ve spoken face to face, and he’s every bit the perspicacious, romantic figure that I’d envisioned.

Haim and I begin by recounting how we first crossed paths—I was happy to learn that I played a small role in his career as a published writer. While he has to remain silent on some of the details, Haim recounts his decision, following writers like Hemingway and Orwell, to “leap over his desk” and join the war effort in Ukraine. This was no reckless decision—clearly, Haim knows how to take care of himself—and it further buttressed his view that defending Ukraine is necessary both to maintain stability in Europe and as a matter of principle. Throughout the conversation, he suggests that the principle of sovereignty at work in his defense of the international effort to support Ukraine might have something to do Israel-Palestine as well. Haim is an American by birth but an Israeli, as he says, “by birthright,” and he offers some carefully worded thoughts on the matter.

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