The war in Europe has once again presented Israel with a dilemma. Although Israel is fundamentally aligned with the Western mentality, Jerusalem is trying to be careful not to anger Russian President Vladimir Putin. Instead, Israel initially angered the Americans with behind-the-scenes disagreements with the UN Security Council’s condemnation of Russia. Of course, Israel Foreign Minister Yair Lapid has now openly condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but other government voices have remained silent or sang a more noncommittal tune. From a purely human point of view, there is no reason not to condemn Putin and to fully support the victim. Instinctively and historically, Israel should have sided wholeheartedly with the West, but Israel initially maintained neutrality for political reasons.

See also: Ukraine to Israel: “Stop spreading Russian propaganda, this is war!”

Can politics and morality really coexist, let alone cooperate? To what extent is it worth constraining political action by moral considerations? For the medieval Florentine philosopher and politician Niccolò Machiavelli, the...

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