Sartre explained Jewish destiny through the anti-Semite. Levinas objected that Judaism is not a result of anti-Semitism. Both rejected liberal abstraction, for opposite reasons. The same fork reappeared in 2022: in Putin's rhetoric of denazifying Ukraine and in an open letter from Ukrainian Jews to Israel.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Israel's newspapers covered the war in four languages and in four different ways. Hebrew papers condemned Russia with caution, English ones spoke of a barbaric invasion, and Arabic ones barely noticed the war. Russian-language outlets were free of Kremlin propaganda.
In February 2022, 16 Israeli outlets in Hebrew, English, Arabic and Russian covered Russia's invasion of Ukraine differently. All but the Arabic press sided with Ukraine and focused on Jewish refugees, but none urged a break with Moscow. Why did one war look so different in one country?