On Saturday, a short time after the sun went down and another Shabbat ended, hundreds of people gathered together in Habima Square in Tel Aviv.

They were protesting over the lukewarm support given to Ukraine by Israel, and held up signs calling on the government to open the gates for non-Jewish refugees, speak out against the invasion and take the same kinds of actions against Russia that have been adopted by other liberal democracies.

At that moment, the prime minister was not even in Israel. Although religious, Naftali Bennett had flown on Shabbat to see Vladimir Putin – the first western leader to meet the Russian president since the invasion of Ukraine began. While protestors chanted that he should "stand on the right side of history", Mr Bennett stood next to the most hated person on earth.  

For me, as an Israeli journalist living in London, these unprecedented events are deeply unsettling, even surreal. The basic sentiment of every decent human is to support the courageous women and men of Ukraine, as they battle for their freedom and simply perhaps to survive. The heart-breaking sight of families torn apart and refugees fleeing from their motherland echo the darkest period in human history.

Some of them look just like my grandparents, who were born into an eastern Europe that gradually fell apart until the horrors of the Holocaust made one thing clear: that the Jewish people need their own state, and nobody will defend it other than the people who sacrificed everything in order to build their home there.

Yet one cannot – or at least should not – ignore the complexity of the whole picture. It’s not only the concern over Iran and Hezbollah’s aggression in the northern Israeli border, where Russia is the de facto boss. While Kyiv has the world’s attention, many Israelis are worrying about the negotiations with Iran in Vienna: a new agreement looks imminent, but seems all too likely to be a strategic turn for the worse.

For more than a decade, Iran’s nuclear programme has been hammered home to the Israeli people as the greatest threat to their existence. Now, after a rollercoaster of events since first the agreement in 2013 and later the US withdrawal under President Trump, it looks as if Iran is going to get the upper hand.

And that’s without mentioning another concerning issue, one that can’t be put on the back-burner forever. No honourable person could seriously suggest there’s any equivalence between Russia and Ukraine, and Israel and the Palestinians. Still, it’s all too easy to imagine liberal institutions uniting against Israel’s control of the West Bank, including the biggest corporations that feed the economy.

This scenario seems all too feasible, here in London, where the BDS movement has a disturbingly strong voice. It’s an appalling prospect for all of us who wish to see Israelis and Palestinians live and thrive side by side, or at least hope that the next generation will succeed where others before them have miserably failed.

Juggling all these factors in my brain at the same time makes my head as dizzy as a drunken uncle at a wedding. The age of social media has made an old Israeli habit a worldwide one: having an opinion about everything. All the time. But the issues we debate in Israel are about far more than getting likes for a tweet or a Facebook post: it’s about walking between the raindrops and hoping that you don’t catch pneumonia.
Taking necessary gambles with the chance of losing more than your underwear. Remembering that "friends" and "foes" have a very different meaning when it comes to realpolitik.

As a journalist but also as an Israeli Jew, looking at the current situation fills me with apprehension. Yet still, nuances matter. Being able to doubt yourself matters. Humility matters.

We should all strive to stand on the right side of history. That is beyond dispute. But Israel does not have the luxury of choosing its path regardless of the practical considerations of the wider region and the real world. That is, perhaps, a small tragedy of a country which exists under two conditions: war, and the conflict in between wars. "Standing on the right side of history" is essential. But Israel must also think how to act in order to stay standing at all.