Boycotting Israel Became a Cultural Default

At the end of May, a group of Israeli teenage climbers were due to compete in Brussels. They had registered, been approved, and trained for the event. Then the host venue, Le Camp de Base, informed them that they could participate, but without a flag, without an anthem, and without their country’s name appearing alongside their own. Israel refused, and the competition was canceled. It would be easy to focus on the demand itself, or on the cancellation. But we have seen both before, in one form or another.

What is troubling is the tone in which the decision was presented. The venue did not announce a boycott or engage in a public argument. It simply stated that, under the current circumstances, it could not host an official Israeli delegation. The “current circumstances” were not presented as an argument but as a description of reality, much like saying that it rains in winter.

Once a boycott becomes a trivial matter, the burden of justification disappears. It no longer takes any particular hostility for a competition to be canceled. It is enough that defending its inclusion becomes a burden no one wishes to carry. There was a time when those calling for a boycott were expected to explain themselves. Now the boycott is increasingly taken for granted.

Even at Eurovision, where Israel ultimately participated, participation itself became the subject of controversy and required repeated justification. Suddenly, those who chose to invite an Israeli delegation and proceed with the event as planned were the ones expected to account for their decision. Opposition to a boycott became the unusual position — the one that had to be defended and justified. The boycott of Israel had become a cultural default. Today, it takes courage precisely to include Israel in something.

From this point, it is easy to slide into one of two positions. The first insists that everything is antisemitism: an old blood libel in modern dress, nothing more than hatred of Israel. The second insists that there is no antisemitism involved at all, merely a response to the actions of the state.

Both answers are too comfortable, and both reduce a far more complicated reality. There is an ancient hatred that would persist regardless of what Israel does. There is also entirely legitimate criticism of a government that repeatedly causes diplomatic and moral damage. What these opposing camps share, however, is not a position but a movement: the act of folding something large and complex into something small and simple.

This folding erases not only people but politics itself. It removes the possibility that a society might contain multiple voices, contradictions, internal struggles, and ongoing arguments about its own character. The moment an entire country becomes identified with its government, its internal opponents disappear from view as well. The protesters in the streets, investigative journalists, academics, and civil-society organizations all cease to be seen as part of the Israeli story. They become footnotes within a picture whose meaning has already been decided in advance.

It is tempting to blame those looking from the outside. Yet the distance between the state and its government is being erased from both directions. Abroad, Israel is folded into the actions of its government. At home, there are ministers who behave as though electoral victory grants ownership rather than stewardship, as though the state, its institutions, and even its critics are theirs to do with as they please.

When National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir circulated footage of Gaza flotilla activists bound on the floor of a detention facility, the prime minister and foreign minister rushed to clarify that the act did not reflect Israel’s values. It was a revealing admission. Even the government suddenly sought to distinguish between the state and one of its own senior ministers.

Yet one cannot appoint a man, grant him power and a central role, and then claim in moments of crisis that he does not represent Israel. The more the government itself blurs the line between the state and the more extreme forces within it, the harder it becomes to ask the world to distinguish between Israel and its government. This blurring is not a malfunction that can be corrected with a press statement. It accumulates. With every day this government remains in office, it becomes more credible in the eyes of the world.

The claim that Israel is not its government is not a slogan. Israel has a Supreme Court that still rules against those in power, a press that exposes them, universities, an opposition, and streets filled with citizens who loudly disagree with them. All of these are Israel no less than the coalition is. And yet, in a democracy, an elected government represents everyone, including those who did not vote for it. That is what representation means, and there is no escaping it by saying, “It does not represent me.”

At the same time, representation is not ownership. A government speaks in the name of the state, but it does not own the state, and Israel’s complexity does not disappear simply because one voice happens to speak on its behalf.

If we refuse to let the world fold Israel into its government, refusal alone is not enough. Precisely because the government does represent us, we cannot ask others to ignore it and search instead for some “other” Israel hidden behind it. That demand assigns to others a responsibility that belongs to us.

The way to prove that Israel is not Ben Gvir’s government is not through apologies or increasingly sophisticated public diplomacy. The only way is to replace the government through elections. Not as a concession to external pressure, but as an internal refusal to fold. So that even on a climbing wall in Brussels, Israel will not appear as a single thing.

That, ultimately, is the meaning of democracy: not to deny the voice that speaks in our name, but to take responsibility for changing it.

Adapted from the author’s Hebrew column originally published in Haaretz on June 4, 2026