Hatred as a National Project: From the Middle East to the Western World

Anger, jealousy, revenge, obsession—these forces sit at the root of so many of our personal and national struggles. We often have only ourselves to blame. Each of us knows this on a personal level: a moment of ego, the wrong word said to a spouse or child, an argument that spirals, the emotional shock of losing a job. We tell ourselves we have emotional intelligence, and maybe we do, yet we still stumble. We regret, we dwell on the mistakes, we do teshuvah, and we pray to be better.

But what is true on the personal level is amplified a thousand times on the national stage. Add ego, pride, history, and grievance—and suddenly humanity repeats the same patterns. History is filled with individuals whose obsessions reshaped nations: Alexander, Caesar, Isabella of Spain, Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, and today, perhaps Putin. Yet focusing on the individuals misses the deeper point: these eruptions of hate emerge from societies that allow jealousy, resentment, and grievance to metastasise.

Learning From Our Parsha: Vayeshev

This dynamic is already visible in one of our foundational stories—the story of Joseph in Parashat Vayeshev. We know the multicolored coat from the musical, but the heart of the story is far darker and more human.

Jacob’s favoritism breeds jealousy. Joseph’s dreams intensify it. In Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ words, “Love unbalanced becomes a seed of hate.” The brothers’ jealousy festers until it becomes obsession; obsession becomes action. They conspire to kill him, throw him into a pit, and ultimately sell him as a slave.

The Torah does not sanitize the aftermath. Judah descends—morally and spiritually. The brothers live for decades under the unbearable weight of a lie to their father. “It tore the family apart,” writes Rabbi Sacks, “and the wound never fully healed.”

Their guilt remained. Their unity shattered. The schism echoes through Jewish history.

The Torah is teaching us something simple and profound:
When jealousy and resentment take root, destruction follows—first internally, then externally. Families fall apart. Nations fall apart. Civilizations fall apart.

From Morocco: A Painful Mirror

That same pattern of jealousy, obsession, and destructive fixation plays out on the global stage today.

Recently I watched a video of a Moroccan man speaking honestly, without fear or flourish:

“There is one thing that unites the 22 Arab states—hatred of Israel.”

“This hate,” he continued, “has cost us our progress. While other nations build, we obsess. While others innovate, we stagnate.”

It was raw, and it was true.

He explained that for decades, so much energy that could have gone into creating thriving societies—education, infrastructure, opportunity—was instead poured into sustaining an obsession: Israel. A few countries are beginning to shift their focus, but the legacy of this choice runs deep.

Some Arab states built temporary prosperity on oil. Others outsourced their worldview to toxic media networks like Al Jazeera or to ideologies like the Muslim Brotherhood. When hatred becomes a national purpose, self-destruction follows. You stop building your own world because you are too fixated on destroying someone else’s.

Europe’s Turn Toward Obsession

And this self-destruction is no longer limited to the Arab world. We now see it spreading across Europe and beyond.

Officially, the Gaza war is over. Yet four European countries—Spain, Ireland, Slovenia, and the Netherlands—chose to boycott Eurovision because Israel dared to participate.

The irony is breathtaking when one considers their own histories.

• Spain and the Netherlands carry centuries of colonial sins and moral contradictions.
• Ireland’s wartime stance during the 1940s was… complicated. Ditto Holland in assisting the Nazis in the round-up of the Jews
• European nations, still burdened by unresolved guilt, now seek moral purification by condemning Israel. Better to shift blame than open the closet of history.

The scapegoating of Israel is not about Israel—it is about avoiding themselves.

Qatar: A Terror State Addicted to Its Obsession With Israel

Countries don’t become legitimate because they have oil money, and terrorists don’t become statesmen because they wear suits. Truth still matters — even when much of the world tries to bury it beneath PR, propaganda, and diplomatic theatre.

What unfolded at the Doha Forum this week was not simply hypocrisy. It was something deeper and more revealing: an obsession. A political, ideological, and psychological fixation shared by terror sponsors, authoritarian governments, and even global institutions — an obsession with Jews and with Israel.

Tucker Carlson asked Qatar’s Prime Minister the wrong question: “Why did Israel bomb your country?”

The real question is why Qatar finances the rockets, tunnels, and Hamas’s terror empire. The Tunnels were used to hold hostages, who were tortured and executed by Hamas. Why did they not arrest the Hamas Leaders in Doha?

On October 7, while Jews were being massacred, Ismail Haniyeh sat comfortably in his luxury office in Doha, smiling at the live broadcast of the slaughter.

After October 7, Qatar did not arrest a single Hamas leader. Instead, it protected them. Negotiated for them. Gave them global legitimacy. Al Jazeera ran the PR operation, sanitising terror while vilifying the Jewish state.

Why? Because Qatar’s foreign policy is built on one foundation: a sustained, strategic obsession with Israel.

This is not mediation — it is manipulation. Not diplomacy — obsession.

And the West Falls for Qatar’s Game

The West is obsessed with Israel — but for all the wrong reasons.
Instead of understanding the region honestly, it turns Israel into a moral mirror onto which it projects its own anxieties and unresolved guilt.

The West accepts the illusion because it is easier than confronting reality.

Syria: When an Al-Qaeda Commander Is Treated as a Statesman

Perhaps the most grotesque moment was seeing Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, former head of Al-Qaeda in Syria, appear on stage in a suit telling Christiane Amanpour that the word “terrorist” was politicized.

This is a man whose forces massacred Druze, Christians, and Alawites. Yet he was given a stage—not because he changed, but because powerful actors often rebrand extremists when it suits their goals.

A terrorist in a suit becomes a “stakeholder.”
Victims remain invisible.

The Barghouti–Mandela Myth

Another distortion is the call to free Marwan Barghouti, often marketed as “the Palestinian Mandela.”

Mandela rejected terror and sought reconciliation.
Barghouti was convicted of orchestrating attacks that intentionally killed civilians—and has never renounced violence.

So why the comparison?

Because when the world wants a symbol, it manufactures one, even if it means erasing history.

A narrative is valued more than the truth.

The Vatican: A Historical Obsession Repackaged in Political Language

During his visits to Turkey and Lebanon, the Pope declared that Israel must accept a Palestinian state.

This is from the institution that ran the Inquisition, locked Jews in ghettos, and stayed silent during the Holocaust. It refused to recognise Israel for 45 years — yet now presumes to lecture Jews on national security after Jewish women were raped, mutilated, and massacred on October 7.

This is not about compassion for Palestinians.
It is about a very old, very persistent obsession with the Jewish people — repurposed as modern geopolitics.

Lebanon: A State Captured by Hezbollah’s Obsession

Lebanon is not a fragile democracy. It is a Hezbollah-controlled territory whose national identity has been hijacked by Iran’s proxy army.

Hezbollah exists for one purpose: to wage eternal war against Israel. Lebanon’s economy collapses, its society disintegrates, and its government crumbles — but Hezbollah’s obsession never wavers. After October 7, it opened a second front against Israel not because Lebanon wanted war but because the obsession demanded it.

Turkey: A NATO Power Driven by Islamist Fixation

Turkey, a NATO member, hosts Hamas leaders while jailing journalists, persecuting Kurds, suppressing dissent, pressuring minorities, and illegally occupying Northern Cyprus. Its actions in Syria have displaced communities and empowered extremist groups — yet it routinely lectures Israel on human rights.

Erdoğan has long used confrontational rhetoric toward Israel as part of his broader regional strategy. His government positions itself as a defender of Muslim causes, and public criticism of Israel reliably reinforces that image at home and across parts of the Muslim world.

UNRWA: The Bureaucracy Built to Preserve the Obsession

No institution on earth protects and perpetuates the obsession more systematically than UNRWA — the only refugee agency in history designed not to resolve a refugee crisis but to ensure it grows forever.

Every other refugee group on earth moves toward resettlement and rehabilitation.
Only Palestinians are kept in permanent limbo — because their suffering is used as a political weapon.

UNRWA doesn’t educate children.
It indoctrinates them.

Textbooks glorify terrorism, erase Jewish history, and teach that Israel’s destruction is not only possible but necessary. Teachers were involved in the October 7 attack. UNRWA facilities housed tunnels. Its vehicles carried weapons. Its leadership pretends to be “neutral” while maintaining the infrastructure of hatred that guarantees the obsession will pass to the next generation.

UNRWA doesn’t promote peace.
It manufactures conflict.

The United Nations: The Global Headquarters of the Obsession

The obsession becomes global at the United Nations, which has condemned Israel many more times than all other countries combined. This week, the GA assembly overwhelmingly renewed – again – UNRWA’s mandate in a 151-10 vote.

This is not oversight.
It is fixation.

When Jewish women were raped, tortured, mutilated, and executed on October 7 — crimes Hamas filmed and celebrated — the UN hesitated. UN Women went silent. Reports were delayed. Evidence was “under review.” Jewish victims were treated not as human beings. The UN does not defend human rights.
It defends the obsession.

The Heart of the Matter: Why They Are Obsessed With Jews and Israel

These regimes and institutions are not motivated by morality. Their obsession is rooted in something far older and deeper.

Anti-Israelism is simply antisemitism reborn—shaped by centuries of Church demonization, reinforced by Arab nationalism, and amplified by strands of Islamic theology that viewed Jews as dhimmis, permanently subordinate. A sovereign, successful Jewish state overturns that hierarchy. It threatens radical Islamist ideology, which imagines dominance through jihad and sees Israel as the obstacle that must be removed.

In the Western world, the dynamic is different but no less corrosive:
Israel has become the modern scapegoat, the convenient outlet for societies unwilling to confront their own failures and guilt—centuries of persecuting Jews culminating in the Holocaust, and unresolved colonial guilt.

And because of this, Israel becomes unbearable to them:

Israel’s survival contradicts their worldview.
Israel’s strength blocks their ambitions.

So they obsess. They distort. They fuel hatred.

The tragedy is that the world is obsessed with Hatred.

The tragedy is the decline of these countries themselves.

Israel Thrives Despite the Noise

Meanwhile, Israel continues to thrive—economically, technologically, militarily. On social media, we often struggle, drowned out by the sheer weight of coordinated narratives and old hatreds masquerading as activism.

But the truth has a long shelf life.

Slowly, common sense is returning. Thoughtful people are beginning to understand that Israel is not simply a geopolitical actor—it is a symbol, a story, a moral idea, and for many, a spiritual anchor.

To erase Israel would be to erase the foundations of Western civilisation itself.

The West, in its rejection of Christian heritage and biblical foundations, now finds itself spiritually homeless. A civilisation cannot survive without a soul. Into this void rush all manner of radical ideologies—some secular, some religious, all destabilising.

The Abraham Accords showed another way: a return to shared humanity, shared ancestry, and shared purpose. Abraham is not a symbol of division but of unity. He represents the idea of a moral life under God.

A Good Society: What the World Truly Needs

Suppose the world can reject radical narratives—both secular and religious—and return to the principles that unite rather than divide. In that case, we can begin to build a good society, a good global society.

If nations embrace Israel and the Jewish people not as scapegoats but as partners in shaping a moral future, something remarkable becomes possible. We can help one another reclaim purpose. We can build societies grounded in mutual respect, shared values, and a vision of human dignity.

This is the narrative that must change.