Israel, the Island

In September 2025, a diplomat from Tuvalu raised a small placard against the creation of a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly. Tuvalu with a population of just over eleven thousand spread across nine small islands in the Pacific has a population smaller than that of many neighborhoods in Tel Aviv and on some school maps the country is completely omitted much like the Green Line. On that day 142 countries voted in favor of the Palestinian state while ten voted against.

The isolation of a country rarely manifests as a single statement. South Africa during apartheid discovered this throughout the 1980s when the world stopped discussing merely its policies and began questioning its legitimacy. The difference seemingly semantic is profound. Governments survive criticism but few survive the moment when the world ceases to want to defend them publicly. There are photographs from the 1960s in which South African ministers smile at European diplomatic receptions convinced they belonged to the future of the world. Two decades later apartheid ceased to be merely a matter of foreign policy and became a question of moral identity for those who condemned it.

Israel is still far from that final stage but I have lived here long enough to feel that the atmosphere has changed. We still rely on American military support for now with economic integration and relevant strategic alliances. But in multilateral institutions the temperature around us and the 2025 vote made this apparent with a precision that is hard to process for those living inside the map.

At the end of April 2026 a photograph circulated on social media showing a birthday table with two cakes. In one Israeli Police Commissioner Danny Levy offers a ceremonial cake to National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir in a scene of such utter submission that it almost loses its political dimension and enters the realm of an anecdote. State officials no longer seem to serve institutions but individuals. On the other cake prepared by the minister wife there was a noose made of icing as a festive reference to the death penalty for Palestinians accused of terrorism photographed without restraint and shared shamelessly. The most disturbing aspect was not the cake itself because civilizations have always produced occasional monsters but the domestic tone with which that cruelty appeared decorated as affection and served as a family dessert.

Countries do not begin to lose their way when they commit atrocities but when they fail to perceive the monstrosity of their own actions. Apartheid era South Africa long believed its problem was merely diplomatic merely narrative and merely an unfair international campaign. The 142 votes at the UN may mark the beginning of that silent shift in atmosphere that precedes major historical upheavals the moment when the world begins slowly to view a country differently from the way it still insists on seeing itself. The world tolerates violence for a long time but rarely forgives societies that learn to celebrate it. As the waves of animosity grow stronger Israel faces the challenge of rediscovering its own humanity before the silence of indifference becomes its only companion.