No apologies, no double standards
European Jews are not Netanyahu’s ambassadors
The problem of pre-emptive disclaimers
A troubling trend has emerged in European public discourse surrounding Israel and Gaza: Jews — regardless of nationality — are increasingly expected to preface any commentary on antisemitism or Jewish safety with a public denunciation of Israeli government policies. This demand, whether implicit or explicit, operates as a form of moral gatekeeping. It imposes a discriminatory burden on Jewish voices that is applied to no other minority or diaspora group.
Let us be clear: the events of 7 October 2023 were not morally ambiguous. Hamas initiated a coordinated and deliberate assault on civilians in southern Israël — targeting families, the elderly, children, and festival-goers — with no legitimate military aim (B’Tselem, 2023; ADL, 2024). It was a terrorist attack, by any legal or ethical definition. And yet, in the days that followed, certain political actors, segments of academia, and activist networks rapidly redirected the public narrative — focusing not on Hamas’s atrocities, but on Israëli “colonialism,” “apartheid,” and “resistance.”
This discursive pivot served to marginalise Jewish voices and to legitimise violence under the guise of decolonial theory (Bauer, 2021; Sunstein, 2009). It allowed many to avoid condemning terrorism by masking ideological bias as moral complexity.
The Double Standard
The logic of double standards has been long recognised as a diagnostic indicator of antisemitism. Natan Sharansky’s “Three Ds” framework — demonisation, delegitimisation, and double standards — defines this type of asymmetry, where Israël is treated more harshly than any other democratic state, and where Jews are required to meet ideological tests others are not (Sharansky, 2004).
This pattern has deep historical roots. As Rabbi Benjamin Elton (2025) has shown, Jews have often been viewed through an exceptionalising lens — demanded to be more loyal, more moral, more apologetic — than other communities. When applied to the modern political context, this translates into conditional legitimacy: Jews may only participate in public discourse if they denounce Israel, Zionism, or both.
Recent empirical work supports this. Cheng and Bolton (2024) found that Jews are uniquely subjected to ideological “litmus tests” in academic and cultural spaces. Unlike members of other groups, they must distance themselves from their ethno-religious or political identity to be considered neutral or credible participants.
More concerning still, Enstad (2024) demonstrated in a twelve-country survey that stronger Jewish identification with Israel correlates with heightened exposure to antisemitic threats and violence. That is: double standards don’t just distort discourse — they increase fear, erode civic participation, and deepen social exclusion.
This dynamic is not only a matter of social norms; it intersects directly with European legal protections. The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights guarantees the right to dignity (Art. 1) and explicitly prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion or belief (Art. 21). When ideological “litmus tests” are applied to Jewish citizens as a precondition for participation, they run counter to these foundational principles of EU law. The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) has similarly identified “political conditionality” as a form of indirect discrimination against Jews in democratic societies (OSCE/ODIHR, 2023). In a comparative context, Pew Research Center data show that antisemitic attitudes persist across Europe, with significant proportions of respondents in multiple countries endorsing negative stereotypes about Jews (Pew Research Center, 2018). This underscores that such conditionality does not emerge in a vacuum but within a broader environment where bias remains socially and politically salient.
Adding the European context
This phenomenon must also be situated within broader European policy and empirical evidence. The EU Strategy on Combating Antisemitism and Fostering Jewish Life (2021–2030), adopted by the European Commission, explicitly rejects holding Jews collectively responsible for the policies of Israël (European Commission, 2021). In its first progress report (European Commission, 2024), the EU notes that 23 member states have adopted national strategies and 20 have appointed special envoys to address antisemitism.
Findings from the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA, 2024) underscore the severity of the issue: across the EU, 96% of Jews report experiencing antisemitism in their lifetime, 76% avoid displaying Jewish symbols in public, and a large majority perceive rising hostility. In the Netherlands specifically, 97% of respondents reported experiencing antisemitism in the past year, and 78% felt at least occasionally held responsible for Israeli policy purely because of their Jewish identity.
These data confirm that the phenomenon described here is not anecdotal — it is documented, measurable, and recognised as a threat to the democratic principles of equal citizenship across Europe.
Comparative data reinforce this picture. According to FRA’s 2024 country fact sheets, 85% of German Jews and 88% of French Jews report avoiding visible signs of Jewish identity due to safety concerns, while in Belgium the figure rises to 90% (FRA, 2024a; FRA, 2024b; FRA, 2024c). These figures align with historical trends documented by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC, 2003–2005), showing that spikes in antisemitic incidents have often followed periods of heightened conflict in the Middle East. Recent academic work by Weiss and Taragin-Zeller (2023) highlights how Jewish identity in Europe has become increasingly politicised in public debates, often leading to heightened scrutiny and social sanction for those who do not conform to dominant political narratives about Israel.
Engaging with counterarguments
Some scholars (e.g., Butler, 2021; Pappé, 2023) argue that the heightened criticism of Israel is a function of its protracted occupation and human rights record, and therefore not necessarily antisemitic. This perspective emphasises the legitimacy of human rights–based critiques of state policy.
However, when such criticism is operationalised as a precondition for Jewish participation in public discourse — a test applied to no other group — it crosses into discriminatory territory. As Sharansky’s framework (2004) and Rensmann (2019) make clear, this is where “double standards” become not just bias, but a structural mechanism of exclusion. The distinction lies in whether critique is issue-focused or identity-conditional; in the latter case, the target is not policy, but people.
Media framing plays a central role in this dynamic. Laderman and Lipsitz (2022) demonstrate that in European news coverage, political events involving Israel are frequently framed in ways that obscure antisemitic targeting of diaspora communities, instead recasting the issue as purely geopolitical. This framing can create social permission for the transfer of political grievances onto Jewish citizens. Cammaerts et al. (2020), in their analysis of online hate speech across five European countries, find that algorithmic amplification and selective visibility on major platforms tend to normalise hostile discourse towards minority groups, including Jews, particularly during times of international crisis.
Zionism: affirmation, not aggression
In activist discourse and academic contexts, “Zionism” is increasingly wielded not as a descriptor of political ideology, but as a smear. Critics collapse the diversity of Zionist belief into one monolithic image: that of conquest and colonialism. The term becomes a proxy — not for policy, but for identity.
According to sociologist David Hirsh (2022), “Zionist” has functioned in some progressive milieus as a coded replacement for “Jew,” allowing for classic antisemitic tropes to re-enter discourse under the guise of anti-colonialism. In many online and campus settings, to be labeled a “Zionist” is to be marked for exclusion — regardless of what one actually believes. This rhetorical weaponisation enables a politics of delegitimisation.
Hirsh also describes what he calls the Livingstone Formulation: the accusation that anyone raising concerns about antisemitism is attempting to silence criticism of Israel. This tactic serves to shift blame and discredit those speaking out — often Jewish individuals — by accusing them of bad faith (Hirsh, 2010).
Kenneth Stern, one of the architects of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, has also warned of this dynamic. While he supports the definition’s diagnostic role, he cautions against its misuse as a political tool to suppress dissent. When anti-Zionism becomes a basis for exclusion, and Zionism is equated with racism in blanket terms, legitimate Jewish self-determination is erased — and the line between criticism and discrimination is lost (Stern, 2019).
As political theorist Lars Rensmann (2019) argues, the “Jewish Question” has been reactivated on the left in a new form: “When Jews are only accepted if they meet anti-Zionist criteria, a fundamental exclusion is taking place — under a banner of progressivism.” This distortion risks silencing even critical Jewish voices that do not conform to activist orthodoxy.
Hamas: emotional manipulation, social media, and western polarisation
Hamas’s warfare is not only kinetic — it is cognitive. According to Schleifer (2025), Hamas deliberately constructs emotionally charged narratives and imagery to hijack public empathy and shift global opinion. These campaigns are coordinated, sophisticated, and executed across multiple platforms (ICGS, 2025).
Social media is central to this strategy. Research from the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS, 2024) shows that Hamas deploys targeted propaganda to manipulate the emotional responses of Western audiences, including through fake accounts, decontextualised imagery, and high-velocity repetition. In a 2024 study, Dey, Luceri, and Ferrara analysed 1.3 million tweets and found that coordinated disinformation campaigns modulate user emotions — particularly fear and outrage — with Hamas-linked content often spreading via bot-assisted amplification (Dey et al., 2024).
Stella, Ferrara, and De Domenico (2018) add that bot networks significantly increase exposure to polarising and inflammatory content, amplifying the destabilising effects of such propaganda on democratic discourse.
This use of emotional saturation aligns with what Rid and Hecht (2021) describe as “strategic narrative warfare,” in which militant actors deliberately craft moral storylines to reframe violence as justified resistance. The EU Hybrid Centre of Excellence (Hybrid CoE, 2023) has documented how non-state actors, including Hamas, exploit Western frameworks of empathy and justice to shift public opinion in liberal democracies. By embedding emotionally resonant narratives into digital ecosystems, these campaigns weaken the ability of audiences to distinguish between legitimate humanitarian concerns and deliberate manipulative framing.
Research on information operations demonstrates that militant propaganda mechanics — such as message repetition, moral reframing, and selective omission (Paul & Matthews, 2016; Cornish et al., 2011)— create the preconditions for how conflicts are later discussed in international fora. In the European context, these tactics exploit the normative emphasis on pluralism and human rights, seeding narratives that, once embedded, are taken up within activist networks, media commentary, and even academic debate (OSCE/ODIHR, 2023). This conditioning shapes discourse so that calls for condemnation of terrorism may be reframed as political alignment, making the public sphere more susceptible to selective moral scrutiny.
From a policy perspective, institutions such as the EU Hybrid CoE and NATO’s StratCom COE recommend proactive countermeasures: increased media literacy training for journalists and educators; transparent attribution of content provenance on social platforms; and the systematic archiving of manipulated content for forensic analysis (Hybrid CoE, 2023; NATO StratCom COE, 2022). Implementing these measures would not only counter hostile information campaigns, but also help safeguard the integrity of European democratic debate by ensuring that discourse norms are not silently shaped by militant propaganda mechanics.
Taken together, these dynamics illustrate that Hamas’s information strategy is not a secondary front, but a core component of its operational doctrine. By systematically shaping the interpretive frameworks through which its actions are viewed, Hamas reduces the political costs of violence and amplifies divisions within target societies. For European policymakers and civil society actors, recognising this interplay between militant propaganda mechanics and domestic discourse norms is essential. Only by addressing both the informational and physical dimensions of such conflicts can Europe safeguard an open, pluralistic debate that resists manipulation and remains anchored in democratic principles.
Hamas is not a partner for peace
Calls for ceasefire, proportionality, or negotiations too often sidestep the reality of Hamas. It is an armed Islamist organisation whose founding charter and subsequent communiqués reject Israëls legitimacy and endorse armed “resistance” (MEMRI, 2023; ICGS, 2025). Hamas has no political roadmap beyond resistance, no commitment to democratic norms, and, according to independent assessments, exercises governance in ways that constrain judicial independence, press freedom, and political opposition.
Scholarly analyses concur with this assessment. Milton-Edwards and Farrell (2010) document that Hamas’s strategic posture is rooted in a zero-sum conception of the conflict, where political engagement is primarily instrumental and subordinate to armed resistance. The International Crisis Group (2019) notes that internal governance in Gaza under Hamas has systematically undermined judicial independence, curtailed press freedom, and criminalised dissent, creating conditions incompatible with conflict resolution. Furthermore, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports detail repeated use of civilian infrastructure for military purposes, in violation of international humanitarian law (OCHA, 2022). These findings reinforce the conclusion that Hamas’s organisational objectives and operational methods are fundamentally at odds with the requirements for a viable peace partner.
To frame Hamas as a “resistance movement” without acknowledging its stated aim of destroying Israël and documented calls for mass violence — including its use of human shields and persecution of civilians, Palestinians among them — is intellectually dishonest. Such omissions not only distort the conflict, they grant implicit legitimacy to terror (CIDI, 2024).
The need for moral clarity
What is needed is not more hedging, disclaimers, or ideological tests. What is needed is moral clarity.
Philosopher Avishai Margalit (2009) argues that a “decent society” is one where institutions do not humiliate individuals — and that demanding ideological disclaimers from Jewish citizens before acknowledging their suffering constitutes precisely such institutional humiliation. This erodes democratic norms of equal treatment and undermines the moral authority of public space.
From a political theory perspective, Judith Shklar’s (1990) framework of liberalism of fear warns against political systems that tolerate exclusion, especially of minorities who are scapegoated in moments of national stress. The current treatment of Jews — where grief must be morally filtered and speech is conditional — echoes this danger.
Recent empirical findings confirm that the cumulative effect of conditional legitimacy, double standards, and emotional delegitimisation results in real withdrawal from civic life. Enstad (2024) shows that Jews who perceive public discourse as hostile are more likely to avoid political participation, media expression, or institutional affiliation. The outcome is not only personal silencing but democratic weakening.
Moral clarity, then, is not an abstract virtue — it is the foundational requirement for pluralistic democracies to function. When citizens are asked to apologise for their identities or condition their safety on political alignment, democracy turns against its own principles.
From a democratic theory standpoint, Habermas (1996) stresses that an inclusive public sphere requires that all citizens can participate without being compelled to renounce core elements of their identity. When speech is conditional on ideological conformity, the public sphere itself becomes exclusionary. Empirical research by Vogt and van Spanje (2021) on religious minorities in Western Europe shows that hostile public discourse significantly reduces political engagement, not only by discouraging participation but also by eroding trust in institutions. Such withdrawal has long-term consequences for democratic resilience, as it narrows the diversity of voices and experiences represented in civic life.
Jewish citizens in the Netherlands — and across Europe — should not have to apologise for existing, for fearing violence, or for grieving their dead. They do not require permission to speak, and they do not need to distance themselves from Israël in order to earn their right to public safety.
To reduce Jewish identity to a political statement, to make Jewish grief conditional on political compliance, is to hollow out the very idea of pluralism. A democracy that imposes ideological purity before it offers protection is a democracy in decline.
