Who Asked for Your Opinion?

I make a conscious effort to stay away from the news. Not because I do not care, but because sometimes the hypocrisy surrounding Israel sickens me to my core.

Then came the joint statement.

Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom announced that they intend to introduce, support or consider restrictions on trade with Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria—the territory most of the world calls the West Bank.

And my first reaction was simple: Who asked you?
Yes, sovereign governments may establish their own foreign and trade policies and criticize Israel, just as Israel may criticize them. But legal authority does not make every intervention principled, proportionate or wise—and it does not entitle them to expect their relationship with Israel to continue unchanged.

Israel is a sovereign democracy. Its government is accountable first to the people who live here—the people who send their children to defend this country, run to shelters when missiles fall and live with the consequences of every security decision. Foreign ministers in London, Paris, Ottawa and Madrid do not carry those consequences. Israelis do.

Yet Israel is treated as though it were international public property: a free-for-all on which every government may offer opinions and impose conditions or punishments.

Why?

Britain’s position captures the contradiction perfectly. While announcing punitive measures, its foreign secretary also said that Britain and Israel would continue cooperating on shared national-security interests.

Of course Britain wants that cooperation. It wants Israeli intelligence, cybersecurity, defense expertise, medical innovation, agricultural technology and artificial intelligence. These countries want access to everything Israel has built while reserving the right to publicly punish Israel for decisions they dislike.

That is not partnership. Partnership requires reciprocity.

Israel did not accept Britain’s decision in silence. It announced that it would close the British consulate in East Jerusalem, exclude Britain from the US-led Gaza coordination mission, end British training of Palestinian Authority security forces and bar certain British figures from entering Israel.

That response is not retaliation for its own sake. It is a sovereign country fulfilling its first and most fundamental responsibility: protecting its people, security and national interests against outside pressure and interference. Every one of these governments claims that same responsibility toward its own citizens. Not one can honestly fault Israel for fulfilling it. You cannot impose consequences on Israel and then express outrage when Israel responds with diplomatic consequences of its own.

If Britain chooses to alter its relationship with Israel, Israel is entitled—indeed, obligated—to reassess the cooperation, access and privileges Britain receives in return. Sovereignty does not mean accepting punishment politely.

Look at home

What makes this international grandstanding even more infuriating is that these countries have no shortage of crises requiring their attention at home.

Britain is managing a social-security system forecast to cost roughly £334 billion in 2025–26. It is still confronting the findings of a national audit into group-based child sexual exploitation—an audit that exposed devastating institutional failures, missing data and years in which vulnerable girls were not adequately protected. None of this is minor. None of it has been solved.

Canada faces a housing-affordability crisis, strained health-care systems and an antisemitism emergency that should horrify its government. B’nai Brith Canada documented 6,800 antisemitic incidents in 2025—the highest number in the organization’s more than four decades of annual reporting. By July 15, 2026, it had already recorded 27 violent antisemitic incidents, more than twice the total for all of 2025.

Britain recorded 3,700 antisemitic incidents in 2025, its second-highest annual total. France recorded 1,320 antisemitic acts, accounting for more than half of all anti-religious incidents despite Jews representing less than one percent of the population. Spain’s Jewish federation and the Movement Against Intolerance documented 221 incidents in 2025.

And this is not confined to those four countries. A major survey by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights—covering Denmark, France, Poland, Spain and Sweden among other EU states—found that 96 percent of Jewish respondents had encountered antisemitism in the previous year. Seventy-five percent said they were blamed, at least occasionally, for the actions of the Israeli government simply because they were Jewish.

Only 18 percent believed their governments fought antisemitism effectively.

Ireland and Portugal are struggling with acute housing pressures. Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway are confronting strains involving public services, integration, security and the sustainability of their welfare systems. Iceland has its own housing and public-service challenges. Poland is managing border security and the consequences of a major war next door.

I am not arguing that a government must solve every domestic problem before it can conduct foreign policy. No government would pass that test. I am asking about proportionality, priorities and the ease with which Israel becomes a shared stage for international virtue-signaling while urgent failures at home remain unresolved.
Before lecturing Israel about how it protects its people, perhaps protect the people living in your own countries.

The consequences do not remain overseas. These governments also cannot pretend that their rhetoric affects only Israel.

When a government publicly marks the Jewish state as uniquely deserving of punishment, antisemites at home do not necessarily hear a careful distinction between Israel, Israeli policy, Zionism and the Jewish person walking down the street. They hear permission. They hear validation. They hear that hostility toward Israel—and, by extension, toward Jews—is respectable.

That does not mean every criticism of Israel is antisemitic. It is not. It does not mean that every person who opposes a settlement policy hates Jews. They do not. It means that governments have a responsibility to recognize the environment in which their words and actions land.

The data should leave no room for denial. Three-quarters of the Jewish respondents in the EU survey already felt they were being held responsible for the Israeli government’s actions. When governments intensify the public punishment of Israel without forcefully separating policy disagreements from the legitimacy of Jewish self-determination, they risk feeding a hatred they have already failed to control.

Britain’s Chief Rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, called the new measures a dark day for British Jews and warned that they would bolster extremism. That concern should not be waved away as an attempt to silence criticism. It comes from a Jewish community living with the consequences.

A Jew is a Jew is a Jew

History has already shown us that antisemites do not care what kind of Jew you are.
Nazi racial ideology did not ask whether a Jew was religious, secular or somewhere in between. Jewish identity was classified largely through ancestry. Conversion, assimilation or lack of religious observance did not necessarily offer escape.
A Jew was a Jew was a Jew.

I am not comparing these democratic governments to Nazi Germany. I am making a narrower and essential point: hatred does not honor the distinctions that polite political discourse claims to maintain. The person who attacks a synagogue, threatens a Jewish school or assaults someone wearing a kippah is not conducting a thoughtful analysis of Israeli policy.

Nor does the hatred stop to determine whether its target voted for Israel’s government, lives in Israel or agrees with a particular decision made in Judea and Samaria.

What Zionism actually means

The word Zionist has been transformed into an accusation, an insult and, far too often, a socially acceptable substitute for the word Jew.

So let us be clear about what Zionism means at its core: the Jewish people have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland.

It does not mean that every Zionist supports every Israeli government. It does not demand agreement with every military operation, coalition member or policy. Israelis themselves argue about all of those things constantly—that is what happens in a democracy.

Criticism of Israel comparable to criticism directed at any other country is not inherently antisemitic. But denying the Jewish people alone the right to self-determination, demanding the elimination of the world’s only Jewish state or using Zionist as a coded substitute for Jew crosses that line. The distinction matters. Unfortunately, the people attacking Jews around the world are increasingly refusing to make it.

Israel’s door is not an entitlement.

Israel has shared its intelligence, technology, medical breakthroughs, agricultural innovations and security expertise with the world. It has done so even while being condemned by many of the countries benefiting from that cooperation.

But access to Israel is not an entitlement.

You may establish your own foreign policy. You may criticize Israel. You may decide that your relationship with Israel should change. But then you must accept that Israel may change the relationship too.

Israel’s government has one overriding responsibility: the safety and welfare of the people of Israel. It is not required to sacrifice that responsibility for Britain’s approval, Europe’s applause or Canada’s sense of moral superiority.

No country that claims the same duty toward its own citizens has the moral standing to fault Israel for putting its people first.

So, to the twelve countries lining up to instruct and punish Israel while benefiting from what Israel provides: concentrate on your own failures. Protect the Jews living within your borders. Address the hatred, violence, housing crises, public-safety failures and institutional breakdowns facing your own citizens.

And if you choose to sanction Israel, do not act surprised when Israel protects its sovereignty, reassesses what it gives you and closes the door.

Israel is a sovereign country. Its first responsibility is not to satisfy the outside world. It is to protect its citizens. And no country has the right to fault Israel for doing exactly that.