Why Does Israel Alone Stand Trial?

A Meditation on the World’s Double Standard

Every war leaves behind refugees. Every state arises from conflict, from migration, from conquest or colonialism or chance. Borders are redrawn, peoples are displaced, nations are invented—and the world moves on.

Except in one case.

Only Israel is made to stand trial, endlessly, for existing.

No one asks Pakistan to justify being carved from India on religious lines. No one questions Jordan—a kingdom dreamed up by the British, gifted to a Hashemite prince with no historical roots in the land. No UN agency exists solely to preserve the refugee status of Kashmiris, Armenians, Karelians, or Sudeten Germans. Only the descendants of Arab migrants from British Mandate Palestine are told they may never resettle, never integrate—only wait. In “camps.” Forever. Funded by UNRWA, an agency whose mission is not to solve the refugee crisis, but to preserve it.

The UNRWA Anomaly

Every other refugee crisis in the world is managed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), whose mission is resettlement, integration, and closure. Except one. UNRWA was created solely for Arabs displaced during Israel’s War of Independence, and uniquely among all the world’s refugees, their status is hereditary.

No other refugee population has been kept in limbo for generations. No other children and grandchildren of displaced people are told to remain stateless until one specific nation ceases to exist.

Justice for All — Except Israel

Critics of Israel scoff at what they call “whataboutism.” But if comparisons are invalid, then so is context—and history becomes selective outrage.

When Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 and still occupies its north, did the UN create a special refugee agency to preserve the grievances of displaced Greek Cypriots for generations?

When the Arab world expelled 850,000 Jews after 1948, did anyone demand that the host countries integrate them or provide reparations?

When Pakistan was founded in 1947—the first modern state explicitly created along religious lines—millions of Hindus and Sikhs were forced to flee. No one calls for their “right of return.” No one accuses Pakistan of “apartheid” for being an Islamic republic.

After the Russo-Finnish War of 1939–1940, the Soviet Union annexed roughly 10% of Finland’s territory—including the region of Karelia—which remains part of Russia to this day. Around 410,000 indigenous inhabitants—nearly 12% of Finland’s total population—were forcibly displaced. They lost their homes, their ancestral lands, and any realistic prospect of return. Yet they were resettled with dignity, absorbed into Finnish society, and moved on. No special refugee bureaucracy was created. No one insisted they remain stateless until Russia reversed its conquests. Their suffering was real, but it wasn’t weaponized or preserved in perpetuity as a tool for revenge.

So why is Israel—a single Jewish state in a region of dozens of Muslim-majority nations—held to a different moral standard?

The Obsession With Israel

It is not that people ask tough questions about Israel. It is that they ask only of Israel what they ask of no other.

Why does a nation of less than 10 million people receive more UN condemnations than all others combined? Why is a democracy with openly elected Arab legislators, independent courts, and a free press called an “apartheid state” by those who excuse regimes where dissidents are jailed or worse?

Why does Israel’s existence trigger such elaborate rhetorical gymnastics, historical revisionism, and obsessive legalism—but the most egregious state crimes elsewhere are met with diplomatic shrugs?

The Metaphysical War

This is no longer a political debate. It is a ritual. A moral theater.

Israel’s critics are not content to debate its policies. They must question its premise. They do not ask for reform. They ask for annulment. No other nation is treated as a problem to be undone.

Perhaps the hatred is not political but theological. Not rational but primal.

In a world obsessed with flattening identities, the stubborn survival of a people with memory, covenant, and continuity provokes something deeper than resentment. It touches a nerve.

Because if Israel exists, unashamed and unbowed, then history did not end. The past is not erased. And exile is not permanent.

That, more than anything else, is what many cannot forgive.

The Real Question

So ask yourself: Why must Israel explain itself when no other state must do the same? Why are refugees who fled Israel in 1948 preserved in limbo, while others are absorbed and resettled? Why are Jewish rights framed as threats to peace, but Arab demands—even when maximalist—are treated as justice?

The answer lies not in what Israel is, but in what Israel means.

And if the world hates that meaning—maybe it’s time to ask why.