Why Israel Is Treated Differently

Israel Is Not Unique — The Standards Applied to It Are

There is something strangely revealing about the way people speak about Israel.

Not merely criticize it. Criticism is normal. Every country on Earth is criticized. Americans criticize America. French criticize France. Israelis criticize Israel more passionately than most outsiders ever could.

No, the revealing part is something deeper.

Israel is not merely criticized as a country among countries. It is constantly treated as though it must justify its very existence, its identity, its laws, its demographics, and even the moral legitimacy of its continued sovereignty in ways almost no other nation on Earth is expected to do.

Most countries are judged by what they do.

Israel is judged by what it is.

That distinction changes everything.

People do not simply argue about a border dispute, a military operation, or a coalition government. Instead, the conversation quickly becomes metaphysical:

Israel should not exist as a Jewish state at all.
Jews should not define national belonging.
Jewish immigration laws should not exist.
Jewish self-determination itself should be considered illegitimate.
Zionism should be viewed as uniquely immoral among national movements.

And once one notices this pattern, a larger question emerges:

Why is Israel treated as an exception to the normal standards applied to every other sovereign country?

There are roughly 200 sovereign states in the world, and virtually every one of them has its own immigration laws, citizenship criteria, national priorities, and definitions of belonging.

Some countries prioritize family reunification.
Some prioritize skilled workers.
Some grant citizenship through ancestry.
Some define themselves through language, religion, ethnicity, culture, or historical peoplehood.
Some combine all of the above.

This is not unusual.
This is called sovereignty.

Germany has ancestry-based citizenship provisions. Armenia does. Greece does. Ireland does. Japan carefully protects its national identity. Many Arab and Muslim states openly define themselves through Arab or Islamic identity. Pakistan was explicitly founded as a Muslim homeland. Countless countries preserve demographic, linguistic, religious, or historical continuity through law and policy.

Israel does the same according to its own national definition and historical circumstances.

That is not some bizarre exception to global norms.
That is global norms.

Yet somehow, when Israel behaves like a normal sovereign state, it is treated as though it has committed a philosophical crime against humanity.

Why?

Why must Israel constantly justify having immigration laws tied to Jewish peoplehood when dozens of countries openly maintain national frameworks tied to their own historical peoples?

Why is Israel endlessly interrogated about who belongs there, while nearly every other nation-state is permitted to define itself without standing trial before the court of global morality?

Some even make the bizarre argument that Israel should become like the United States. And if Israel is “allowed” to be different from the United States, then — according to the same logic — why shouldn’t the United States become like Israel?

The argument itself is absurd. It assumes that all countries must become interchangeable — with identical laws, identical historical narratives, identical immigration systems, identical demographic structures, identical concepts of nationhood, and identical cultural priorities.

But the world does not work that way.

France is not Japan.
India is not Saudi Arabia.
Turkey is not Canada.
Pakistan is not Norway.
And Israel is not the United States.

Every country on Earth emerged through complicated historical processes involving migrations, wars, empires, partitions, demographic changes, and competing national narratives. If one wishes, one can endlessly deconstruct every border, every founding myth, every demographic majority, and every national identity on Earth.

One can question who is truly indigenous.
Who conquered whom.
Who displaced whom.
Who arrived first.
Who belongs.
Who does not.

But if that standard is applied consistently, then virtually no modern state survives the exercise intact.

And yet this obsessive scrutiny somehow fixates overwhelmingly on one country: Israel.

My own view is simple: I view Israel like any other sovereign country in the world — no more mystical, no more sinister, and no less legitimate. Its existence is justified by its very existence, and by its ability to defend itself.

Israel exists.
The United States exists.
France exists.
Turkey exists.
Saudi Arabia exists.

They all have laws.
They all define citizenship.
They all define national belonging according to their own histories and priorities.

Of course, not everyone considers those laws fair or just. Many people think American immigration law is unfair — especially those who do not qualify to immigrate to the United States. Others criticize French secularism, Turkish nationalism, Saudi religious law, Indian citizenship policy, or Pakistani identity politics.

That is normal political discourse.

What is not normal is treating one country alone as uniquely illegitimate among all nations.

Nobody is obligated to support Israel, Zionism, or any other political ideology. People criticize countries every day. Israelis themselves criticize Israeli governments constantly. Criticism of policies, military operations, coalition politics, judicial reforms, or immigration laws is entirely legitimate.

But criticism of Israel is not automatically neutral simply because someone labels it “just criticism.” The standards being applied matter.

There is a meaningful difference between criticizing a specific policy and treating one country as uniquely colonial, uniquely racist, uniquely evil, uniquely undeserving of sovereignty, or uniquely unworthy of existing as a nation-state at all.

That distinction matters enormously.

From 1948 to the present, Israel has consistently received more condemnations at the United Nations than the rest of the world combined, despite the existence of vastly larger wars, dictatorships, invasions, occupations, ethnic conflicts, and humanitarian catastrophes elsewhere.

A tiny country smaller than New Jersey somehow becomes the central moral obsession of international politics.

At some point, reasonable people begin noticing the pattern.

This is where the concept of Ziophobia becomes relevant.

Ziophobia does not mean disagreement with a particular Israeli policy.
It does not mean criticizing a military action.
It does not mean opposing a government coalition.

Ziophobia refers to hostility, prejudice, or obsessive double standards directed against Zionism, Zionists, or Israel as the Jewish homeland.

And obsessive double standards are precisely what distinguish ordinary criticism from ideological fixation.

The same pattern appears in debates over anti-boycott laws. US law strictly penalizes companies for attempting to comply with unsanctioned foreign boycotts.

Critics often portray such laws as though Israel has somehow suspended free speech itself in the US. But the reality is much less dramatic.

The United States is one of Israel’s strongest allies. The two countries cooperate extensively in intelligence, military strategy, technological development, counterterrorism, and regional security against shared adversaries. Countries routinely enact laws protecting strategic allies and national economic interests.

People remain free to criticize Israel.
They remain free to boycott Israel personally.
But governments are equally free to decide that they do not wish to subsidize, contract with, or officially support organized campaigns targeting a close strategic ally.

That is not authoritarianism.
That is statecraft.

What I find particularly revealing is that many of the loudest Ziophobic voices online claim to be Jewish themselves, or to have lived in Israel, studied there, or even served in the IDF. Some may be real people. Many are bots. Frankly, I do not care.

Because I do not divide human beings by race, ethnicity, religion, or ancestry.

I divide people into only two categories: those who love Israel and those who hate it. Zionists and Ziophobes.

Everything else is secondary.

And I have far more in common with Arabs who love Israel than with Jews who obsessively demonize it.

That, too, seems to confuse people who reduce identity to tribal biology, religion, or ideology rather than shared values and loyalties — even though, of course, people on all sides will claim their position is based on values. The real difference is what ultimately determines belonging within their framework.

But perhaps that confusion itself reveals the deeper issue.

All nations are unique, including Israel. In that sense, Israel is not unique. Or maybe it is.

But the standards applied to it certainly are.

—

See Also

Why Does Israel Alone Stand Trial?