Israel is the world's favorite double standard.
From the "day after" scam to disputing Israel’s capital city, the Jewish state faces a playbook of hypocrisy written for it and it alone.
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This is a guest essay by Nachum Kaplan, who writes the newsletter, “Moral Clarity.”
Israel is the only country expected to fight terrorism with one hand tied behind its back, blindfolded, and standing on one leg like a flamingo, while a panel of yobbo hecklers looks on yelling nonsense about “war crimes.”
Holding Israel to a double standard, along with delegitimization and dehumanization, is one of the three Ds of antisemitism. Everyone knows this double standard is as common as modern-day Nazis in Gaza, but few appreciate how many of these double standards have infected our discourse.
Let’s take a further look:
The Right to Exist
Israel is the only country asked to demonstrate that it has a right to exist. This is as perverse as it sounds. One might take issue with Russian, Chinese, or Jordanian policy, but no one argues that those states have no right to exist. That is reserved solely for Israel.
International Law
Israel is expected to adhere to the laws of war, while no such demand or expectation is placed upon Hamas. Every Palestinian civilian death is treated as an atrocity, regardless of circumstance, while the fact that Hamas operatives routinely use humans as shields, embed themselves in hospitals, and target civilians in violation of the laws of war goes virtually unremarked.
When Israel destroys the weapons, it gets accused of targeting hospitals and schools. When Israel calls ahead to evacuate civilians, the world calls it ethnic cleansing. When ISIS did this in Mosul from 2016 to 2017, U.S. airstrikes killed thousands. There was no outrage, no protests, no “war crimes” allegations. The world allows jihadists to use human shields, but demands miracles from Jews in combating this tactic.
Effects-Based Condemnation
Every military is judged by its intentions, context, and legal frameworks. Except Israel. When Israel fights Hamas, foreign leaders, the United Nations, and much of the mainstream news media judge Israel by the body count alone.
Israel makes extraordinary efforts to avoid civilian casualties — warning civilians with leaflets, texts, phone calls, roof knocks, and drone fly-bys — yet it still gets condemned for alleged indiscriminate bombing. Hamas, meanwhile, hides beneath civilians and laughs as accusations of war crimes are leveled against Israel.
Terrorists versus Government
The world treats Hamas, a genocidal terrorist group whose founding charter calls for the annihilation of Jews, as a legitimate political actor, while questioning the democratic State of Israel’s legitimacy. This makes Israel the only country to be equated with a terrorist organization.
Proportionality
This is a misunderstood term. While there may have been some justification for that misunderstanding when the war began, almost two years on there can be no such excuse; misusing the word is deliberate and malicious.
Proportionality in warfare means civilian harm must be proportionate to the military advantage gained. It has nothing to do with relative casualty numbers. That makes it complex and highly subjective.
It is also something that applies at the commander level, who must weigh whether any attack is proportionate. The Israel Defense Forces takes this requirement so seriously that it has lawyers — who are outside any military chain of command — overseeing commanders’ target acquisition and strikes.
When people cite the questionable Hamas figure that 60,000 people have been killed in the war and then argue that it is disproportionate, they are showing you that they have no idea what they are talking about. The idea that proportionality means Israel must match Hamas rocket for rocket and corpse for corpse is absurd and macabre.
Proportionality comes up only in wars that Israel fights. America toppled regimes after 9/11, yet Israel is told that it is too much even to defend its borders. That is a double standard, for sure.
Western Hypocrisy
Bashar al-Assad kills 500,000 in Syria? Silence. China puts a million Uyghurs into concentration camps? Yawn. Hamas slaughters Jews? Within 24 hours, there are protests on Western streets and campuses against Israel, the victim of the attacks. When Arabs kill Arabs, the West shrugs. When Jews defend themselves, it is a global moral crisis.
The ‘Day After’ Scam
When the Allies invaded Germany in World War Two, no one demanded a post-Hitler reconstruction plan before the D-Day landings had even commenced. When America toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, nobody said: “Wait, who will be mayor of Fallujah?” Yet Israel is required to have a complete governance plan for Gaza before the IDF has even finished clearing Hamas bunkers and tunnels.
Aid you enemies, or else…
Israel, alone in the history of warfare, is expected to supply electricity, water, and humanitarian aid to its enemies — during battle, no less. The U.S. dropped bombs on Fallujah in 2004, not aid packages. The Allies did not send diesel to Dresden in 1944. Yet, if Israel cuts off fuel to Hamas bunkers, it stands accused of collective punishment.
When Israeli ministers make the obvious point that providing aid to Gaza is prolonging the war and suffering, and that it is absurd to be supporting the enemy’s war effort, they are branded as monsters.
You cannot use that weapon.
Israel uses 900-kilogram (2,000-pound) bombs against Hamas tunnel shafts dug under civilian areas. These tunnels are deep, meaning using large ordnance is a military necessity (and legal under the laws of armed conflict).
When the U.S. used such weapons in Mosul and Raqqa, it was urban warfare. When NATO did it in Belgrade in 1999, it was deemed precision targeting. When Israel does it, the cries of war crimes and massacre ring out.
It also happens when Israel uses white phosphorus, which the U.S. also uses, or when it uses cluster munitions (in Lebanon, not Gaza), which the U.S. happily exported to Ukraine to help it defend against Russia’s attack. Apparently, Jewish munitions have special properties that make them evil.
Disputing Israel’s Capital City
Every country is free to choose its capital city, except Israel. Even Israel’s greatest ally, the United States, only recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017, and many countries still refuse to do so. No one tells the UK that London is not its capital. No Jews, you see.
Thou shalt not displace civilians fleeing war.
The Geneva Convention requires that civilians be allowed to flee war zones, which is why Ukrainians could flee to Poland, Syrians to Turkey, and Afghans to anywhere that was not Afghanistan.
Yet, when Israel urges Gazan civilians to evacuate — warning them early and giving them maps of where to go — the Jewish state is accused of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
While Israel gets castigated, neighboring Egypt gets a free pass for violating international humanitarian law by not letting Palestinians in to seek refuge. Imagine a house on fire, the back door locked from outside, and you blaming the firefighter — and you will have the idea.
Solve everything, right now.
Hamas attacks Israel, the Jewish state fights back, and the world demands Israel solve the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict while it is at it. Oh, yes, and make peace with the Palestinian Authority, even though it has not held an election in about a billion years.
No one demanded that Ukraine negotiate with Russia while dodging missiles. Only Israel is asked to engage in war, diplomacy, post-conflict rebuilding, and adhere to biased UN resolutions all at once.
Self-Defense
Every country has a right to self-defense and a responsibility to protect its citizens. Foreign leaders maintain this is true of Israel, but they do not act like it — and there is no evidence that they believe it. Only when Israel defends itself does the international community start measuring civilian casualties, questioning its intentions, and demanding restraint.
When France kills terrorists in Mali, it is self-defense, and civilian casualties are collateral damage. When Israel hits Hamas in Gaza, that collateral damage is now called genocide.
The United Nations of Jew-Haters
Only one country is a permanent agenda item at the UN Human Rights Council, and you win nothing for guessing correctly that it is Israel — because, well, of course it is. It is called “Agenda Item 7,” which is the UN technical term for “Agenda: Destroy Israel.”
Between 2015 and 2020, Israel was condemned 112 times. Bashar al-Assad’s now deposed regime in Syria gassed his own people at the time and was condemned only eight times. Apparently, if you are a democracy, hold elections, and have a free press — but are Jewish — you are worse than Assad, who led the vilest of regimes.
Meanwhile, the UN General Assembly is an anti-Israel resolution factory. In 2022, it passed 15 resolutions against Israel, versus just 13 for all other countries combined.
Israel, a tiny nation of no more than 10 million people, attracted more ire from the UN than China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela combined. That is more than a double standard; it is a witch trial.
The Weaponization of International Institutions
The UN is not the only international body that is anti-Israel and, let us not kid ourselves, antisemitic. The UN’s kangaroo court, the International Criminal Court, issues arrest warrants for Israel’s leaders, but not for the leaders of regimes such as China or Iran.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International publish one-sided reports built entirely on unverifiable or Hamas-fed data. When Jews are in the dock, the burden of proof becomes incredibly low.
Ceasefire now! So Hamas can regroup.
No nation in history has been asked to absorb a pogrom, watch its babies be burned alive, and then implement a ceasefire three days later. After 9/11, America went to war for two decades. After October 7th, Israel was told to stop after 72 hours (more or less). Western lawmakers who say they oppose terrorism demand that Israel let Hamas live to fight another day. That is abject surrender and moral cowardice.
Only one kind of refugee matters.
Millions of refugees were resettled after World War Two relatively smoothly, while 750,000 Palestinian refugees got their own agency: the terror-infested United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The Palestinians alone inherit refugee status for four generations in a logical, legal, and moral absurdity. The world has solved every other refugee crisis, except this one.
The reason for this is that stateless Palestinians are a useful weapon to wield against Israel. It keeps an 80-year-old grievance alive and allows Israel’s enemies to blame Israel for existing.
Peace is exclusively Israel’s responsibility.
It is axiomatic that it takes at least two parties to fight a war, and that therefore all sides bear some responsibility for bringing peace. Yet, when the world demands a ceasefire and does not get one, Israel gets the blame. It is almost as if the Hamas psychopaths are not holding hostages and did not start this war.
Excusing terrorism against Israel.
It is impossible to fathom, but even Hamas beheading babies, raping women, and burning families alive is not enough to get more than a few mealy-mouthed statements about the “cycle of violence” out of the so-called “pro-Palestinian” mob. Some even called it “resistance,” which speaks to their deep depravity.
No one said the Bataclan massacre was “contextual,” or that 9/11 was “complex.” These dismissals are reserved only for when Israelis are murdered in cold blood, when the world starts talking gibberish about “root causes.”
The Media Propagandists
The international media quotes Hamas data in 97 percent of coverage and Israeli data in just three percent of stories, according to The Henry Jackson Society think tank. As far as the media is concerned, Israel is guilty until proven innocent — and when that proof of innocence comes, the news media have moved on to reporting and legitimizing the next lie.
I am a career journalist and have held every job in a newsroom from copy boy to editor-in-chief, so I can say with confidence that anyone who believes most of the reporting on the Israel-Hamas war is a fool.
Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS)
China interning millions of Muslims and Iran hanging gays do not spark a social movement to boycott everything from their goods to their academics and to divest from any investments. Yet, if Israel builds houses in Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank), suddenly every “progressive” in the Sociology Department starts demanding sanctions against Israel. Palestinians blowing things up is fine; Israel building things is not.
The BDS movement has nothing to do with justice; it is just an expression of the world’s pathological obsession with the Jewish state. There are no movements to boycott India over disputed Kashmir. It is a privilege reserved for Jews.
Religious and Ethical Double Standards
Israel is condemned for being an “ethnostate,” while no one demands Saudi Arabia stop being a Muslim state or India stop being a Hindu-majority one. Israel is accused of “apartheid” for having laws that preserve its Jewish character, while 22 Arab countries exist as ethnically and religiously defined states, many of which criminalize conversion to any other religion.
Settlement versus Occupation
Jewish settlements in the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria loom in antisemites’ minds like something terrible, despite them merely being villages. There is no outrage about Turkish settlers in Northern Cyprus, Moroccan settlers in Western Sahara, or Chinese settlers in Tibet. Only Jewish homes are the problem.
Censorship and Campus Hysteria
Criticizing China’s internment of Uyghurs or Iran’s public executions can get you in trouble with the Left. However, criticizing Hamas or defending Israel is grounds for doxxing, harassment, and cancellation at major universities. Every ideology is allowed expression, except Zionism, which is treated as hate speech.
Israel, the Jew Among Nations, is judged not by the standards of war, or law, or morality, but by the standard of exception. Its self-defense is suspect. Its existence is conditional. Its victories are crimes. Its pain is downplayed. Its enemies are victims. It is antisemitism with a human-rights face to hide its true face, which is more like the face in Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”
Remove the double standards and the fog clears. Israel is a nation like any other, with the same rights to defend itself, define itself, and exist in peace.
Another hypocrisy: Jews who emigrated to mandate Palestine during the 1920s-30s are called "colonizers," while Muslims who emigrated there during the same period are called "immigrants."
The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, Israel, has His eyes on His people Israel, the nation of Israel shall endure and come out in victory in that day the Lord of lords the King of kings will destroy all of Isarel's enemies Israel's enemies are God's enemies