Israel is not exceptional. The way people talk about it is.

The only unusual thing about the Jewish state is how it’s viewed, discussed, and judged.

photo: Levi Meir Clancy/Unsplash

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This is a guest essay by Nachum Kaplan, a longtime journalist and commentator who writes the newsletter, “Moral Clarity.”

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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Israel occupies an unusual place in global discourse. It is scrutinized, criticized, and debated with a forensic intensity rarely applied to any country of comparable size, power, or strategic importance.

The scrutiny extends beyond policy. Israel’s very existence is treated as a subject for debate in a way that would be unthinkable for any other modern state. This is striking because, when placed in historical context, Israel looks remarkably familiar.

The creation of the modern State of Israel is often presented as uniquely complicated, unusually controversial, and morally troubling. Yet the formation of Israel closely resembles the birth of many 20th-century states.

The period between the end of the First World War and the aftermath of the second one witnessed the collapse of Europe’s great empires and the emergence of new countries across multiple continents. These transitions were rarely orderly. Borders were improvised. Populations were mixed. Violence was common. Political arrangements were fragile.

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire alone produced Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel, alongside new Balkan states in Europe. These countries did not emerge from carefully negotiated national consensus; they emerged from imperial retreat and diplomatic improvisation. Their borders reflected administrative decisions and strategic considerations more than coherent national identities. Sectarian divisions, ethnic tensions, and competing claims were embedded into their foundations.

This was not unusual, but it was how some of the modern world was formed.

Elsewhere, the collapse of European empires produced similar outcomes. When Britain withdrew from India in 1947, partition followed rapidly. Borders were drawn under intense time pressure. The consequences were catastrophic: Millions were displaced, violence erupted on a vast scale, and the dispute over Kashmir emerged almost immediately and continues to shape regional politics decades later. India and Pakistan’s legitimacy is not questioned because of the violence surrounding their creation. Their turbulent birth is treated as part of a messy historical moment.

The State of Israel emerged within that same moment. Its creation involved conflict, displacement, and contested borders, features shared by many states born from imperial collapse. Yet Israel’s origins are often treated as uniquely disqualifying.

This selective interpretation becomes even harder to sustain when examining other 20th-century examples. Algeria gained independence after a brutal war with France. Bangladesh emerged through violent separation from Pakistan, itself created through partition from India. The breakup of Yugoslavia produced new states amid ethnic conflict, displacement, and war. Eritrea separated from Ethiopia after decades of fighting.

These countries are now treated as normal members of the international community. Their violent births did not permanently mark them as anomalies. Meanwhile, Israel’s history is interpreted differently.

The same pattern appears in discussions of borders. The modern world is filled with unresolved territorial disputes. India and Pakistan continue to contest Kashmir. China and India face recurring tensions along the Himalayas. Cyprus remains divided between Greece and Turkey. Western Sahara remains contested. The Korean Peninsula remains technically at war. Six countries contest sovereignty in the South China Sea. These disputes are treated as persistent challenges, part of the imperfect reality of international politics.

Israel’s territorial disputes, however, are often framed as something fundamentally abnormal. The existence of unresolved conflict becomes, in the Jewish state’s case, a sign of unique illegitimacy rather than a common feature of the modern state system.

Population displacement follows a similar pattern. The 20th century witnessed enormous population movements. The partition of India displaced millions. Post-war Europe saw large-scale expulsions and transfers. The Greco-Turkish population exchange uprooted entire communities. The Cyprus conflict produced displacement on both sides. These events are remembered as tragic yet historically familiar, and they are not used to question the legitimacy of the states involved.

Israel’s creation, which also involved displacement on both sides, is interpreted differently. Once again, familiar patterns are framed as unique.

Even national identity, often cited as controversial in Israel’s case, is widely embedded in modern states. Countries frequently define themselves in relation to a national people, culture, or language. The principle of national self-determination shaped much of 20th-century politics. Nation-states built around shared identity were not unusual; they were the defining political form of the era. Jewish self-determination, however, is treated as uniquely problematic.

Security concerns provide another example. Countries facing persistent threats develop strong defense institutions. South Korea maintains a large military because of North Korea. Taiwan emphasizes defense because of China. Finland historically built robust security structures because it sits next to Russia. Israel’s emphasis on security reflects similar dynamics, yet the Jewish state’s defensive posture is frequently interpreted as uniquely aggressive.

As each comparison is drawn, the narrative of Israeli exceptionalism becomes harder to sustain. The features often described as unique to Israel appear repeatedly across modern history. Israel begins to resemble not an anomaly, yet a typical state born in turbulent circumstances. This raises an obvious question: If Israel is not unusual, why the extraordinary attention?

Israel is a small country. Its economy, while innovative, is not globally dominant. Its conflicts are regional. Yet Israelis occupy a disproportionate place in global discourse. Conflicts elsewhere often produce more casualties yet receive less attention. Territorial disputes in other places persist for decades without generating comparable outrage. Strategic considerations alone cannot explain this fixation.

The explanation lies partly in psychology. For centuries, Jews existed without sovereignty. They lived as minorities, dependent on the goodwill of host societies. Jewish vulnerability became normalized. It shaped expectations, attitudes, and assumptions. Israel disrupted that psychological framework. Jews returned to sovereignty. They acquired territory, political institutions, and military power. They became actors rather than subjects. Jewish vulnerability gave way, at least partially, to Jewish agency.

This shift created cognitive dissonance. For centuries, Jews were understood as vulnerable, stateless, and dependent. The emergence of a Jewish state disrupted that narrative. A sovereign Jewish people did not fit comfortably into inherited assumptions. The reaction to Israel often reflects this discomfort.

Israel is judged not merely as a state, but as a violation of expectations. Jewish power unsettles narratives built around Jewish vulnerability. Jewish self-defense disrupts narratives built around Jewish passivity. This helps explain the intensity of scrutiny.

Israel’s actions are examined with unusual rigor. Mistakes are interpreted as defining features. Defensive measures are reframed as aggression. Familiar dilemmas of statehood are treated as unique moral failings. This does not mean Israel is beyond criticism. Israel makes mistakes, like every country. It faces moral dilemmas familiar to many states, yet the pattern of exceptional scrutiny reveals something deeper.

Ordinary features of statehood become extraordinary faults when Israel is involved. Familiar historical patterns become unique transgressions. The same behavior judged as understandable elsewhere becomes intolerable in Israel’s case. This is exceptionalism; Israel is treated as though it exists outside the normal rules of history, even though its experience closely mirrors that of many modern states.

Even immigration, often cited as controversial in Israel’s case, follows familiar patterns. Many Jews came to Israel from abroad, either through choice or expulsion from Middle Eastern and North African states. There is a word for people who come to a country from abroad: immigrants.

Americans, Canadians, and Australians should recognize the concept. Immigrants built those countries. They continue to shape them. Once again, Israel looks familiar.

This familiarity complicates the narrative of Israeli exceptionalism. If Israel resembles many other states, the extraordinary attention directed at it requires another explanation. The most obvious one is also the most uncomfortable: Israel is the world’s only Jewish state. That fact shapes global discourse more than many are willing to admit.

Obsessive focus on Israel cannot be explained solely by policy disagreements or strategic considerations. It reflects something deeper: the persistence of antisemitism in modern form. The hostility emerges across ideological boundaries. From the Far-Left, the Far-Right, Islamist movements, and elements of Christian and post-colonial ideologies. The language changes; the fixation remains. Israel becomes the vessel onto which older anxieties and resentments are projected.

Psychologically, Israel functions as a screen. The Jewish state absorbs disproportionate attention, criticism, and moral outrage because it activates deeply embedded narratives. This is not unusual in psychological terms. Projection, displacement, and moral overcompensation are familiar mechanisms. Israel triggers them all.

Israel’s story, when stripped of imagined exceptionalism, is not unusual. It is the story of a small state navigating difficult circumstances in a turbulent region that has been the heart of empires for millennia. What is unusual is the insistence that Israel must be unusual.

Once Israel is placed within the broader pattern of modern state formation, the anomaly disappears. Israel looks like many other countries born from imperial collapse, managing imperfect borders, confronting security threats, and navigating identity in contested environments. The extraordinary element lies not in Israel’s existence; it lies in the refusal to treat Israel as ordinary.

That refusal says far more about the world than it does about Israel. And once that becomes clear, the disproportionate criticism begins to look less like principled concern and more like something older, more persistent, and far uglier: the ancient, adaptable, and remarkably resilient phenomenon of Jew-hatred.

Israel is not exceptional. The insistence that it must be is.

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