Israelis think the world is dumb. Are they right?
As Israel fights for its survival, much of the world seems to be fighting for its own moral confusion.
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Spend enough time in Israel, and you’ll hear a particular brand of national frustration — part sarcasm, part survival instinct.
It usually sounds something like: “The world has lost its mind.” Or, if you're in a more cynical crowd: “The world is dumb.”
It’s not just street talk; it’s a pervasive undercurrent, a reaction to decades of diplomatic gymnastics, security double standards, and a global media narrative that seems determined to invert victim and aggressor when it comes to the Jewish state.
But let’s pause: Is this just Israeli paranoia wrapped in chutzpah? Or is there a case (dare I say, a strong one) that much of the world actually is behaving, well, dumbly?
Exhibit A: The ‘Context’ Olympics
When Hamas slaughtered, raped, and burned its way through Israeli homes on October 7th, many international voices didn’t respond with moral clarity; they responded with caveats.
“We condemn violence,” they said, “but we must understand the context.”
What followed was an interpretive dance of false equivalencies, moral gymnastics, and Twitter threads longer than the Torah itself, all designed to explain why the brutal massacre of civilians was somehow “complicated.”
To Israelis, this wasn’t just offensive; it was insane. Context is important, yes, but it does not absolve terrorism. You don’t hear similar nuance when discussing 9/11, or the Bataclan massacre, or the Manchester bombing.
Only when Jews are murdered does the global intelligentsia reach for its pipe, sigh, and say: “It’s complicated.”
Is it any wonder Israelis think the world has lost the plot?
Exhibit B: The United Nations (or, How to Lose Credibility in 194 Steps)
Consider this: The UN has passed more resolutions condemning Israel than any other country on Earth. More than Syria. More than North Korea. More than Iran. More than Russia, even on a good day.
Israel (a democracy with gay pride parades, Arab Supreme Court justices, and a higher startup rate than Silicon Valley) has been declared a bigger threat to world peace than regimes that literally execute dissidents in soccer stadiums.
To Israelis, watching the UN operate is like watching a Monty Python sketch in real time — only it’s not funny. It’s infuriating. The gap between reality and rhetoric is so wide, they wonder if the whole system is run by people who failed basic geography, history, and ethics.
Exhibit C: Campus Activism as Kabuki Theater
The explosion of “anti-Israel” activism on Western campuses is another case study.
Students at elite institutions (supposedly future leaders of the free world, no less) are now marching under banners that praise intifada, call for “globalizing” it, and sometimes even cheer on Hamas “resistance.” Many seem to have all the conviction in the world, but none of the facts.
Ask them about the Hamas Charter — blank stares. Ask them if they know how many times Israel offered peace — crickets. Ask them if they know that Arab Israelis vote, serve in parliament, and have full civil rights — zilch.
But ask them to chant “From the River to the Sea!” and the whole quad lights up like like Queen’s Live Aid performance at Wembley Stadium in 1985. It’s performance without substance, rebellion without reading comprehension.
From the Israeli perspective, this is not a good-faith protest; it’s a TikTok-age tantrum dressed up in radical chic.
Exhibit D: The Media (Or, if it bleeds, it’s Israel’s fault.)
Then there’s the global media, which seems to operate under a different editorial standard for Israel.
A hospital in Gaza was bombed? Run the headline: “Israel Attacks Hospital.” No need to confirm who did it. Only later, when the damage is done and the street protests have already erupted, do we find out that it was actually a misfired rocket from a Palestinian terror group.
A correction? Buried. A retraction? Optional. An apology? Never.
Now, imagine you’re an Israeli watching this unfold, knowing full well that your country (imperfect as it is) is trying to fight a war against an enemy that embeds itself under hospitals, in schools, and in mosques. You build bomb shelters. They build rocket launchers in kindergartens. You try to evacuate civilians before airstrikes. They try to keep them in place to maximize the body count for propaganda.
And yet, somehow, you are the villain?
At a certain point, you stop wondering why Israelis think the world is dumb, and you start wondering why more people don’t agree with them.
Exhibit E: Boycott us, then buy our innovation.
There’s also the small matter of hypocrisy — the kind that makes Israelis want to bang their heads against the world’s WiFi router.
Because, while activists chant “boycott Israel,” post angry Instagram infographics, and call for divestment from Israeli companies, they’re often doing so on devices powered by Israeli technology.
The irony? It’s coded into the protest itself. Literally.
That Zoom call about Israeli “apartheid”? Might be running on an Intel chip designed in Haifa. That slick social justice post? It might owe its speed to a cybersecurity algorithm developed by Israeli engineers. Even Waze, the navigation app guiding “anti-Zionist” protesters to their next rally, was invented in Israel.
Of course, Israelis notice this. The same countries and institutions that benefit from Israeli agricultural technology, water desalination, medical research, and emergency response software are often the first to condemn it in diplomatic forums. It’s the international equivalent of borrowing your neighbor’s tools while suing them for existing.
To many Israelis, this behavior doesn’t just seem dumb; it seems performative, incoherent, and fundamentally unserious. If you’re going to wage economic war, at least have the intellectual honesty to unplug.
Exhibit F: The world taunts Israelis, then secretly wants to be them.
It’s hard to talk about Israel’s place in the world without mentioning its most mythologized institutions: the Israel Defense Forces and the Mossad (among other Israeli national security establishments).
To much of the global elite, the IDF is framed as a symbol of oppression: armed, aggressive, and “disproportionate.” But behind closed doors, military and intelligence agencies around the world are studying its tactics, mimicking its counterterrorism protocols, and trying to figure out how this tiny country manages to defend itself on multiple fronts, under daily threat, while habitually embarrassing its enemies with the most audacious maneuvers.
The Mossad? It’s treated like a shadowy villain in bad Netflix thrillers until, of course, it carries out an operation so surgically brilliant (like spiriting Iran’s nuclear archive out of Tehran, or exploding Hezbollah’s pagers and downing the Iranian president’s helicopter, or finding Nazi war criminals in South America decades before it was cool) that intelligence professionals across the globe can’t help but applaud. Sometimes quietly. Sometimes with envy.
Israelis are very aware of the dissonance: Their soldiers are caricatured in the media as brutes, while their enemies (some of whom literally strap explosives to children) are cast as “freedom fighters.” And yet the same critics who call the IDF “occupiers” would sell a kidney to get their kids into an Israeli Krav Maga class.
To Israelis, this isn’t just dumb; it’s theater. A world that relies on Israeli intelligence, studies its security doctrine, and depends on its tech to foil terrorist plots, while simultaneously wagging its finger and signing condemnations?
Welcome to moral schizophrenia, international edition.
But also: The world is not entirely dumb.
Herein lies a twist in the story.
For all the cynicism, Israelis have also seen something extraordinary over the past year: the emergence of a broader, louder, and more passionate group of allies, both Jewish and non-Jewish, who have stood up, spoken out, and shown up for Israel in ways that many Israelis didn’t fully expect.
From Christian Zionists organizing rallies to Indian influencers defending Israel on social media, from African-American pastors flying to the Knesset to Jewish students risking their safety to wear Stars of David on campus — something is shifting.
This isn’t just fringe support. It’s growing, global, and often driven by people who simply refuse to play dumb about terrorism, moral equivalency, and the right of a democracy to defend itself.
Many Israelis, long used to feeling isolated or vilified in international arenas, are now discovering unexpected pockets of solidarity. Some are reconnecting with Diaspora Jews they assumed had checked out. Others are hearing from strangers in countries they’ve never visited. In many ways, October 7th clarified not just who hates Israel, but also who truly sees it.
It’s a humbling reminder that, while global institutions may continue to disappoint, the global people are more complex — and sometimes more courageous — than the headlines suggest.
And, let’s be honest: Israelis don’t actually think the world is stupid in a literal sense. What they think is worse: They think the world is unserious. That it is drowning in postmodern moral relativism, obsessed with optics over substance, afraid to name evil when it wears the right scarf or uses the right hashtags.
Israelis have had to grow up fast. Surrounded by enemies, scarred by trauma, and anchored in memory, they’ve had little choice but to learn how to distinguish survival from symbolism. The vast majority of them know the cost of self-delusion. They don’t have the luxury of pretending that peace slogans can stop bullets.
So, is the world dumb?
Maybe not dumb, precisely. But when it comes to understanding Israel’s reality (or even acknowledging Jewish history with any consistency), the world is far too comfortable playing the fool.
And Israelis? They’re just tired of having to explain the obvious.
Bad things happen when good men do nothing, or in this case, bad things happen to Jews when liberal Jews stab the rest in the back,
The world isn't dumb. It's a toxic combination of evil and insane.