8 excuses for the world’s Israel obsession, and why they’re all nonsense

The Western world, including Europe, is obviously obsessed with Israel. It’s become more obvious with the recent debacle surrounding the Eurovision. It’s strange that such a tiny people, like the Jews, and such a small country, like Israel, should get so much focus. Why is that? Why have you heard about the Jews more than you’ve heard of the Zhuang people? There are 16 million Jews and 19 million Zhuangs in the world. Why is the world so involved in a territorial dispute in Israel, a tiny country the size of New Jersey, but no one cared about the civil war in Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009, a country three times Israel’s size?

My theory is that there is a spiritual dimension to it, and that antisemitism is at the root of it all. But maybe I’m wrong? In this article, I’m going to examine secular attempts to explain the over-focus on Israel without anti-Semitic bias and see if they make sense.

I believe that at the root, all types of antisemitism, including antizionism, are a deep, demonic hatred of God. Satan knows that any people that blesses Israel will be blessed. He doesn’t want you, or anyone, to be blessed. He wants the entire world, including the West, to be in chaos and turmoil. That’s why anyone with some portion of Satanic influence will hate Israel.

After the Holocaust, antisemitism quickly became “not politically correct,” and anyone with anti-Semitic views had to go into hiding. I believe this situation was temporary and lasted for one lifetime. Now, when we are one full lifetime away from the Holocaust, people are back to their anti-Semitic “default.” It’s still politically incorrect, but I think that will change within a decade or two.

Am I wrong? Is Israel singled out for other reasons, and not because of antisemitism? Let’s examine the claims to the contrary.

Claim 1: Israel committed evil things in Gaza

This one is easy to refute. It’s not true, but even if it were, it wouldn’t hold up. If that were the only reason people disliked Israel, then we would see similar mass protests against Yemen, Sudan, or Nigeria as well. There has to be something more.

Claim 2: Israel is a European colonizer that doesn’t belong in the Middle East

This one is also blatantly false and easy to refute. But even if it were true, why don’t we see similar protests against the existence of Australia or Canada? Oh, because they’ve been there for generations? The Israeli Hebrew-speaking society has existed for over a century. Tel-Aviv was founded in 1909, long before Australia or Canada had meaningful political independence from Britain, so that’s not really a functioning argument either.

Claim 3: Israel is an illegal occupier according to international law.

Again, not correct, since international law only speaks of occupied areas, not reclaimed ancestral homeland. But again, even if this was some sort of a valid claim against Israel – the same thing happens in many other countries, that are not protested against with the same vigor, so this claim falls flat as well. I’m not sure exactly what the people who say this expect Israel to do exactly. Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza from Jordan and Egypt, neither of whom wants to take them back. People with this claim seem to think that Israel should just magically evict half a million people from their homes overnight. Any government that tried to do so would be voted out the next day. Even if you believe the international-law argument, Israel’s situation is unique: it captured these territories in a defensive war from countries that no longer want them. There is no parallel case where the world demands mass eviction of 500,000 people without offering a viable alternative.

Claim 4: We just really, really care about the Palestinian people specifically; that’s why we care less about Sudan and Somalia and more about Israel.

If that were true, your protests would focus on the regimes that have killed most Palestinians – Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan – and not on a country in which 2 million of them are fully integrated citizens with representation in the parliament. And you would protest against UNWRA who keeps them in perpetual refugee bondage, and Hamas, which drags them into a war they can’t win.

Claim 5: We dislike Israel just as we dislike Russia because wars are bad.

There’s a difference here, in that Russia was the aggressor just like Hamas, and Ukraine is defending Western values like democracy, pluralism, and freedom of expression, just like Israel. So if anything, Israel is more like Ukraine. But even if it were true, this again doesn’t hold up. We would see the same angry protests against every country at war, not just Israel and Russia. Where are the protests against Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey, Yemen, China, Nigeria, and Venezuela?

Claim 6: Israel is an unsolved issue left from World War Two and the decolonization process, and we Westerners feel guilty for being part of causing it.

This is understandable, especially regarding the UK. But it also falls flat. If this were true, and you honestly didn’t believe Israel should exist as a Jewish homeland, you would come up with an actual alternative. You would make your own country a haven for Jews where antisemitism is taken seriously and dealt with severely. It would be a place where Jews could fly Star-of-David flags on cars and on balconies, as we can in Israel. We don’t see that happening anywhere right now – on the contrary, the blatant anti-Semitic attacks triggered by October 7th have been allowed to run rampant. Imagine if anti-gay crimes had increased as a result of the shooting in Orlando in 2016, and huge anti-gay demonstrations had taken place as a direct result of it. Would that be protected as freedom of expression?

Claim 7: You Israelis are like us Westerners, and we expect more from you

Oh, so you claim it’s not about antisemitism; it’s about racism against Arabs. You think the Palestinians are stupid brown people who don’t know any better, and you expect us “European” Jews to be “enlightened” and better than them, because those poor people can’t help being fanatic and stupid? I’m sorry, but who exactly is the one having a colonialist mindset here? We Israelis are natives; we are home; we are not colonialists; and we will defend our country against anyone and anything that tries to attack it, and we don’t care if they are Palestinians, Egyptians, Russians, or Brits. If you see that situation through a colonialist-racism filter, that’s on you.

Claim 8: We are just so easily fooled by the Palestinian propaganda; it’s not our fault

I did believe this for the longest time. I honestly thought that European media were not necessarily anti-Semitic. They were just stupid and easily fooled. But then the war in Ukraine happened, and Russia used all the same propaganda tricks as the Palestinians do – and the West didn’t fall for it. They actually saw through Putin’s lies easily and knew exactly how to refute them and defend Western values. I was stunned. I had always thought that the media easily swallows that kind of propaganda. But apparently they only do that when they can blame the Jews – not when the perpetrator is Putin.

Conclusion: There is no secular explanation for the hyper-focus on Israel. None that make sense anyway. I am forced to draw the conclusion that the only reason they hate Israel so much is either pure antisemitism or being fooled by anti-Semites. If the same behaviors do not trigger the same outrage elsewhere, then the outrage is not about the behaviors — it’s about the Jews.