Most Israelis disagree with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right coalition and, in poll after poll since October 7, back a cease-fire–hostage deal. Yet when criticism of Israel comes from abroad, it often sounds less like sober analysis and more like reflexive hostility—sometimes laced with antisemitism. The latest fighting in southern Syria is a textbook case.
Last month, President Ahmed al-Sharaa—the former jihadist who toppled Bashar Assad in 2024—sent armored units into the largely Druze province of Sweida. Witnesses described indiscriminate shelling of civilian neighborhoods and reports of executions at roadblocks.
Israel, home to some 150,000 Druze citizens and reservists, warned Damascus to stop the assault. When the killing continued, the Israel Air Force struck Syrian military positions linked to the attacks in an effort to deter further bloodshed.
That context vanished the moment the first missile hit. International broadcasts led with “Israel bombs Syria” and breathless commentary about a “regional escalation,” as if al-Sharaa’s militias had not been massacring their own civilians. One cable network even described Syria’s new regime as “post-conflict” and “seeking stability,” omitting the president’s al-Qaeda pedigree.
This pattern is depressingly familiar. When Iran fired precision-guided missiles at Israeli hospitals and kindergartens, some outlets framed Tehran as the victim and Israel as the aggressor.
'Proportionate response'
The same distortion colors coverage of Hamas, which still holds about 50 Israelis hostage a year, and nine months after the terror group butchered 1,200 people in the western Negev. “Proportionate response” is a phrase rarely heard when Islamist factions target civilians; it becomes an obsession only once the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) act to stop them.
To be clear: Israelis argue ferociously at home about strategy, proportionality and the government’s conduct of the war. That debate is healthy. But there is a difference between legitimate criticism and the grotesque inversion that portrays jihadist dictatorships as misunderstood underdogs while painting the region’s lone liberal democracy as a perennial villain.
Israel is not perfect. Yet it remains the only Middle East state where women dress as they please, LGBTQ pride parades draw tens of thousands, Arab citizens receive university scholarships, and a free press excoriates its leaders daily. None of those freedoms exists in Gaza under Hamas, in Tehran under the ayatollahs, or in Damascus under al-Sharaa.
Imagine running a kindergarten in a neighborhood menaced by rockets, suicide bombers and neighbors sworn to your destruction. Most parents would fortify the walls, post guards and pray the world understood why.
Instead, Israelis often find themselves lectured by pundits half a continent away who equate terror with self-defense and demand that Jerusalem show “restraint” while its citizens scramble for shelters.
Criticize Netanyahu all you like; many Israelis do. But don’t pretend that Israel’s decision to shield the Druze of Sweida—or the children of Sderot—makes it the region’s bully. The real scandal is that global media giants keep mistaking the arsonist for the fire brigade—and then wonder why their credibility burns.
Bar Shem-Ur is an anchor and journalist for the investigative program In Real Time on Israel’s Channel 11.