The world watches Israel with an intensity that borders on obsession in ways that simply don’t apply to other nations engaged in similar conflicts. This scrutiny often feels unfair, even malicious – and sometimes it is. But what if this burden could be transformed into an opportunity?
Israel faces a level of attention that defies rational explanation. The current Gaza conflict, for example, receives far more attention than all the other 32 wars currently occurring on planet Earth combined. This includes wars with far higher casualty rates. This is even though the civilian-to-combatant ratio in Gaza represents what may be the most restrained urban warfare in modern history.
For years, two-thirds of all United Nations resolutions have focused on one tiny country: Israel. If an alien came down from another planet and wanted to understand what it is that humans think is the most important issue facing the planet, they would likely note that there is one single topic that rises above all others both in the UN and in media coverage worldwide, and that is the Jewish people in the Land of Israel who are not behaving well enough.
We are not just dealing with antisemitism, though that certainly exists, but something more complex. At some level, even our harshest critics expect more from us. They hold us to standards they would never dream of applying to themselves or their allies.
The questions of why that is, or whether or not we should hold up a mirror to them, have proven to be irrelevant, as they simply return to the same actions over and over again. This predates the Gaza conflict and dates back to Israel’s very inception. Their obsession defies logic.
This impossible standard, however unfair, carries within it an unintended compliment: the world’s subconscious expectation that we should be different, that we should transcend the moral compromises that others accept as inevitable.
This is not all negative. Israel, as the Jewish collective, is undoubtedly the most hated nation on earth. But it is also the most loved, admired, and adored. I travel the world as a visible Jew and have been stopped many times by people wanting to give me blessings – and wanting me to bless them. Not many other nations on Earth are thought of in the same way. It is not that the world hates us; it is that the world is obsessed with us.
How do we respond to this reality constructively?
FIRST, WE must abandon the defeatist attitude that “they hate us anyway, so why bother explaining ourselves?” This approach has led to criminally negligent failures in public diplomacy. We lack the rapid response capabilities that any modern political campaign would consider essential.
When false claims spread, we often remain silent while the lie circles the globe, only issuing corrections weeks later, after the damage is done. Mark Twain is often credited with the quote that “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still getting its shoes on.”
Secondly, we need to invest heavily in building alliances and shaping narratives before crises hit. Qatar transformed itself from an irrelevant backwater Arabian country to a major regional player in just two decades through strategic communication and relationship building. If they can do it, certainly we can marshal our considerable intellectual and creative resources to do the same.
We need to proactively find and engage with the billions of people who love us, not just keep fighting those who hate us. Through equitable relationship building with partners who face similar difficulties in their regions, we can create a new narrative.
The third, and to my mind by far the most important, is to abandon the expectation that we be treated like every other nation. We should give up trying to be an ordinary people. If the world scrutinizes us in an extraordinary way, it is because of a deep, perhaps subconscious expectation that we are meant to be an extraordinary people.
THE FOUNDING texts of Christianity and Islam are about the Jews. The founding texts of hard-left politics, from the founders of communism, were mostly written by Jews. The Jew lies at the center of their very identity, which simultaneously produces unparalleled admiration and unmatched resentment, jealousy, and fear.
Jews returning to their land was and is a cataclysmic event. The world watched with bated breath as the ancient people of Israel walked out of the grave of Auschwitz into the redemption of the Promised Land. They waited to see what we would build. Subconsciously, they awaited the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham: ‘Through you will be blessed all the families of the Earth.’ And then we went and tried to be like everyone else.
For the first seventy years of statehood, we had little choice but to survive. Despite levels of hostility and adversity that might have broken many fledgling states, Israel experienced miracles, both Divine intervention and human determination. Its achievements are beyond admirable by comparison to other nations facing far lesser challenges.
But now, we feel inner national schisms developing around our core identity. Simultaneously, the world is pushing us as hard as possible to become a nation through which all humanity becomes blessed.
While we should not stop calling out the unfair double standards, we can and should embrace the message the world is screaming to us. It is time to make the mission statement of the nation of Israel: “Through you shall be blessed all nations of the world.”
THE WORLD is moving at hyper-speed into phases like none we have ever seen. The world in 30 years is likely to be as different from our world as the Neolithic farmers are from us today. As AI-powered humanoid robots, driverless cars, and brain chips move from science fiction to reality, the possibilities of a radically different world are opening up in ways unimaginable.
The Jewish people have always lived for the future, and we need to continue to do so. The fractious tribes of the modern State of Israel can and should come together to ask one question: how can each of us contribute to the new mission of the State of Israel, the ancient mission of the nation of Israel: “Through you will be blessed all the nations of the earth”?
Our centers of innovation create new possibilities. Our centers of Torah study focus on the call of God that spawned the theologies, philosophies, and revolutions that dominate the world to this day. By bringing these two poles together, we can forge new pathways to bring humanity into a new age of miraculous harmony, spirituality, healing, and connection. We can help shape a world that once lived only in the prophecies and dreams of our ancestors.
The biblical call to be “a light unto the nations” is a practical blueprint for turning our burden into our strength. If the world won’t treat us like everyone else, then let’s prove we’re not like everyone else. Let’s use the impossible standards we face as motivation to achieve the impossible.
The writer serves as the educational visionary of Aish, a global Jewish educational institution, and resides in Jerusalem. He is an expert on Jewish and Muslim history.