Criticizing Israel

Those who live with the memory of violence in their bones run the risk of letting that memory define everything. We see that danger reflected today in Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, which bears the contours of a politics of destruction.

Born in the shadow of profound trauma, Israel arose after centuries of Jewish persecution, culminating in the horrors of the Holocaust. This trauma continues to shape the national identity to this day, but it has never been collectively processed. Instead, it has become embedded in Israel’s state ideology, in which threat is experienced as a permanent condition.

Under the banner of security, Israel enforces policies that structurally exclude and dehumanize Palestinians—in painful contradiction to the human rights set as a universal moral standard in the wake of the Holocaust. By placing itself above legitimate critique, Israel assumes an exceptional status that unintentionally reinforces the antisemitic image of the Jew as a perpetual outsider. Criticism of Israeli policy, however, is not an antisemitic attack. It is the painful and necessary act of exposing a deep, festering wound.

Meanwhile, the reality on the ground for Palestinians is one of daily dispossession, displacement, and denial of basic rights—a condition not born of ancient hatred, but of modern policy.

THE IDEOLOGY OF TRAUMA

The reflex to embrace an imposed notion of "otherness" has a troubling history, as noted by Hannah Arendt, the German-American political thinker of Jewish descent. In her analysis, she argued that the idea of Jewish “otherness” was initially imposed from the outside, and ultimately internalized from within.

Arendt viewed this internalization as dangerous. Both Zionism and antisemitism shared the belief that Jews held an exceptional status. While Zionism framed this difference positively—as a calling or form of exceptionalism—antisemitism used it as justification for exclusion and dehumanization. In both narratives, the Jew was cast as a fundamental outsider. And because Zionism partially adopted this framing, it inadvertently confirmed the worldview of the antisemite.

This mirroring still haunts Israeli policy today. The sense of perpetual exile has shaped a politics of constant defense, where threat is assumed and criticism is internalized as existential. This is what the Israeli thinker Yehuda Elkana described as an "internalized Holocaust logic"—a deeply rooted fear of annihilation that paralyzes the moral conscience. What remains is a survival reflex: to strike hard, driven by the fear of being destroyed again.

From this defensive self-image, Israel legitimizes violence while claiming an exceptional position that evades accountability. In doing so, it places itself outside ethical boundaries—and once again, into the position of the outsider.

WHAT TRUE SOLIDARITY REQUIRES

Israel’s current policies are not the result of some deliberate conspiracy, but rather the tragic outcome of a history that was never fully processed. To truly protect Israel from external threats, one must also be willing to confront the moral decay unfolding from within. Precisely out of reverence for Jewish history, such vigilance is a moral imperative.

If this erosion persists, Israel risks once again being cast out—not because of who Jews are, but because of what is being done in their name. In this way, history repeats itself, not as external persecution, but as the tragic echo of an unhealed wound.

That is why true solidarity with Israel requires more than blind allegiance. It deserves more than mere military survival. It deserves, in addition to physical safety, spiritual freedom: freedom from the ghosts of the past, from the fears that drive policy, and from the reflexes that erode moral boundaries.

Real solidarity means holding Israel accountable when it betrays the very principles on which its existence was founded. One cannot claim to be truly free while surviving at the expense of another. And those who, out of loyalty, stay silent about this violence only feed the very trauma they claim to want to heal.

*This article is being reproduced with permission. The original was published on the Initiatives of Change intranet.