Israeli Exceptionalism
What standard should Israel meet?
Zionists love to define antisemitism as “holding Israel to a higher standard.” When they say this, they mean Israel should be judged by the 19th century standards that the United Nations was created to end. Zionists want to take land from its inhabitants and drive them onto reservations without criticism. The “higher standard” they complain about is the standard used by everyone who criticized the US for Jim Crow, South Africa for apartheid, and the US and Russia for rushing to war. The “higher standard” that Zionists complain about is the standard of all of us who support the United Nations: compliance with international law.
The complaint about a higher standard is cover for the real question: Why should Israel be held to a lower standard than any other country?
Israel’s tragedy is that it was born as an expansionist ethnostate three years after the world fought a war to defeat three countries that believed in ethnostates and expansionism. Had Israel existed at the end of the 19th century, when Zionists first made plans to expel Palestinians and build a Jewish state, Israel would seem no different than any other country that dreamed of empire. But Israel was born in a new age, so it is held to the standards of that new age.
