How Israel can stand up to Western hypocrisy and bullying
The West's hatred of Israel is out of control. It is time for the Jewish state to push back hard. Here is how to do it.
Few things are as irksome as Western governments’ corrupt condemnations of Israel. Lately, it has been a case of another day, another outrageous comment from some mid-tier Western leader.
France has been stirring up talk of recognizing a Palestinian state at a forthcoming conference, Australia has been denying visas to Israeli speakers, while the UK, Canada, Australia, Norway, and New Zealand, have imposed sanctions on Far-Right Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
These sanctions are the work of perfect morons. They have handed Gvir and Smotrich a political gift. They are populist elected politicians whose popularity increases greatly when the West targets Israel like this.
Furthermore, the premise that two elected Israeli politicians - and readers will know I am not a fan of either, but that I agree with them on security matters - is what warrants international attention in a region of tyrants, despots, absolute monarchs, and Jihadist militia, is howling-at-the-moon crazy.
In any case, enough is enough. It is indecent that Israel, the Middle East’s only liberal democracy, is constantly condemned for defending itself against the Jihadist hordes it has for its neighbors.
Israel must not tolerate this any longer. It must show Western nations that treating the Jewish state maliciously carries a cost.
With the Middle East in unprecedented flux, this moment demands strength, clarity, and unapologetic sovereignty from Israel. It also demands some major changes. Israel must reconsider its dependencies, recalibrate its strategic alliances, and embrace firm national self-interest.
Here is a blueprint. It is audacious, but when it comes to everything from fist-fighting to beard color, fortune favors the bold.
ARMS EXPORTS AS DETERRENCE
A most delicious fact to emerge recently is that while European governments have spent the past 18 months sandbagging Israel over its war with Hamas, they have been quietly spending billions of dollars buying Israeli weaponry.
Israeli defense exports hit a record $14.7 billion in 2024 and 54 percent of deals were done with European countries, according to the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
While defense deals are often secretive, open source reporting shows that European buyers included Germany (Arrow 3 missile defense system), the UK (Hermes 900 drones) France (Spike anti-tank missiles), Italy (David’s Sling missile defense components), Poland (loitering munitions, aka suicide drones), the Czech Republic (SPYDER air defense system), Finland (counter-drone systems), Romania (drones), Greece (Unmanned surface vessels), Belgium (cybersecurity systems), Norway (IIAI’s Advanced Missile Approach Warning Systems for F-35 fighter jets), Estonia (loitering munitions and counter drone systems), Latvia (radar systems), and Sweden (armored vehicles).
It is quite a list. Countries such as the UK, France, and Norway, are among Israel’s fiercest critics. Yet, they know that Israeli’s missile, rocket, and drone defense systems are the world’s best, a fact they prove daily in combat.
Jerusalem wants to keep growing defense exports, but it could leverage these exports to encourage greater diplomatic restraint from critical nations.
Israel could suspend arms sales - as other countries do or threaten to do to Israel - or redirect those sales to rival or non-aligned nations. It could detail which countries buy its equipment, which many countries do on the sly, which would expose their hypocrisy and subject them to domestic political ire.
The risk might be that these countries would buy weapons elsewhere, but with Europe fretting that US President Donald Trump has abandoned NATO and that their children will grow up speaking Russian, they are likely still to want top-tier defense equipment built by people who know how to fight a war.
By controlling the flow of high-end defense technology, Israel could ensure that respect - not coercion, propaganda, and lies - is the foundation of diplomatic relationships.
WHO WANTS LOSERS FOR FRIENDS?
Israel needs to decide whether it is worth having diplomatic relations with hostile nations such as Ireland, Spain, and Norway. Diplomacy must be reciprocal; if there is no mutual respect, there need be no relations.
Historically, Israel has viewed other countries recognizing it as a mark of legitimacy and would, on those grounds, have relations with almost any willing nation.
Yet, Israel is a fledgling state no more. It is a regional superpower with a $500 billion high-tech economy.
It makes sense for Israel to desire diplomatic relations with its traditionally hostile neighbors, but would anything in the known universe change if Israel never appointed an ambassador to Dublin again? Israel closed its embassy in Ireland last year, though Ireland retains its one in Israel. No one noticed.
Norway also has nothing to offer Israel. It has a two-trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund, but it foolishly divested from Israel amid much self-aggrandizement, so Norway has now lost its sole point of leverage.
Well played, Oslo. That really showed those Jews.
EXIT THE UN AND OTHER BIASED BODIES
There are many things I do not understand, but few vex me as much as why Israel remains in the United Nations (UN).
Words are inadequate to capture the UN’s flaws. Still, let me have a go:
The UN is a malignant cesspool of racism, corruption, and hypocrisy - a grotesque parade of spineless bureaucrats, bloodstained terror supporters, and virtue-signaling cowards who spit on the principles it claims to defend and vomit empty resolutions. It is a moral abomination, a black hole of incompetence and cowardice that has prolonged more suffering than it has ever alleviated. It is a bloated, parasitic circus that deserves not reform, but a bulldozer and a funeral pyre. Burn it down. Salt the earth where it stood. The UN is not just broken; it is guilty.
Nope. I am not even close to capturing the UN’s worthlessness. I give up.
Contrary to widespread belief, nothing would happen if Israel quit the UN. Its jesters would jump up and down in a rage at Israel, which is what they do now; only Israel would not be there to listen to it. It brings to mind the old philosophical chestnut: if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?
The UN has long been biased against Israel, with bodies such as the Human Rights Council, fixated on the Jewish state to a point of clinical obsession. If Israel, for some misguided reason, did not wish to quit the UN wholesale, it could at least exit such UN bodies that routinely attack it, cease cooperating with them, and expel their personnel.
Simultaneously, Israel could initiate legal proceedings against the UN in international courts - a favorite trick that Israel’s foes use against it - for failing to protect Jews and Jewish rights, and its complicity in normalizing antisemitism.
A FIRM “NO RIFF RAFF” POLICY
Israel must deny entry and access to delegations, officials, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that visit Israel not as impartial observers, but as hostile agents set on undermining Israel’s legitimacy.
No country is obliged to entertain foreign interference.
There are many precedents. Earlier this year, Israel denied entry to two European Parliament members, France’s Rima Hassan and Ireland’s Lynn Boylan, for promoting boycotts against Israel. Israel also refused entry to British Members of Parliament Abtisam Mohamed and Yuan Yang, who Jerusalem accused of planning to document Israeli security forces and spread anti-Israel sentiment.
In 2019, Israel barred Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, two notorious Democratic antisemites from the US, because of their support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement.
Israel could use visa denials more aggressively as a retaliatory tool against countries such as Australia, which often denies Israeli speakers’ visas, while allowing terror-sympathizers and Islamist agitators into the country to preach hate against Jews.
Just last week Australia denied a visa to renowned Israeli technology columnist and Israel advocate Hillel Fuld. The idea that Fuld would whip up divisions in Australia is absurd. Only someone entirely unfamiliar with the man, his work, and his background, could conclude otherwise.
In 2024, Australia also denied entry to Ayelet Shaked, Israel’s former Interior and Justice Minister, who was to give a speaking tour. Her crime? She said all two million Palestinians in Gaza should be removed, which is the exact same position that US President Trump holds. Would the mouth-breathers running Australia deny Trump entry on the same grounds?
Australia, however, welcomes terrorist sympathizers, agitators, and antisemites. In 2024, American professor Khaled Beydoun was allowed to enter and used the occasion to declare October 7 a day of “considerable celebration”.
The country even allowed Francesca Albanese, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories and one of her generation’s leading Jew haters, to visit in 2024 on a trip that pro-Palestinian groups partly funded.
This tackling of foreign interference should extend beyond foreign politicians and include treating foreign-funded NGOs as de facto agents of foreign influence.
Israel must - and I am pleased to say, has started to - get some control over these pernicious organizations. Israel plans to impose an 80 percent tax on foreign NGOs, which would destroy their operating budgets.
Greater transparency should also be demanded from these groups. Those with hostile intentions and backers should be banned or deported. No country is obliged to subsidize or tolerate foreign-backed activism that undermines its legitimacy or security.
Preventing malicious Western ministers or human rights dilettantes from entering Israel would remind other nations that Israel, too, has control over who may enter its borders.
ISRAEL MUST GOVERN ITS OWN LAND
Israel must embrace reality and reevaluate the failed model of Palestinian partial autonomy. The PA has proven itself an unreliable partner - corrupt, weak, and increasingly irrelevant, even in Palestinian politics.
PA dictator Mahmoud Abbas has only just found it in him to condemn the October 7 pogrom against Israel. It took him almost two years to conclude that civilian mass murder, torture, and rape were wrong. Maybe he has had a moral awakening.
Israel should annex key areas of Judea and Samaria where it has demographic and strategic control, so effectively Area C, which Israel administers solely under the terms of the Oslo Accords and where the Jewish settlements are located.
Israel should end the apologetics and build more settlements on state land. None should be built on land that Palestinians own privately.
Settlements are essential to Israel’s security. Had Israel not withdrawn from Gaza and torn down its settlements there in 2005, Hamas would not have come to power and the October 7 attacks would not have happened.
Ending cooperation with the PA would also remove ambiguity and restore clarity: Israel governs its own land. This need not be overcomplicated conceptually. Peaceful Arabs who want to stay and prosper are welcome. Jihadists must be rooted out ruthlessly.
Israel must also reassert its full sovereignty over the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site. The current so-called status quo, which is absurdly complicated but boils down to Jews being restricted from praying there, is unjust.
No one would be arguing for such a status quo if the situation were reversed and Jews could worship there, but not Arabs. You can hear the cries of apartheid just thinking about it.
Israel should control the Temple Mount because it is in Israel. Worshippers of all faiths should be allowed to pray there because that is the right thing to do.
The idea that everyone having equal praying rights would spark Muslim outrage and riots is nonsense. Rebellious Jewish worshippers pray there illegally almost daily and nothing happens.
Gaza is far more complicated. The devastation is such that reconstruction will take decades and Gaza’s two million people will be living on foreign aid in tent cities for years.
However, security realities mean that, at a minimum, Israel must establish a buffer zone, maintain a strong security presence, and control any humanitarian corridors.
Other areas need to be developed, too.
Jerusalem has not done anywhere near enough to populate and develop the Golan Heights, which it annexed in 1981, having taken the territory from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War that Arab states started with genocidal goals.
Likewise, Israel must develop the Negev and Galilee into major population centers, complete with infrastructure, high-tech corridors, and military bases. This would expand Israel’s population centers away from the country’s center on which it remains overly dependent.
This would strengthen Israel, improve its negotiating position, and create irreversible facts on the ground.
The West may revel in hypocrisy, moral decay, and sermons, but Israel is in the Middle East, a tribal region where strength equals respect, and respect brings peace.
Israel will be stronger, more secure, and more prosperous if it asserts full sovereignty over its own land, stands up to foreign bullies, and stops participating in an international system that is rigged against it.
Western approval is not required.
“Respect between countries as the foundation of diplomacy NOT coercion propaganda and lies” - beautiful, Nachum. Maybe forge stronger alliances with countries like Argentina Hungary and India to mention but a few.
👏👏👏 All right, Nacham! You said it all here! Israel is constantly being shafted by the vast majority of western nations except the United States. It is indeed time for Israel to stand up for itself! Arms sales to every western country except the United States should be suspended until they change their tune diplomatically. They could by their weapons elsewhere but the best are in Israel and they know it. They’d quickly change their tune to singing a rousing chorus of Hatikvah. Also, Israel should cut diplomatic ties with Ireland, Spain and Norway and send their ambassadors home. There is no need for the Jewish state to have a relationship with nations that demonize it and refuse to give it a fair hearing.
Individuals and NGOs who just come to Israel to make trouble should be banned from entering the country. Israel should absolutely assert its full sovereignty over the Temple Mount. Israel should do another lightning raid like they did at Entebbe to take over the Temple from the Jordanians. It should then be opened up to prayer for all religions. King Abdullah claims he’d go to war if Israel took the Temple Mount and that would be a red line for him. But ultimately, he would be forced to back off as the Royal Jordanian Army simply can’t compete with the IDF. EVERYONE should be allowed to pray at the holy and sacred Temple Mount: Jews, Christians and Muslims! The religious apartheid that exists there must be brought to an end.
Israel should definitely build settlements in the Golan Heights, the Negev and the Galilee and develop them. Taking the burden off the country’s center would be a great help. In the Negev building settlements would also help to put an end to the Wild West time atmosphere out there, bring down crime and help the Israeli Bedouin population. I’m opposed to settlement expansion in the West Bank if it’s on Palestinian private land. But building on Israeli land I have no problem with.
If Israel should reassert its sovereignty over Gaza, here is what they should do. An Israeli Governor-General should be appointed to run the strip. It should be opened back up to Jewish settlements and any of those who were forced out in 2005 should be allowed to return if they wish. All Palestinians living in Gaza will be extended Israeli citizenship, the right to vote and representation in the Knesset. The strip will be deradicalized, demilitarized and de-Hamasified.