Israel Is Definitely Held to a Different Standard – Just Not the Way It Thinks
From secret nukes to open war crimes, no state since WWII - and this includes the United States, Soviet Union, Russia, and China - has enjoyed the kind of impunity that the state of Israel has.
This piece was first published by Dutch-Palestinian analyst and writer Mouin Rabbani on his Substack. Zeteo is republishing it with his permission.
Israel and its flunkies consistently complain that Israel is held to a different standard than other states.
The assertion is factually correct, though not in the manner intended.
No state since the Second World War, and this includes the United States, Soviet Union, Russia, and China, has enjoyed both the impunity and freedom from criticism enjoyed by Israel.
It was hardly a taboo to condemn the US wars against Vietnam or Iraq, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, Russia’s wars in Chechnya or Ukraine, or China’s domestic policies. By contrast, the prominent politicians who dared to explicitly condemn Israel for its murderous 1982 invasion of Lebanon, for example, can be counted on the fingers of an amputated hand.
Israel likes to complain that the United Nations, which in 1947 adopted the critical decision to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, is an anti-Israeli organization and even one whose primary purpose is to promote an anti-Israel agenda.
Yet, with the exception of the veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council, no state in the world body’s history with a record even remotely similar to Israel’s has systematically escaped sanction and condemnation. The former Rhodesia, South Africa’s former white-minority regime, the former Yugoslavia, Sudan, Iran, North Korea, Yemen, and Myanmar, to name but a few, would like nothing better than to be in Israel’s exalted international position. Zero economic sanctions, zero arms embargoes, zero UN-mandated criminal tribunals, zero anything with practical consequences.
The same could be said for Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Iran has been subjected to decades of Western and UN sanctions on the pretext that these are required to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. Earlier this year, Washington supported and participated in an Israeli war against Iran, the claimed purpose of which was to destroy its capacity to weaponize its nuclear program. UN sanctions on Iran, lifted a decade ago, are at European urging almost certain to be re-imposed later this year.
Unlike Iran, Israel has refused to ratify the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has possessed a nuclear arsenal since the 1960s. Western governments systematically refuse to even acknowledge that this arsenal exists, let alone attach even a single consequence to Israel’s possession of hundreds of nuclear weapons and advanced delivery systems. Most recently, Germany knowingly provided Israel with nuclear-weapons-capable submarines and subsidized much of their cost. Ensuring a permanent Israeli nuclear monopoly in the Middle East while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge its existence is the West’s undeclared policy.
Russia and China have voted in favor of Chapter VII Security Council resolutions against not only Iran but also North Korea. And then there is, of course, Iraq, sanctioned to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dead long after it ceased to have any WMD. By contrast, Israel’s nuclear arsenal, now more than half a century old, has never even been discussed as a council item.
At the International Criminal Court (ICC), the 2023 indictment of Russian President Vladimir Putin and warrant for his arrest did not produce an international crisis. The Russian leader threw a fit, took it in his stride, avoided visiting certain countries, and that was the end of it.
The Court’s 2024 indictment of two Israeli leaders has, by contrast, produced an ongoing, concerted campaign to dismantle the court wholesale. Hungary has withdrawn from the ICC. Greece, Italy, and France have effectively repudiated the Rome Statute and renounced their treaty obligations by repeatedly permitting international fugitive Benjamin Netanyahu to traverse their airspace. Most recently, Little Marco for a Big Israel sanctioned the three leading Palestinian human rights organizations on the grounds that they were cooperating with the Court.
Any organization with the temerity to hold Israel to the same standards applied to others must be destroyed – by any means necessary.
I recently had dinner with an individual who has, for many years, been teaching at a British university. Almost immediately after the October 7, 2023, attacks, the university administration sent a communication to all staff warning them to be careful about how they expressed themselves about this issue. No similar communication had ever been received about any other issue, whether foreign or domestic. Not Iraq, not the climate protests, not government austerity policies, not even the major terrorist attacks Britain has experienced in recent years.
It seemed to me clear that the warning was meant to instill fear and stifle discussion about causes and consequences, just as the campaign against freedom of expression in US universities has far exceeded anything witnessed during the Vietnam or Iraq wars, wars in which the US was directly involved and lost thousands of lives.
What has changed during the Gaza Genocide is that the taboo on criticism and condemnation of Israel – the taboo on open discussion of the nature of the Israeli state and its policies – has been irrevocably shattered.
Individuals, public figures, and increasingly politicians as well, are no longer mortified by the spurious accusations that are inevitably flung their way if they dare to hold Israel to the same standards they have for their entire lives instinctively applied to other and similar regimes. Even the Washington branch office of Israel’s parliament, the US Senate, recently debated a partial arms embargo on Israel, a development inconceivable even three years ago.
Jewish critics of Israel have played a pivotal role in these developments. Their words and actions have made a mockery of the tropes that criticism of Israel is, for all intents and purposes, criticism directed at Jews for being Jewish, and invalidated the Defamation League’s constant refrain that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. In so doing, they have given many others, often previously unfamiliar with the Middle East, and instinctively and rightfully opposed to being associated with hatred and discrimination, the confidence to judge Israel as a political entity like any other.
Their numbers are also perceptibly increasing. In decades past, a Jewish anti-Zionist or public critic of Israel was often considered something of an anomaly, and their affiliation would be repeatedly noted as if they were a member of an endangered species miraculously sighted in Borneo. That is, for the most part, no longer the case. The schism between Israel and diaspora Jewish communities, or at least with significant sectors of the latter, is as real as it is visible. The same can be said for the growing rift between Jewish communities and the organizations that claim to represent them, but are in practice surrogates for the Israeli government.
From Israel’s perspective, being judged by the same standards applied to others after a lifetime of impunity may well feel like being singled out for special treatment. But the reality is, of course, precisely the opposite. The goose is finally being treated like the gander and is no longer the unacknowledged elephant in the room. Hence, the ongoing meltdown, and the systematic resort to formal measures to shut down not only protest but also debate, and punish those who insist on speaking their minds.
Mouin Rabbani is a Dutch-Palestinian researcher, analyst, and commentator specializing in Palestinian affairs, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the contemporary Middle East. He is a senior non-resident fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs Center and co-editor of Jadaliyya.
Subscribe to his Substack and follow him on X (@MouinRabbani) for more of his writing.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo
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Israel acts like a global empire. Everyone and anyone can be criticized, except for Israel. No matter what horrible atrocity it commits, if you only suggest they stop, you are accused of "anti-semitism" which is a very tired and phony excuse. What it in effect does is make people anti-semitic, but in a way that has nothing to do with racism or prejudice, but has been earned by Israel's arrogance and superiority complex.