Israel Derangement Syndrome

The West's Absurd Moral Suicide

In the wake of Glastonbury’s Nuremberg-style chanting to kill Jews this weekend (yes, the IDF is made up mostly of Jews) it is worth reminding ourselves once again the ways “progressives” are willing to twist themselves into giant pretzels (yes, that’s a German pun) to condemn Israel and justify anything that resembles resistance against the Jewish State.

As the writer Brendan O’Neill put it:

Let’s cut the crap: this is a call for the death of Jews. The IDF is the army of the Jewish nation. Its purpose is to defend the Jewish homeland from the gangs of antisemites that surround it. When you say “Death to the IDF”, you are saying “Death to the Jews”. You are calling for the destruction of the only force capable of protecting the Jewish nation from the genocidal obliteration its enemies dream of. England’s sons and daughters of privilege publicly rallied today for the mass murder of Jews. It was a woke Nuremberg rally, an orgy of fascistic dreaming dressed up as an anti-war protest. A dark and shameful day.

Recently, the Western world's relationship with Israel reads like a dark satire complete with moral contortions, intellectual gymnastics, and ethical acrobatics so absurd they would be laughable if they weren't profoundly dangerous. Perhaps most astonishing is the eagerness of purportedly enlightened, progressive societies to abandon everything, and I mean everything, they claim to value simply because their hatred for Israel overrides their better judgment.

LGBTQ+ rights

LGBTQ+ rights activists who march tirelessly for equality and denounce even minor slights as grave injustices to their cause somehow become blind to executions, imprisonments, and systemic persecution of LGBTQ+ individuals across the Middle East. In February 2009, when then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was for some preposterous reason invited to give a talk at Al-Quds Columbia University, he said, "In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who has told you we have that." A lie coupled with I imagine wishful thinking on the former-president’s part? The same people who last weekend were holding signs in solidarity with the Ayatollah are willing to sweep comments like this under the Persian rug.

Israel, paradoxically one of the most gay-friendly nations globally, and certainly the most in the Middle East, is vilified (#pinkwashing), while regimes that literally execute gay people earn a pass because confronting them would apparently weaken anti-Israel narratives.

No one needs to know that the Speaker of the Knesset is a proud gay man, that Israel recognizes same-sex marriage and that same-sex couples may adopt, or that Tel Aviv hosts one of the world’s largest gay pride parades, right?

Women’s rights

Or let’s take women's rights, a cornerstone issue for Western liberals. They proudly wave their feminist flags, denouncing oppression everywhere unless, of course, that oppression involves Palestinians or Hamas. Suddenly, honour killings, domestic violence, and gender apartheid lose their… je ne sais quoi. Feminists who rail passionately against "mansplaining" and workplace inequality become remarkably mute when it comes to Hamas' oppressive gender politics. Why this sudden amnesia? Well that’s because advocating for women only matters when it doesn't inadvertently humanize Israel. Israel and the Zionist experiment have long been proponents of women’s rights, having women participate in Zionist Congresses and voting in them for decades before, for example, the UK even allowed a woman to vote in a general election.

Let’s also never forget the #MeToo movement and the push to believe every woman when it comes to allegations of sexual assault, until Israeli women are mass-raped on dusty roads and fields surrounding Gaza. Then, its #MeTooUnlessYoureAJew. Lookin’ at you @UNWomen.

Freedoms

Freedom of speech and press freedom, sacred cows of Western democracy, become remarkably flexible standards when Palestinians or their leaders violate them. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority suppress dissent, jail journalists, and censor relentlessly. Yet, Western media and human rights defenders either pretend these outrages don't exist or explain them away. Journalistic integrity and free speech advocacy have a giant loophole marked "Israel," where suppression magically transforms into resistance.

Antisemitism

Antisemitism, a topic Western activists love to spotlight to demonstrate their moral virtue, strangely evaporates the moment criticism of Israel morphs into blatant Jew-hatred. Chants like "from the river to the sea," openly advocating Israel's annihilation, receive nuanced justifications or outright denial from the very activists who would explode in outrage if similarly genocidal slogans targeted any other group.

At the Walk for Israel in Toronto in May 2025, a section was set aside by the police for anti-Israel protestors to shout at the Jews walking down Toronto’s streets. Could you imagine the outrage if a section of bigots was delineated alongside the Pride Parade? Or if White supremacists were given a safe space to shout at anyone celebrating Black History Month?

This.

Would.

Never.

Happen.

In the new and twisted logic however, antisemitism is suddenly nuanced and acceptable, so long as it's protected in the bubble-wrap of anti-Zionism. Or as the former presidents of MIT, Harvard, and U Penn would say, it depends on the “context.”

Terrorism

Even terrorism, usually unequivocally condemned by the West (usually the target of said terrorism), suddenly becomes a gray area when directed at Israeli civilians. Rockets fired at kindergartens, stabbings at bus stops, suicide bombings: each incident somehow warrants "context" and "root cause analysis" when Israelis are the victims. Terror against Israel triggers thoughtful chin-stroking rather than straightforward condemnation, as if Israelis somehow deserve the terror inflicted upon them.

In November 2023, one month after the 10/7 massacres when children were murdered, women were raped, and elderly Jews were kidnapped and beaten, hundreds if not thousands of young American posted videos on TikTok expressing sympathy with…you guessed it…the woefully misunderstood Osama Bin Laden, sharing his “Letter to Americans” from 2002. Nowadays, they sooner sympathize with terror masterminds than with the murder of innocent Jews.

Environmentalism

Environmentalists who routinely express horror over minor ecological infractions conveniently overlook deliberate arson and environmental sabotage from Gaza into Israel. The ecological destruction is ignored because acknowledging it might humanize Israeli suffering, thereby diluting the preferred victim-oppressor narrative. Oh Greta, go back to your roots!

Children

Child welfare, universally championed elsewhere, is shrugged off when Palestinian children are weaponized by Hamas, a terror entity well known to use child soldiers to do their fighting and their dying. Instead of condemning this tactic, activists point fingers at Israel for collateral damage caused by terrorists hiding behind children. Rumours begin online of a fake starvation leading to the imminent death of 14,000 children, leading to widespread condemnation of Israel, whereas the actual subjugation of children by Hamas, and weaponizing them in the conflict, is swept under the carpet. Child welfare matters everywhere except when condemning it might accidentally support Israel.

Yahya Sinwar at his grandson’s upsherin

Education

Even education is a hypocritical front in today’s war on Israel. While Western societies lecture endlessly about the importance of unbiased education promoting tolerance, Palestinian textbooks replete with antisemitism and historical revisionism earn a pass. Hatred and incitement in Palestinian classrooms are excused or justified because confronting them might align activists, even momentarily, with Israel's concerns.

One apple plus one pear equals two dead Jews. A+.

Democracy

But perhaps the most glaring hypocrisy concerns democracy itself, which is, you know, the West's purported crown jewel. Israel remains the Middle East’s lone thriving democracy, yet Western critics shamelessly cozy up to oppressive regimes, conveniently ignoring or downplaying their lack of democracy, civil liberties, and basic human rights. Tyrants and autocrats are acceptable allies if their anti-Israel credentials are sufficiently robust.

French President Macron with PA President Mahmoud Abbas

Of course, the West often applauds itself for confronting authoritarianism, except when the tyrants in question reliably vote against Israel at the United Nations or fund anti-Israel activism on Western campuses. Then, suddenly, democratic standards become simple inconveniences, swept under the rug to maintain alliances with regimes **coughQatarcough** whose core values are diametrically opposed to Western ideals. Countries with egregious human rights records can effortlessly secure lucrative trade deals, diplomatic praise, and even military support, provided they maintain, or despite their maintaining, a strong enough anti-Israel stance.

Worse yet, the intellectual dishonesty is astonishingly blatant. Academics and pundits who fervently champion democracy and civil rights elsewhere lose their voices entirely when facing regimes that systematically oppress women, persecute minorities, or silence journalists provided these regimes vocally condemn Israel. In this morally inverted logic, the enemy of Israel automatically becomes the West’s friend, no matter how fundamentally incompatible their values and practices are with Western democracy.

Hypocrisy

This theater of obvious hypocrisy reveals an uncomfortable truth: antipathy toward Israel has evolved into a sacred value of liberalism, distorting moral clarity and rational judgment. Western societies discard their deepest principles if clinging to them interferes with their entrenched negative views of Israel. This is nothing new, but it bears repeating again and again, as the examples become increasingly obvious.

This cynical, selective morality achieves nothing meaningful. It only emboldens oppressive regimes, excuses terrorism, and perpetuates endless conflict. Ironically, it harms the very people these activists claim to support. But hey, at least it allows them to sleep soundly, confident they've upheld their twisted version of justice. Let’s see how they twist themselves in a knot the next time there’s, God forbid, another Bataclan, Pulse Nightclub, 7/7, or 9/11.

Aftermath of the Bataclan massacre in 2015 (Photo: Reuters)

Real peace, genuine justice, and true human dignity demand an end to this embarrassing double standard. Only by confronting their own absurd biases can Western societies reclaim any shred of moral authority. Until then, this cynical farce continues, leaving observers to wonder if Western values are nothing more than empty rhetoric, preying on the ignorant, conveniently discarded whenever Israel enters the equation.

Don’t be afraid to call out the double-standard when you see it.

Western civilization is worth fighting for. The Jews were happy to lead the charge in taking out Iran’s nuclear program for the benefit of global security, but we can’t fight all your battle’s for you.