Have You Considered Talking To Israelis?

By Seth Mandel

Tuesday, July 14, 2026

 

While conducting research for his book on the ways American policies and culture complicate parenting, my friend Tim Carney traveled to Israel. He wanted to see what the Western country with an above-replacement-level birthrate was doing that the rest of the West wasn’t.

 

If he were lazy, he could have written something shallow about ultra-Orthodox Jews with large families and called it a day. But Tim suspected that wasn’t the full story, so instead of relying on caricature, he talked to as many Israelis as he could. In Tel Aviv, he approached one secular dad and began asking about Israelis having more children than people in Europe or the U.S.:

 

“‘I know! It’s horrible. It’s not here in Tel Aviv,’ Ezra defended himself, pointing eastward toward Jerusalem while kicking a soccer ball back and forth with his four-year-old son. ‘It’s the very religious in Jerusalem. The women there all have eight or nine kids,’ he said, pointing at my notebook, insisting I write this down, while his wife walked up and handed him their newborn.”

 

While his wife walked up and handed him their newborn. In other words, the Israeli version of the secular anti-natalist had two kids. Another secular Tel Avivian he spoke to had three. It wasn’t just ultra-Orthodox Jews who were out of step with the declining family formation of the West; it was Israelis of all stripes.

 

Just imagine how much less interesting his work would have been had he instead phoned it in and tossed readers a couple stats about Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem, plus a quote from someone who hates Orthodox Jews.

 

In other words, imagine if his book chapter had been like most Western journalism and political activism regarding Israel.

 

The dynamic that made Tim’s research possible is also the dynamic that makes much reporting on Israel, and the kind of stunt pulled by Ro Khanna last week, so useless. Israel is a democracy; it is diverse in every way it is possible for a society to be diverse; and it is a country full of very un-shy people.

 

Khanna’s attempt to frame Israelis as violent and wild Jews has been the subject of a great deal of criticism and ridicule, all of it deserved. The criticism is of the spectacularly dangerous idiocy of a member of Congress trying to spark a confrontation between Jews and Arabs in a conflict-ridden area. The ridicule is because he failed, then his team released a video they insisted vindicated their claims but that in fact disproved everything Khanna asserted.

 

But also worth criticizing is the reason anti-Israel activists seem incapable of portraying an accurate picture of Israelis: the movement against “normalization.” Progressive dogma holds that Israelis should mostly not even be engaged with. The BDS movement is built around this idea (and other, more murderous concepts). And it is the current position of much activism in the arts and entertainment world and among NGOs.

 

It’s why the novelist Dinaw Mengestu resigned as president of what once was known as a free-speech organization, PEN America. The organization posted a story about how Israelis have been increasingly blacklisted in the publishing industry, and the writer spoke to Israelis who’d been affected. Mengestu resigned in protest of this engagement with the silenced Israelis.

 

Normalization is humanization. Many people are upset by the humanization of Jews, especially those from the Jewish state. But this dehumanization has a strategic purpose: It is very easy to find out what Israelis really think, and so if you want to dehumanize them you must ban contact with them outside of those whom you know will express a pre-approved line of thought.

 

If you publish an Israeli writer, it’ll be much more difficult to convince the wider public of your flattened stereotype of them.

 

And if you want to portray Israel as a Mad Max colony of frontier fanaticism, your only chance is to go to Judea and Samaria unannounced, wave off coordination and security help from the government, and try to goad a couple of settlers into a fight. Even then, you will probably fail—as Khanna failed.

 

The premise of this type of propaganda is that there is a story Israelis won’t or can’t tell you, something the nefarious regime in Jerusalem is hiding from you, a deep dark truth only rich power-seeking scam artists from California can tell you.

 

And you might believe this, right up until the moment you talk to actual Israelis.

 

Because they’ll tell you their problems with their government, or the settlers, or the army, or any other institutions. You can even read polls, of which there are many, that will tell you that nearly half the country thinks security forces are too lenient with settlers who attack Palestinians and that those settlers should be dealt with more harshly. Or that the percentage of Israeli adults who think the settlements detract from Israel’s security is nearly as high the percentage who think the settlements increase Israel’s security.

 

If you want to conduct a thoughtful, informative discussion about Israel’s policies in the disputed territories, you should talk to Israelis. They are having a fascinating debate about all these subjects.

 

Israel is a vibrant democracy. That fact bothers anti-Zionists in the West, because they need Israelis to be one-dimensional ogres for their own personal gain.

 

Israelis are people. That scrambles the prejudices of longshot presidential candidates who live thousands of miles away, as well as the propaganda of anti-normalization bubble-dwellers who support such candidates. They want to suppress knowledge and information. Thankfully, they often fail.