The Double Standard Comes Home

By Abe Greenwald

Wednesday, September 16, 2026

 

We often talk about the double standard that Israel’s devoted critics apply to the Jewish state. They seek to indict the country for a whole range of phenomena that they ignore everywhere else in the world. From receiving American aid, to defending its people, right on down to simply existing—if Israel does it, it’s called into question.

 

One of the ways in which the world has changed since October 7 is that Jews around the globe are now increasingly held to this double standard as well.

 

It’s long been the case that an anti-Semite can describe Israel as uniquely bloodthirsty or as America’s hidden master and claim to be voicing only the “mildest criticism” of the Jewish state. Today, you can also speak of Zionists as baby-killers and genocidaires and get a mostly receptive hearing. You can indulge in anti-Semitic caricatures of all sorts, and it won’t make many waves outside of the Jewish community.

 

When other minorities are blatantly offended, media broadly condemns the offense. When Jews are offended, the same media opts for “Some Jews consider this offensive.” If a public figure dons blackface, he’s through. If he makes himself up with a prosthetic hook nose, beard, and black hat (as the singer Macklemore has done on stage), he’s just having some innocent fun.

 

We’ve seen that when Israel is attacked, there’s a great rush to blame Israel and defend its attackers. The murderers, rapists, mutilators, and kidnappers of Hamas are, according to Hasan Piker, “a thousand times better than Israel.” Should American Jews be attacked? That too, Piker said more recently, would be the victims’ fault for “putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel.”

 

Then there’s the Jewish response. When Israel takes the fight to its enemies, it’s accused of every war crime in the book, including genocide. When Jews of the Diaspora fight back against Jew-haters, it’s called hysteria, oversensitivity, special pleading, and cited as evidence of a Jewish conspiracy to police public opinion (as in the case of Macklemore being cut loose from the current tour he was on).

 

All of this is a kind of historical boomerang. Not that long ago, the late Abe Foxman and others would describe Israel as “the Jew among the nations.” The idea being that other countries treat Israel the way gentile populations treated the Jews. This was, and is, true: With few exceptions, world leaders and international bodies subject the Jewish state to uniquely excessive scrutiny, unjustified criticism, and blatant double standards. But while the modern State of Israel became the chief target for anti-Semites around the world, the Jews of the West (most clearly in the U.S.) were treated much better than the Jewish state.

 

That is, until October 7, 2023. Since then, you might say, the Jew has become the Israel among the people.

 

Israel is the Jews, and the Jews are Israel. This was always the case, no matter what things may have looked like in a given historical era. Now that it’s become clear to all, Diaspora Jews would do well to act like the Israel among the people. Be kind, brilliant, proud, and brave. Fight back with everything you have, even knowing that you’ll be condemned for saving your own life.