JERUSALEM — The October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel marked the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, killing roughly 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, prompting an immediate military response.
These were crimes of brutality, directed at civilians. Those facts are not in dispute.
Israel has, in the months since, faced repeated global accusations, claims of genocide, occupation, oppression, and unlawful warfare. These allegations, amplified by international organizations and major media outlets, stand in stark contrast to the way other nations are treated when defending themselves.
The accusations go further than policy critique; they recycle antisemitic blood libels that have haunted Jewish communities for generations. “Genocide,” “starvation,” “oppression,” these charges against Israel ignore basic facts.
Israel’s army has demonstrated unprecedented caution, warning civilians, delivering humanitarian aid, and using precision tactics to target threats. No army on earth, certainly none facing similar terror attacks, would be expected to do more.
Yet the obsessive focus on Israel’s war against Hamas betrays a double standard. If another country were attacked with the ferocity Israel suffered, few would demand paralyzing restraint or the handcuffing of its defense.
Few would expect the assailed nation to risk its soldiers to minimize losses among enemy civilians or to continue supporting populations under hostile rule.
The reality is simple and troubling: Israel is condemned out of disproportionate animus because it is the world’s only Jewish state.
The relentless media and diplomatic scrutiny, the diplomatic recalls, and the protests all point to an ancient hatred repackaged for our time. The conversation itself is a new form of antisemitism.
For every day hostages remain in Hamas’s grip and Israeli soldiers and civilians are killed, Israel’s response must be measured by the same standards applied around the world. Its right to defend itself is as valid as that of any other nation, and calls for Israel to “erase” the threat in Gaza echo the legitimate expectations for sovereign self-defense.
To my fellow Jews and Zionists, I say this. We must call out lies and blood libels when we see them. We must demand that journalists and policymakers refuse false equivalence. We must insist that international law be applied even handedly. And we must press our own leaders to pursue the release of hostages.
I will not be silent about the double standard.
This is not a call for vengeance masquerading as policy. It is a call for clarity. Call out Hamas as the perpetrator. Call out those who whitewash the October 7 massacre. Call out the use of the word genocide.
The truth is harsh but clear. Moral clarity demands an honest reckoning: the Gaza war is not unique in its intensity, but it is unique in its global attention, because Jews are defending themselves.
This article is based on verified information from the Washington Institute, BBC, PBS, Pew Research, Hillel Fuld’s public statements, and international news reports.
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