Hard questions

Honest answers to the questions you will actually be asked

For each question: what is really being asked, what to acknowledge, what to say, and where legitimate criticism of Israel ends. These are starting points in plain language, not scripts to recite.

An old olive tree on a terraced hillside overlooking the Judean hills

A tool to keep in your pocket

The 3D test

Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet refusenik, proposed a simple way to tell legitimate criticism of Israel from antisemitism dressed up as criticism. Criticism crosses the line when it does one of three things.

Demonization

Israel's actions are blown out of all proportion; Israelis are compared to Nazis; the Jewish state is portrayed as uniquely evil.

Double standards

Israel is singled out for condemnation while far graver conduct by other states is ignored, and held to standards demanded of no other democracy.

Delegitimization

Israel's fundamental right to exist — alone among all the nations of the world — is denied.

Source: Natan Sharansky, “3D Test of Anti-Semitism,” Jewish Political Studies Review (2004). Summaries at the World Jewish Congress and The Jerusalem Post.

“Isn't criticizing Israel antisemitic?”

What they're really askingAm I allowed to disagree with you? Are you going to call me a bigot if I do?

Acknowledge

No. Criticizing Israeli policy is not antisemitic. Israelis do it loudly every day; it fills their newspapers and their streets. Jews around the world do it too. Anyone who tells you otherwise is making your conversation harder.

Say

“Of course you can criticize Israel. I do. The line isn't criticism. It's when the criticism demonizes the one Jewish state, holds it to standards no one else faces, or says it shouldn't exist at all. Those three things aren't about policy anymore.”

Where the line is

Comparing Israel to the Nazis.
Holding Jews anywhere responsible for what Israel's government does.
Condemning Israel for conduct that draws silence when others do far worse.
Denying only the Jewish people the right to a state.

Keep it relational. Say the line clearly once. Do not use “antisemitic” as a conversation-ender. Used sparingly and precisely, the word means something. Used as a reflex, it stops meaning anything.

“Why do American Jews care so much about Israel?”

What they're really askingIs this dual loyalty? Why does a country five thousand miles away feel personal to you?

Acknowledge

It is a fair question from someone who has never had to think about where they would go if things turned.

Say

“Because for most of our history there was nowhere that had to take us in. Israel is the answer to a question Jews asked for two thousand years. It's also where our prayers face, where my friends and family live, and where Jews are murdered for being Jews and then blamed for it. Caring about it isn't instead of caring about America. For most of us, it's the same impulse: wanting a place where people like us are safe and free.”

Go deeper

The connection is older than politics: the Hebrew Bible, the liturgy, the calendar are all oriented toward Jerusalem.
The St. Louis, turned away from American shores in 1939, taught American Jews that goodwill is not a policy. A Jewish state is.
Jews arguing for Jewish safety inside a democracy is not a scandal. It is citizenship.

Essay: Jewish Power Is Not a Scandal

“Isn't what happened in Gaza a genocide?”

What they're really askingDo you care about Palestinians? Will you admit something terrible happened?

Acknowledge first

Palestinian civilians have suffered terribly. Say that plainly and mean it. If you move to the legal definition before you have acknowledged the suffering, you will not be heard.

Say

“I believe Israel did not commit genocide in Gaza — and I don't say that because a prime minister says so. Genocide means intent to destroy a people. Israel went to war after Hamas massacred and kidnapped its citizens and promised to do it again, against an enemy that fights from inside civilian neighborhoods. Warning civilians, allowing aid, and investigating your own soldiers are not what genocide looks like. Terrible things happened in this war. I am not asking you to look away from any of them. I'm asking you not to confuse a declaration of solidarity with a demonstrated conclusion.”

Hold both

Palestinian lives matter before anyone chooses a slogan. Their protection should command support from people who disagree about the war.
Making compassion conditional on accepting a particular accusation turns suffering into a loyalty test. You can decline the test and keep the compassion.
If you don't know a figure, say so. Credibility beats certainty.

Essay: Compassion Does Not Require Joining This Chorus

“What about the occupation and the settlements?”

What they're really askingAre you going to defend everything? Is there anything Israel does that you'll criticize?

Acknowledge

This is where many supporters of Israel lose credibility by defending the indefensible. Don't. Settler violence against Palestinian civilians is wrong. Unauthorized outposts on private Palestinian land are wrong. You can say so and remain entirely pro-Israel; many Israelis say so.

Say

“I don't defend everything. I think violent settlers should be prosecuted, and I think the government should be pressed on it. I also think the West Bank is disputed territory with a complicated history, that Israel has offered to leave most of it more than once, and that boycotts and separation have never built coexistence anywhere. Hold Israel accountable, yes. Punish the whole country into isolation, no — that just strengthens the people on both sides who want the conflict to last.”

Go deeper

A genuinely pro-peace policy acts with precision: sanctions on individuals credibly implicated in violence, pressure to dismantle unauthorized outposts, and equally firm demands that the Palestinian Authority confront terrorism, incitement and corruption, and that Hamas disarm.
Separation is not justice. Boycotts punish the Israelis most likely to build bridges.

Essay: Separation Is Not Justice

“Why can't there just be peace?”

What they're really askingWhy does this never end? Is anybody even trying?

Acknowledge

It is the most human question on this page, and the most honest answer is that signatures are the easy part.

Say

“Diplomats can sign a ceasefire. Only people can keep a peace. Agreements fail when the men with the guns aren't bound by them, and they fail when two peoples have organized their identities around grief that no treaty can touch. Israel has made peace with Egypt and Jordan and the Abraham Accords countries — peace works when the other side wants it to. With Hamas, the stated goal isn't a border. It's Israel's end.”

Go deeper

Grief and grievance are not the same. Peace preparation means helping communities hold their loss without turning it into a permanent weapon.
Real repair needs three things that cannot be faked: honest acknowledgment of what happened, real accountability, and a shared commitment to a future worth choosing over a past worth avenging.

Essay: The Emotional Work Peace Agreements Cannot Do · Diplomats Can Sign a Ceasefire

“Do you support everything Netanyahu does?”

What they're really askingAre you a partisan or a thinking person? Can I trust anything else you say?

Acknowledge

You can love Israel and oppose its government. Roughly half of Israelis do at any given moment. Conflating the state with any one leader is a mistake Israel's critics make; don't make it yourself from the other direction.

Say

“No. Israel is a democracy with a loud opposition, and I have my own opinions about its leaders — ask me sometime. But I don't let my view of a prime minister decide my view of a country, any more than you'd want someone judging America by whoever is in the White House.”

Go deeper

Jewish life has never depended on unanimity. The danger begins when we abandon shared rules for managing disagreement.
Accountability for October 7 — an honest reckoning that names the harm, accepts responsibility proportionate to power and changes behavior — is something many Israelis are demanding. You can stand with them.

Essay: Let the Shared Home Survive the Argument · The Apology Israel Still Needs

“Why should America keep supporting Israel?”

What they're really askingWhat's in it for us? Why is my money going there?

Acknowledge

Americans are entitled to ask what any alliance does for America. The old answer — shared values, a Holocaust-shadowed moral debt — still matters, but it was written for an America that is no longer the whole audience.

Say

“Because it's one of the few alliances that pays America back: intelligence, missile defense, technology, a stable democratic partner in a region that produces most of the world's instability. And because of what it says about us. Walking away from the one Jewish state while it's under attack would tell every ally and every enemy what American promises are worth. Allies can disagree — America has every right to push Israel when its interests are affected — but disagreement between friends is not the same as abandonment.”

Go deeper

A model ally still needs a moral story. Strategic cooperation is real; it is not, by itself, why people keep caring.
Make the case to skeptics, not just to the already convinced: here is what you have seen, here is what we owe, here is why the alliance still matters, here is the future we are prepared to build.

Essay: A Model Ally Still Needs a Moral Story · How Israel Can Make Its Case to a Skeptical America

“Isn't Zionism colonialism?”

What they're really askingIs Israel's existence itself the crime? Are you defending something illegitimate?

Acknowledge

The word has been redefined so often that you should start by asking what they mean by it. Most people have never heard the plain definition.

Say

“Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. That's it. Colonists have a mother country they come from and serve; Jews have no other homeland, and most Israelis descend from refugees — from Europe, and from the Arab and Muslim world that expelled nearly a million Jews after 1948. Jews are indigenous to this land; our language, calendar and prayers come from it. You can argue about borders, policies and governments. Arguing that one people alone has no right to a state is the thing Sharansky called delegitimization — and it's the one argument I won't accept as criticism.”

Go deeper

Israel's Declaration of Independence promised complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex. Hold Israel to it. Don't pretend it never said it.
Two peoples have deep claims to the same land. Recognizing one does not require erasing the other. That is why most Israelis have, at different times, accepted partition.

Guide: “I can't be friends with a Zionist” →

Go deeper

The essays behind these answers

Every answer on this page draws on longer essays published at The Times of Israel. Read them in full, share them, and argue with them.

Seth's Times of Israel blog Essays by theme