What drives the manic zeal which characterises anti-Zionists’ stance on Israel? It is hard to think of any other topic which drives such deranged reactions.
The most extreme manifestations of this trend are clear. Most obviously those who scream “baby killers” or “genocide enabler” at anyone with an Israeli or Jewish connection. It is impossible to argue with such people.
But the reaction goes much further than that. Many otherwise level-headed people will attack Israel with a compulsive rage which is rarely apparent in relation to any other country. Such people may have strong feelings about, say, Myanmar or Russia but they will rarely exhibit the same righteous anger.
Those seeking a quantitative measure of the obsession with Israel would do well to look at a remarkable study of global media coverage. Jeremy Musighi, an independent writer, showed that Israel, with only 10 million people, is the subject of more news coverage per head than any other country. In 2024, for example, one out of every 50 news articles published by outlets outside Israel was mainly about Israel. In absolute terms that is more than any other country apart from America, with 34 times its population.
A similar pattern was apparent even in quiet years when Israel was not involved in any large-scale conflict. In 2019 Israel was ranked seventh in the world in absolute terms but that was still more than Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Japan, Mexico and Spain. In terms of coverage per head it was ranked first as it was in 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024 and 2025.
Over the past decade there was about one news story for every seven Israelis. That compares with one for every 340 Brazilians and one for every 1,550 Indians.
Admittedly not every news story was critical. No doubt some were neutral and others positive. Nevertheless the disparity in coverage is extraordinary.
The number of United Nations General Assembly resolutions criticising Israel gives a clearer idea of the skewed nature of the discussion. According to UN Watch, a pro-Israel advocacy group, from “2015 through 2024, the UN General Assembly has adopted 173 resolutions against Israel and 80 against other countries”. That is more than twice as many as the other 192 member states put together. The organisation includes such hyper-authoritarian regimes as Afghanistan, Belarus, China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Sudan, and Syria.
The obsession with condemning Israel follows from what I have previously argued about anti-Zionism. It is not just hatred of Israel – there are many possible targets of hate – but the tendency to portray Israel as embodying the evils of modernity and western civilisation. Israel is seen by anti-Zionists as emblematic of the sins of the world. Or, as one anti-Israel protestor put it in an interview with GB News last weekend: “it is the biggest cancer of the world”.
For those who genuinely see Israel as malignant the only solution is to purge its presence from the world. In their view they are not engaged in anti-Semitism but, on the contrary, pursuing a righteous cause. They are exhibiting, as one writer in the Tablet put it, the joy of hating Jews. Or, as this website has called it, they are propagating the radicalism of fools.
This premise drives their insatiable demand to eliminate all traces of Israeli influence. That includes supporting Islamist groups which have openly declared their aim of destroying Israel. It also includes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement with its drive to eradicate all signs of an Israeli cultural and economic presence in the West.
The only Jews who are tolerated are those prepared to prostrate themselves before the cause of anti-Zionism. Any who deviate from that path – such as Peter Beinart when he gave a talk at Tel Aviv University last November – face immediate condemnation by BDS. Although one of the most prominent and vehement Jewish anti-Zionists he violated a taboo by talking at an Israeli institution. Under pressure he acknowledged that he had made a “serious mistake”.
The unhinged anti-Zionist mania against Israel is no accident. It follows from an ideological outlook that regards the Jewish state as embodying the evils of western civilisation.
PHOTO: GB News
Further reading
REMINDER. The annual Battle of Ideas festival in London is this coming weekend. In addition to the two panels on which I am speaking – on Islamism and on Islamo-leftism – There will be sessions on the sanctioning Israel and on whether anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism.