1 in 193: Can you explain this disproportionate focus?
Image Credit: DAL-E
This essay regards Israel obsession. That is when the Uyghurs, Syrian Civil War, cannibalism in Haiti, millions displaced in Afghanistan, genocide in Congo, Somalia, Sudan and Ukraine don’t get attention, yet every news channel covers a stubbed toe in Jerusalem.
Ranking States
In a world of 193 UN member states, Israel finds itself uniquely spotlighted despite not holding any extreme rankings in global measures. It stands as the 153rd largest country in size. In terms of population, Israel ranks 99th, far from the most populous giants of the globe. Established in 1948, there are about 110 newer states than Israel, each uncriticized for how “new” they are.
Israel is by no means the richest state, as one made up primarily of people escaping poverty. For example, in 2024, Israel's total GDP ranked it as the 31st largest economy in the world, with a GDP of approximately $530 Billion. That’s considered a “mid-sized” economy. Israel currently stands as the 19th richest state in terms of GDP per capita, below Luxemburg, Ireland, Singapore, Qatar and San Marino (to name a few) [Forbes]. Did you even know San Marino is a state?
And if these unremarkable rankings do not justify the intense focus, what does?
Assessing Diversity
In recent years, we often hear that Zionism is creating a “white colonizer state.” So maybe the fixation is about demographics? You could simply look at a random photo of Israel to see the “white” label is wrong, or consider the facts left out of that chant.
Like wealth, diversity can be measured in different ways (ethnicity, religion, color, thought). These rankings depict Israel as one of the most diverse states in its region, if not the most diverse state in its region.
Israel is 18.1% Muslim and 74% Jewish (including non-white secular, African, Ashkenazi, Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews). It also contains notable Bedouin, Druze, and African populations. That makes it far more diverse than Nordic States, most of Eastern Europe and Ireland (Ireland being 94.1% white [Diversity Abroad]).
Across the Middle East, 22 states are over 90% Muslim and 0% Jewish. The Maldives are nearly 100% Muslim. Yet diversity is never demanded of them. Why only Israel? Why are Arabized populations more important to the UN than Bedouin or Druzim populations?
In contrast to these sharia states with rapidly declining Christian populations, Israel is cited as the only country in the Middle East with a growing Christian population.
If Israeli diversity isn’t the cause, maybe it’s the Palestinians. Feel free to look into their culture and assess it yourself. Look into their Al Abeed city. Be sure to compare Tibet, which I’d argue has a richer cultural and religious tradition. Is Tibetan Buddhism less worthy of attention than a culture which permits honor killing? Or why not focus on the Kurds, a stateless people numbering 30–45 million? Why is Free Palestine many multiples trendier than Free Kurdistan or Free Tibet?
How does one even define Palestinian state and culture to rank it with traditional states? Does your ranking include Gaza and the West Bank? Does it include the Arabs of Israel? What about the Palestinian populations of Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt?
Palestine’s current civil wars include Fatah vs H@mas, H@mas vs PIJ, H@mas vs ISIL, the people vs PA/Fatah, the people vs PLO, and Ra’am (Israel’s Muslim Party) vs Fatah/PA/PLO. In Israel there is protest and frequent elections, while in all Palestinian areas protesting is squashed and often leads to death. What are we even comparing?
Are we ranking a fantasy of Palestine with a fantasy of Israel, and, if so, who’s fantasies are we ranking?
Motivation 1
Let’s unpack the fantasies further with objective comparisons.
Critics often insist Israel’s success is illegitimate. They question Israel’s right to exist, citing a founding extremely similar to Greece (Read Appelbaum, "Israel and Greece: A Tale of Two Nation-States"). Why do we never hear obsession over Greece’s version of “Zionism?” Where are the criticisms of Manifest Destiny, another mass migration ideology of the past? Are only Jews expected to be stateless?
Of course, the answer to virtually all my rhetorical questions above is “no Jews, no news.” Jewish history, whether explicitly or implicitly linked to Israel, is scrutinized more than other culture. Throughout the world, Jews fled poverty and were excluded from trades, then built industries from scratch. Banking became “Jewish” because Jews were banned from land ownership. Hollywood arose when Edison’s patent wars forced Jewish filmmakers west. Comics were pioneered when Jewish artists were shut out of advertising.
Still, people ask what cheat codes Jews used to become so successful. Jews answer, “It’s our focus on community and education. It’s the same combination Indian-Americans used to become the richest demo in the US.” Jay-Z gave another answer, “Credit.” And the skeptics continue to insist, “No. It must be because they control the industries.”
Every Jewish contribution is framed as sinister. Bank control. Hollywood control. Comic control. Actors boycott Israel, the top comedians and TV personalities build their reputation on hating Israel, and still the narrative of Jewish “control” persists.
Why is Jewish economic or cultural dominance seen as a plot, while other groups’ niches are not? Nobody frets that Vietnamese “control” nail salons, Koreans control dry cleaning, Pakistanis control convenience stores. Pragmatic explanations can suffice.
Why is Israel’s economy scrutinized more than, say, Japan? Japan and Israel are both resource-poor countries that have achieved extraordinary success. Why more than the oil-rich Arab states like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, or the UAE? Israel has lower income inequality than these states, where vast wealth is concentrated among elites. Why more than Switzerland or Ireland? Both Switzerland and Ireland profited enormously from so-called neutrality during World War II, and even more from their roles in global banking and finance.
The state we are constantly told to focus on is the global R&D hub that has produced 13 Nobel laureates. It’s the country built on international trade and collaboration. The country that disproportionately gives is nonstop accused of stealing, despite rankings.
If this isn’t about merit, what is it really about?
Motivation 2
The depraved accuse Israel of sex cabals and extortion of politicians. Again, the ranks aren’t the motivator.
Let’s start by looking at sex cabals. Many today are obsessed with imagining sex trafficking rings that mirror movie depictions. Their fantasy likely features that politician or actor they hate. They ignore the beautiful women jumping at A-List celebs, the personalities and marriages of these celebs, and, instead, imagine the celebs are diddling young children and maybe drinking adrenochrome.
These all too common conspiracies are dangerous, not just because they have ended in someone taking a gun into a pizza store and demanding to see their basement, but because they ignore the realities of rape, sex trafficking and gender apartheid around the world. To date, no remarkable sex trafficking operations were found in Israel. There were plenty of cases of prostitution, sex abuse and other horrors, just like the other 190+ states on Earth. During recent wars, Israel proved which state is liberating women. While Israel liberated Yazidi sex slaves from Palestinian and Syrian areas, many sobbed the sex traders rather than the Yazidi.
We should be looking at real data, not cherry picking stories that involve Israel. As far as child sex trade, Thailand, Cambodia and Mexico are cited as the top destinations for child sex tourism and exploitation. There are dozens of states that don’t prosecute child abuse, pedophilia and under age marriage, though Israel does. Yemen and Sudan still see one in three girls married before 18.
Why does the world ignore the gender apartheid of Iran? Why would any so-called civil rights activist or feminist back a regime that forces women to cover their hair, forbids dancing in public and gouges out eyes of those who protest for secular rights?
No good sex trafficking conspiracy lacks extortion. And so, conspiracies about the J. Epstein case were the juiciest topic of the 2020s. Every single major news story was said to be a distraction by the man. Only one story mattered: A Jew with a private island must have had all the secrets of the politicians and rich people that you don’t like. Worse, he was giving them to the Mossad! You were told the sheer number of people talking about it was proof. Who needs evidence when you can see a like count? [/s]
Debating one incident completely irrelevant to our lives is moot. If someone is really convinced “their associate’s dad was Mossad, so they must also be Mossad” is good evidence, listen to them, smile, and try to not call them an idiot. You can’t use reason to argue with someone who thinks your job is dictated by your friend or coworker’s dad. You can ask if they have any other evidence and try to politely explain how anecdotes are not evidence. Or ask for comparison: Why does this matter more than the P. Diddy case or any other high profile case?
Look at the big picture. Israel, according to any reserach, is not the most corrupt state. It is one of the most criticized on a world stage. As of 2023 the UN General Assembly passed over 170 resolutions singling out Israel, while the worst human rights violators had 0 or 1 resolution. Being criticized more isn’t proof of wrong doing. However, it is proof that if any extortion is happening, Israel sucks at it.
When blindly attributing motives to Israel, the Israel haters simply point to what they don’t like. If they don’t like immigration, they will point out that Israel takes in disproportionately high amount of refugees from around the world. If they do like immigration, they’ll insist deporting Hezbolla supporters is the fault of Israel. If they don’t like LGBT+ rights, they will point out that Israel’s Teva pharmaceuticals created and produces gender affirming care. If they do like LGBT+ rights, they will cite that most Jews get married abroad.
How can polar opposite motivations be used against Israel? It’s called noticing.
Noticing
When real statistics fail, anecdotes are highlighted. Conspiracies are palatable so long as they’re devoid of context. Subscribers to this way of thinking proudly call it “noticing.” Noticing can be defined as obsessing over one group.
Imagine a jar of 1,000 M&Ms with 50 green ones. If you only ever talk about the green M&Ms, they start to seem like the whole story. “Don’t you think it’s weird that people pick out the green M&Ms? That they’re so colorful and shiny?” It does not matter if there are 400 blue M&Ms, 300 red M&Ms, 200 brown M&Ms. This is noticing. People are primed to notice Jews.
Schizophrenia and related disorders are marked by impaired pattern recognition, where individuals often miss real connections while simultaneously perceiving illusory ones. For actual schizophrenic people, any Jewish example becomes proof of a pattern, while all the non-Jewish cases vanish from view.
To parody the noticers, consider “Irish control.” Only 9.5% of Americans have Irish ancestry, yet nearly half the US Presidents were Irish. Irish Americans dominated cable news hosting in 2020, with eight visibly Irish Americans (Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Bret Baier, Rachel Maddow, Martha MacCallum, Lawrence O’Donnell, Neil Cavuto) as the most watched cable news hosts. Just look at all the Irish surnames of Wall Street CEOs: Brian Moynihan (Bank of America), Martin Flanagan (Invesco), James P. Gorman (Morgan Stanley), Terrence Duffy (CME Group), Mike Cagney (SoFi), Chris Concannon (Cboe Global Markets).
What does this parody tell us? That some Irish people were successful. That lists and anecdotes can be manipulated to imply control where none exists. It is not a pattern and has no weight on a working class Irish person’s life.
If the Irish noticing above wasn’t enough evidence to convince you of the Irish Question, a conspirer can throw in some more names. Michael Corbat (Citigroup) and Michael Doughty (John Hancock) are suddenly Irish for the sake of a conspiracy. Don’t they sound Irish? Now the list of Irish Wall Street CEOs is even longer. And who would fact check such a thing?
If all else fails, simply list random Irish names: Walt Disney, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, John Houston, Michael Moore. That’s noticing.
Noticing works best when paired with ignorance. Like, what if I told you Joseph W. McIntosh, William McChesney Martin, Jr., Thomas Bayard, James Francis Thaddeus, Edward W. Kelly, Jr., Charles Donovan O’Leary and Patrick H. Fitzsimmons all had control over the US Federal Reserve. Clearly the Irish control the Fed! Only the last two names I listed were entirely made up.
So then why do the noticers only notice Jews, never Irish or Protestants?
Fairness
When haters do reluctantly admit that Israel’s success can be explained through toiling the fields, the next excuse is to say there were inherently unfair circumstances that favored Israel. Haters insist that Israel always had it good, while its enemies had it bad.
Many blame DEI. The purpose of DEI is debated, but there is a consensus that the study involves focusing on the unfair circumstances of marginalized groups. Rather than highlight Jewish, Indian and Irish immigrant success stories, DEI focuses on factors to excuse crime and poverty cycles in other communities. In some versions of DEI, a person born a millionaire is marginalized if they’re black, while a person born in the ghetto is an oppressor if they’re white. In these radical versions of DEI, Jews are always deemed white.
Both the radical DEI lens, white supremacist and religious supremacy lens merit any discussion of Jewish history as arbitrary. Even if the subscriber believes the Farhud, Holocaust and pogroms happened (and many do not), they will insist that Jews later success makes them inherent oppressors. Three ideologic groups that should hate each other verge to share an identity based scapegoat: Jews.
The radical DEI obsessed, Marxists, white supremacists, and Islamic caliphate hopefulls all frequently start conversations by pronouncing that Jews are not ever victims. They share GIF of a “victim card” whenever there is a story of a Jewish school being shot at, a Jewish cemetery vandalized or any other Jewish suffering. Any story involving Jews elicits a blanket response, “You’re not the victim. We are!”
And since it is futile to argue the lack of merit of race-based sciences, especially to someone who’s image permeates from identity politics, it is not worth trying. We should group the KKK wizards who rant about “ZOG” with the faux-progressive and Green party leaders who insist the “Zios control the government.” Shortening Zionist to Zio doesn’t change the underlying ideology, nor does moral narcism.
The best we can do with these groups is explain why using one lens to look at the world causes myopia. Encourage using a second lens. Remind these groups they should use a microscope for the small and a telescope for the distant, a spectrometer to catch wavelengths, a seismograph to feel the tremors beneath the surface, and a calorie log for diet. Remind them that life is tallied in rhythms and traces as much as in visions. We can only discuss things on a true historic or statistic level if they agree to look at things through those lenses.
Lobby
Israel was described as a “world swindle” in Mein Kampf. Such verbiage seems to have never gone away. To list all the major Jewish STEM contributions, inventions, philanthropy and progressive politicians would require 100 pages. It would still not stop claims of “unfairness.”
The lobbyist AIPAC has become the modern way of describing “Jewish dark money.” In 2024, AIPAC spent approximately $3 Million on elections. Endless articles by mainstream media ranted about AIPAC spending, omitting context. In that same period, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent near $70 million on influencing elections, the National Association of Realtors spent $52 Million, and the Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) spent $27 Million [https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying].
Why is a Jewish American lobby group the topic of more dinner conversation than any other lobby group?
Let’s start by comparing religion based lobbyists. CAIR doesn’t release information on their spending. Christian lobbying groups in the U.S. collectively spend just under $400 million annually to influence lawmakers. That’s a whole lot more than AIPAC.
Many insist AIPAC criticism is not about Judaism, it’s about Zionism, the 100+ year old boogeyman. AIPAC is a “Zionist organization.” And so AIPAC spending is dark money. You can ignore antizionist lobbyists Students for Justice in Palestine, Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, Adalah, Palestinian Prisoner Solidary Network, American Muslims for Palestine, Code Pink, Friends of Sabeel, IfNotNow, Palestinian NGO Network, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Within Our Lifetime etc. Only a few of these antizionist lobbies were linked with funding terrorism.
Many struggle to even consider AIPAC an American org. They scream “dual loyalty!” It’s that same Mein Kampf rhetoric, repackaged.
But if the concerns are with dual loyalty, why do these people not care about direct foreign funding. They ignore that the Qataris of Qatar and Saudis of Saudi Arabia spend billions on US film makers, schools and various public institutions. They focus on the Jewish American citizens rather than the people chanting “Death to...”
Despite the endless complaints about AIPAC spending, realtors spent 17+ times more and Christian org spent 133+ times more, as just two examples. This obsession tells us something we already know: Sometimes “it” claims to be about Israel. Sometimes Zionism. Sometimes Judaism. Sometimes Jews. But the end result is always the same.
Law & Order
As one final method of ranking states, let’s look at the purpose of a state. This is another difficult area to rank, because a fascist will define the purpose of a state different to an anarchist. My definition of a state differs from a UN definition, which differs from other definitions.
Israel is ranked a “flawed democracy” by The Economist’s Democracy Index. It is the only such state in MENA. Israel’s electoral process and pluralism is arguably more democratic than the US system. Despite The Economists anti-Israel bias, their index ranks Israel as far more progressive than 3/4 of the world..
Israel legalized abortion before the US, had a female prime minister, and includes minority/Muslim parties in government coalitions. Israel’s enemies can’t say the same of themselves. The merits of Israel’s existence clearly don’t depend on which state is providing and protecting secular rights.
Israel’s military actions are condemned with intensity unmatched elsewhere. The US has killed civilians in drone strikes with little sustained protest. When they killed a terrorist leader in Pakistan, people cheered. Since 1948, each war Israel was involved with was instigated by Arab states, and, still, Israel was the primary party blamed.
For perspective, it’s estimated that modern wars have higher than a 8:1 militant to combatant death ratio, where as the current war between Israel and various militant groups is estimated at being less than 1:1.
Israel’s policing actions are likewise condemned with intensity unmatched elsewhere. Russia bombed aid workers and closed gay clubs with almost no international outrage. India banned Al Jazeera in a day; Israel took six months, and the world exploded.
Why isn’t there a distinct Wiki page attempting to expose Russia for deliberately bombing WCK, like there is for Israel’s accidental killing of WCK workers?
Why is Saudi Arabia’s construction of a border barrier for security hardly criticized, but Israel’s is? Why do people demand Palestinian particpate in Israeli elections, but not Bengalis in Pakistani elections? Why are the rights of the 5.2 million Americans (2.27% of America), disenfranchised due to felony convictions, ignored to discuss the rights of Hamas supporters in Israel?
We should not try to justify every action Israel has taken, but rather explore why worse actions by other states do not attract similar condemnation. This pattern suggests a selective standard applied to Israel, which prompts a deeper inquiry into the motivations.
Conclusion
The obvious conclusion is that Israel stands out because it has a Jewish majority. After asking 1000s for an explanation with Israel obsession over 190+ other states, I have listened to 1000s insist they are not antisemetic. None have provided an alternative rational for their obsession. Simply saying, “I’m not antisemetic. I just think a state the size of New Jersey is more important than US, Russia or China” is sufficient for the world.
I could continue to list facts, like 100% of US Presidents were Christian and 96% (44 of 46) were a Protestant denomination. But it just shows that across rankings, culture, fairness, lobbying, and law, Israel does not stand out as uniquely bad. Yet it stands alone in the intensity of scrutiny. The same actions that draw shrugs elsewhere provoke global outrage when Jews are involved.
If no consistent rationale explains this disparity, then we must ask: is the obsession about behavior, or about Jewish identity? If the world cannot condemn genocide in Congo with the same fervor as a military accident in Gaza, what is really being judged?
The answer seems clear: the disproportionate focus is not about Israel’s size, wealth, or politics. It is about the Jews. And those who pretend otherwise should be honest enough to admit it.
Update
Cornell recently introduced a class claiming 350,000 unique indigenous groups exist. Yet, predictably, the class will focus on Palestine—a national identity invented in 1964 to unify Arabs against Jews. Out of 350,000 possible case studies, only one is prioritized. Why?
If my next essay is titled 1 in 350,000, you’ll already know the answer.
