David M. Weinberg 
David M. Weinberg 
Israel has no choice but to dismiss Western protests and pressures – such as “in your face” recognition of ersatz Palestinian statehood – and instead act independently to secure its future. Israel also has no choice but to weather the specter of diplomatic sequestration and economic isolation.
This is because the world has been consistently wrong throughout Israel’s history about almost every security issue, niggardly nasty and nefarious toward Israel at key points of inflexion. And because the usual threats of BDS, lawfare, and economic ruin are exaggerated, purposefully so.
Western leaders (alongside many Israeli ones) were wrong about the Oslo peace process, investing disastrous degrees of trust and billions of wasted dollars on the corrupt, dictatorial, human rights abusing, antisemitic, and terrorist-sponsoring Palestinian Authority.
For decades, they have ignored and even at times cooperated with the PA’s prolonged campaign to demonize and criminalize Israel in international forums, all the while perpetuating the Palestinian victim-refugee-martyrdom identity and applying the soft bigotry of low expectations to the Palestinians. This is the counterpart to the hard bigotry of unreasonable demands on Israel; plainly and unabashedly weakening it.
Western leaders (alongside some Israeli ones) were flat-out wrong in cheering Israel’s unilateral “disengagement” from Gaza and the expulsion of Israeli residents from the beautiful communities there – exactly twenty years ago next week. That ugly, wrenching rupture in Israeli and regional history led to the catastrophe of Hamas rule in Gaza – and many wars and much suffering for Israelis and Palestinians alike.
WESTERN LEADERS and analysts have been consistently blind to the genocidal-toward-Israel nature of the Palestinian national movement, among both Fatah and Hamas. Don’t confuse Paris, London, and Ottawa with facts like the support of three-quarters of Palestinians in the West Bank for the October 7 Hamas-led massacre, or the support of governors in the Palestinian Authority for terrorism and the active participation of its Fatah Party in the wave of terror attacks threatening central Israel.
They also have been willingly blind to evil operations of the Hamas-controlled UN agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), by providing it with more than a billion dollars every year; even though UNRWA only feeds the Palestinian annihilationist claim to a “right of return” to all of Israel: the delusion that Israel can be overwhelmed and wiped out.
Of course, they have been wrong about responsibility for the current war in Gaza, calling time and time again, almost from day one, on Israel to halt its military operations against Hamas. And wrongly calling out Israel for “flagrant breaches of international law” while disregarding Hamas’s use of women and children as human shields, hospitals as weapons depots, or United Nations schools as launchpads for rockets.
Instead, they tolerate Palestinian “Days of Rage,” “Nakba Day” riots, and missile barrage eruptions as expected and even justified behavior. As if the Palestinians cannot help themselves from throwing a tantrum. As if responsible and reasonable behavior – such as negotiation, democratic and peaceful discourse, and normative state building – cannot be demanded of the Palestinians.
These weak Western leaders tolerate wild riots in their own backyards where radicals push the equation of Israel and Zionism with all of today’s bon-ton iniquities – imperialism, colonialism, apartheid, white supremacy, and genocide.
Manufactured starvation crisis in Gaza
ALSO IN the current moment of manufactured crisis about supposed “starvation” in Gaza, Western sages have nothing to say about Hamas’s violent seizure of humanitarian aid shipments into the Strip or its targeting of Palestinians approaching aid centers operated by the US- and Israel-affiliated Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. They also ignore the UN’s complicity in Hamas’s nefarious aid-denial strategy, which is cynically meant to vilify Israel.Now comes the misguided Macronian campaign to unilaterally, urgently, and insolently recognize synthetic Palestinian “statehood” – a destructive, unforgivable offense.
The high-and-mighty Western leaders who insist that it is imperative specifically now to “advance peace” – by declaring their enthusiastic love for and cheeky recognition of Palestinian statehood – are really all about dissing Israel.
They are punishing the Netanyahu government for its boldness in defending Israel and for becoming too dominant in resetting the regional strategic situation to Israel’s advantage (including its heroic and successful military campaigns against Iran and Hezbollah). To do so when they know that Palestinian statehood is both a fiction and likely a great peril to Israel is downright malicious.
They also ignore the fact that such previous showboating at Israel’s expense – the ad nauseum annual UN resolutions about “inalienable” and “inviolable” Palestinians rights of one sort or another – have only bolstered Palestinian rejection of Israel’s right to exist and have been interpreted by Palestinians as an international green light for the use of terror to destroy Israel.
Messers Macron, Starmer, and Carney flout the fact that grandstanding at this moment about Palestinian statehood is the very essence of victory for Hamas terrorism and incentivizes more acts of massacre.
Western leaders writ large also have been historically wrong about how to confront the Islamic Republic of Iran and its nuclear weapons program (preferring never-ending and ineffective negotiations with Tehran over decisive military action), and about how to handle the hegemonic ambitions of Turkey under Islamist dictator Erdogan. They may also be wrong about the current rush to embrace Ahmed al-Sharaa, the new Sunni jihadi leader of Syria.
THUS, ISRAEL has no choice but to scorn such Western leaders and continue to independently secure its future. Israel also must weather the threats of diplomatic and economic isolation from the world.
It certainly can. The nightmarish scenarios of Israel’s isolation are inaccurate for many reasons – including the weakness of the Arab world, the declining influence of Europe, the resilience of Israel’s reputation in many Western circles, the robustness of Israel’s ties to global technology and business hubs, and more.
The fact is that far more global companies buy from Israel than boycott Israel; far more universities and scientists collaborate with their Israeli counterparts than shun them; far more churches support Israel than condemn it; far more entertainers perform in Israel than avoid it, and so on. Boycotts and condemnations from the usual coterie of wacko-Left artists and “as-a-Jew” artificial Jews can be surmounted.
Unfortunately, the exaggerated threat of “tsunami,” of the complete collapse of Israel’s diplomatic and economic worlds, is an old trick that is pulled down off the shelf every couple of years to force Israel into submission, to frighten the Israeli public into retreat and withdrawal, and to scare-off Israelis from reasonable right-wing policies by inflating their dangers.
IN 2013, former prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert warned of a “diplomatic tsunami” that would befall Israel if the Palestinians went ahead and got their “statehood” approved by the United Nations General Assembly. In panic, they urged Israel to make radical diplomatic concessions to prevent the disaster. Well, the Palestinians got their vote and their upgraded UN status, yet the sky did not fall on Israel.
This scare tactic then became the central playbook of foreign minister Tzipi Livni, who wailed every day about Israel’s impending isolation because of the looming Western boycott of Israel. Israel was about to be hit with an unprecedented diplomatic, economic, and academic chill, she barked, unless it snapped quickly to Livni’s tune of withdrawal from the West Bank and conceded a state to the Palestinians.
Then-finance minister Yair Lapid chimed in with a shabbily concocted reports that confirmed Livni’s premonitions. Lapid advised that the pocketbook of every Israeli was going to suffer from Western BDS activity unless Israel scurried to the camp of US secretary of state John Kerry and hurried to cut a deal with the Palestinians.
It is interesting to note that in the wake of October 7, Lapid has changed his tune. He roundly condemned Macron this week for unilaterally recognizing Palestinian statehood, calling it a “moral mistake” and a prize for Hamas. And note: also this week, Palo Alto Networks bought Israel’s CyberArk security company for $25 billion.
Israel must make its diplomatic-security decisions free of false threats, without having to mollify fidgety forecasters of doomsday. So, avoid the hysterical hand wringing about BDS or ersatz recognition of Palestinian statehood by frosty “friends.” Israel (and its truly loyal friends abroad) must focus instead on winning real battles on tangible battlefronts against armed enemies – going forward with self-confidence and, if necessary, in defiance of wrong Westerners.
Published in The Jerusalem Post, August 2, 2025.