The world has developed a uniquely obsessive moral standard when it comes to Israel.
When Europe uses force, it is called law enforcement.
When America uses force, it is called national security.
When almost any other democracy uses force, it is considered regrettable but understandable.
But when Israel uses force - especially in defense of Jewish lives - it instantly becomes a global moral emergency.
And nowhere has this hypocrisy been more visible than in the recent international reaction to Israel’s handling of anti-Israel flotilla activists and its self-critcism compared to the near silence surrounding the far harsher treatment some of those same activists later allegedly received at the hands of Spanish police.
The contrast is staggering.
Israel intercepted activists attempting to challenge a wartime naval blockade around Gaza during an ongoing war against Hamas after the barbarity of October 7.
The activists were detained.
Processed.
Fed.
Questioned.
Then deported.
Yes, some of the rhetoric surrounding the operation - much of it from figures associated with Itamar Ben-Gvir - was intentionally abrasive and politically theatrical. Israel clearly wanted to send a message that activists attempting to challenge Israeli wartime security measures would not be treated as heroic freedom fighters.
One can argue Israel could have handled the optics more gracefully.
One can argue the tone could have been less confrontational.
One can argue that Israeli officials sometimes speak with unnecessary harshness.
That is fair criticism.
But facts still matter. Israel did not invite a single flotilla terror supporter. Not one.
“Israel may have bruised feelings. Spain bruised bodies."
Because despite the hysterical international condemnation directed at Israel, not one flotilla activist emerged bloodied, clubbed, hospitalized, or battered by Israeli forces.
No videos emerged of Israeli police smashing heads with batons because they didn't.
No footage showed activists sprawled on sidewalks after Israeli riot police charges because there were none.
No images surfaced of Israel violently dispersing crowds with the kind of force routinely seen in European capitals.
Then some of those same activist circles returned to Spain.
And suddenly, reports and videos emerged of Spanish police using riot gear, aggressive crowd-control tactics, physical force, and batons against demonstrators.
And the world barely noticed.
No emergency UN condemnations.
No global media hysteria.
No accusations that Spain was a fascist apartheid regime.
No endless television panels discussing the morality of European state violence.
Why?
Because when Europe swings clubs, it is policing.
When Jews defend themselves, it becomes barbarism.
“The Jewish state is expected to defend itself with one hand tied behind its back while the rest of the world swings freely."
This double standard is not new. It is ancient.
For centuries Jews were condemned when weak and condemned when strong.
When Jews lacked power, they were despised as rootless parasites.
Now that Jews possess sovereignty and military strength, they are despised as oppressors.
The accusation changes. The obsession remains.
And modern Israel lives under a moral microscope no other democracy on earth experiences.
When America fought wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, civilian casualties numbered in the hundreds of thousands.
When Russia flattened Grozny and Aleppo, much of the world eventually normalized it.
When China interned over a million Uyghur Muslims, global outrage remained cautious and restrained because China is powerful.
When Syria slaughtered hundreds of thousands of its own citizens, the international system largely shrugged in exhaustion.
But when Israel intercepts activists attempting to violate a wartime maritime blockade, the Jewish state becomes the embodiment of evil.
The scale of the obsession is astonishing.
And to understand the hypocrisy fully, we must first understand what these flotillas actually are.
They are not serious humanitarian missions.
If activists genuinely wished to deliver aid to Gaza, there are established mechanisms for transferring humanitarian supplies after inspection.
The flotillas are political theater. Their purpose is confrontation. Their purpose is spectacle. Their purpose is to provoke images of Israelis in uniform stopping self-described “peace activists."
Everyone understands this.
The activists understand it. Israel understands it. The media understands it.
The flotillas are designed not primarily to feed Gazans but to starve Israel of legitimacy.
“The flotillas are not humanitarian missions. They are propaganda operations designed to criminalize Jewish self-defense."
And this is what makes the hypocrisy so unbearable.
Israel is not fighting Canada.
Israel is fighting an openly genocidal organization whose leaders celebrated the murder, rape, burning, mutilation, and kidnapping of Jews on October 7.
Hamas has repeatedly promised future massacres. Its leaders openly vow to repeat October 7 “again and again."
Any nation on earth facing such an enemy would impose maritime restrictions and aggressive security measures.
America would.
Britain would.
France would.
Spain certainly would.
In fact, Spain’s own behavior proves the point.
The same Europe that endlessly lectures Israel about “proportionality" routinely deploys riot police, mass arrests, batons, tear gas, and force whenever unrest erupts within its own borders.
French police crack down brutally during riots.
German police disperse demonstrations aggressively.
British police conduct mass detentions.
Spanish police have repeatedly used baton charges against demonstrators in Catalonia and elsewhere.
Yet these actions rarely provoke international hysteria.Whynot?
Because Europe is judged like a normal collection of states.
Israel is judged like a permanent defendant in a global morality trial.
And that trial often has less to do with policy than with something much older and darker.
“Israel is not condemned because it behaves worse than other democracies. Israel is condemned because it is the Jewish state and refuses to remain powerless."
Many Jews are uncomfortable saying this openly. They fear it sounds paranoid.
But history suggests otherwise. The Jewish state violates a deeply rooted historical expectation: that Jews remain vulnerable.
For nearly 2,000 years Jews survived largely through powerlessness.
-The old Jew begged kings for mercy.
-The old Jew fled pogroms.
-The old Jew marched defenseless into ghettos and camps.
Israel changed all that.
-The Israeli Jew carries weapons.
-The Israeli Jew flies fighter jets.
-The Israeli Jew sends commandos.
-The Israeli Jew fights back.
And the world still does not entirely know how to process Jews with power.
This psychological discomfort becomes especially visible in moments of war.
After October 7, Israelis experienced something profoundly clarifying. They watched much of the world respond to the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust not with unequivocal solidarity but with moral equivocation.
Before Israeli victims were even buried, protests erupted condemning Israel rather than Hamas. University students celebrated “resistance." International institutions rushed to scrutinize Israel’s response before Israeli blood had even dried.
Israelis concluded something painfully familiar:
The world sympathizes most comfortably with dead Jews. Armed Jews make the world uneasy.
And this explains the wildly disproportionate reaction to flotilla activists.
Had Israeli police used the same level of visible baton force reportedly used later by Spanish police, the headlines would have screamed:
* “Israeli fascism"
* “State terror"
* “War crimes"
* “Brutality against human rights activists"
There would have been emergency UN sessions.
Human rights organizations would have issued furious condemnations.
Social media would have exploded for weeks.
Instead, Israel detained provocateurs at sea during wartime, fed them, processed them, and deported them.
Spain allegedly used riot tactics against activists in peacetime.
And Spain barely became a story.
That contrast exposes everything.
“Either all democracies possess the right to maintain security, or only Israel is denied that right."
This does not mean Israel is above criticism. No democracy is.
Israel sometimes handles public diplomacy poorly.
Israeli politicians sometimes speak recklessly.
Israelis themselves debate these issues intensely because Israel remains a loud, chaotic democracy.
Indeed, many Israelis themselves criticized aspects of the flotilla operation’s public messaging.
But criticism becomes morally unserious when standards are applied selectively.
And increasingly, Israelis no longer take international outrage seriously because they see how inconsistently it is applied.
When European police crack heads with clubs, the world shrugs.
When Israel detains activists during wartime, the world convulses.
The inconsistency is too obvious to ignore. And beneath that inconsistency lies a deeper truth many refuse to acknowledge:
The world remains uncomfortable with Jewish power. For centuries, Jews were admired only when helpless, scholarly, stateless, wandering, and vulnerable.
The sovereign Jew unsettles people. The armed Jew unsettles people. The Jew who refuses slaughter unsettles people.
Israel represents the end of Jewish helplessness. That is why Israel provokes such emotional intensity globally.
Israel shattered a historical pattern that lasted nearly two millennia.
And after Auschwitz, after Munich, after suicide bombings, after intifadas, and after October 7, Israelis have reached a collective conclusion:
They would rather be condemned alive than pitied dead.
That does not mean Israel should abandon morality. On the contrary. Israel must remain moral precisely because it is Jewish.
But morality cannot mean national suicide.
No country would permit activists to challenge wartime naval restrictions after enduring the equivalent of October 7.
No country.
And the fact that Israel is uniquely condemned for actions other democracies would take automatically reveals the profound double standard at work.
The issue is not whether Spain was right or wrong in its policing.
Every state maintains order. Every democracy sometimes uses force.
The issue is whether the world applies equal moral standards. Clearly, it does not.
Israel is expected to behave with superhuman restraint while confronting enemies openly dedicated to its destruction.
No other nation lives under such expectations.
And no other people have spent centuries learning what happens when Jews are denied the right to defend themselves.
The lesson of Jewish history is brutal but simple:
The world often mourns murdered Jews beautifully. But it condemns Jews who refuse to be murdered in the first place.
Israel was created precisely to end that condition forever.
And no flotilla, no European lecture, no UN resolution, and no international hypocrisy will ever persuade Israelis to return to helplessness again.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the international bestselling author of thirty-eight books, translated into more than twenty languages. He has been hailed as “the most famous rabbi in America" (The Washington Post, Newsweek), “arguably the most famous Orthodox Jew on earth" (The New York Observer), and named one of the fifty most influential Jews in the world (The Jerusalem Post). A fearless public intellectual and one of Israel and Jewry’s most eloquent defenders, Rabbi Boteach has appeared on virtually every major television network and media platform across the globe-from the United States to Europe to Asia to Australia-bringing his unapologetic voice to hundreds of millions.
Rabbi Boteach is the only rabbi ever to receive the London Times Preacher of the Year Award, and remains the competition’s record-holder.
He lives in New Jersey with his Australian wife, Debbie, and together they have, thank God, nine children and twelve grandchildren. Follow him on Instagram and X @RabbiShmuley.