Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth

Anti-Zionism, as benign as some activists would like it to sound, is targeting only one nation on earth. Negating that one nation’s right to have a state, and doing so with vigor, flare, and self-righteousness that should probably be saved for North Korea.

“Why do people judge Jews by one standard and the rest of the world by another? People say Israel is a colonialist country; why not cancel America or Australia as well? People are up in arms about Israel being a Jewish state; why not boycott Pakistan?”

Anti-Zionism is the politically correct version of antisemitism.

Jews are only 2 percent of the United States population, but they are the target of 50 percent of national religion-based hate crimes.

However, because all Arab states unanimously objected to working with Israel, Israel was left out of the region where it is, well, located. This was, of course, part of the Arab nations’ systematic attempts to delegitimize Israel as a state.

In 1948, the UN gave both Jews and Arabs a land. The Jews accepted and the Arabs declined. The Arabs’ first act was to declare war. They did, and they lost. Many Arabs suffered and still suffer greatly, but there was no Israeli desire, systematic or otherwise, to eliminate the Arab people.

All over the world, millions of people are dying because of tyrannical leaders, civil wars, and unimaginable atrocities. But you don’t see passionate picket lines against Dubai or Turkey or even Russia. The one country that’s consistently singled out is… Israel.

Israel grants equal rights to all its citizens, including, of course, the 21 percent of citizens who are Arab.

wrote a bestselling book about his experience, Radical, and coauthored another, Islam and the Future of Tolerance, with Sam Harris. He is a lion of human transformation, and I am proud to call him a friend.