For Western students, Israel is a code word for US imperialism - opinion

What do Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea all have in common? They are authoritarian regimes ruled by dictators. They promote their system as superior to Western democracy. They want to reduce US influence in the world. And they are all pro-Hamas.

In the current conflict, the emphasis in Israel is to focus on immediate and pressing concerns. Widespread support for Hamas has also highlighted the resurgence in antisemitism. While Israelis and Diaspora Jews are naturally preoccupied with these pressing issues, this focus should not blind us to the role being played by the ongoing worldwide struggle to undermine liberal democracy.

There are a number of factors behind Hamas’s decision to initiate a war against Israel, but ignoring the wider context is to limit our understanding, and overlook the role played by the global winds of totalitarianism buffeting the entire world, from the South China Sea to the Crimea.

Only a short time ago, the tide of liberal democracy seemed inexorable, punctuated by the fall of the Berlin Wall and accelerated by the spread of free trade and capitalist ideals. Yet how different the world of the 1990s seems from the one we are living in today. Reversing a trend, multiple indices now indicate that the rule of law and individual freedoms have been on a decline globally for the past decade or so. Concomitantly, totalitarian regimes have become more entrenched and aggressive in exporting their brand of authoritarianism.

The dictators’ newfound assertiveness can be seen in the changing policies of China and Russia. These countries were not notably anti-Israel in the recent past, but now they are singing a different tune. While Iran’s proxies are attacking international navigation, threatening Europe and openly calling for the elimination of US power in the area, the other dictatorships are signaling their tacit agreement.

This alarming trend is being aided and abetted by people living in liberal democracies. A significant percentage in Western societies have become disillusioned with their own system. Some of these people are products of an educational system teaching them that their democracy is evil.

American and European institutions of higher learning harbor academics promoting the idea of the West as a sinful civilization, irremediably guilty of the most horrific crimes. These sentiments are echoed and reverberated in Russian, Chinese and Iranian propaganda being pushed on social media.

Academia has long been critical of democracy

This self-criticism by citizens living in Western democracy is nothing new to academia. One has only to look at the writings of Noam Chomsky going back decades. For the general public, it took the open support on many campuses for Hamas to expose the widespread nature of these teachings. For many protesters on campus, the call to erase Israel goes hand in hand with antipathy to their own country.

Israel is a code word for US imperialism. While this criticism is often oblique, couched in recondite terms appropriate for an academic setting, others are quite straightforward exhortations calling for the demise of the West. Students scream for worldwide intifada, including against America and Europe. Others are even more blunt. For example, during a teach-in regarding the Israel-Hamas war in late 2023, University of Minnesota faculty member Dr. Melanie Yazzie said that the dismantling of the United States must be a goal of the struggle. As of this writing, the video of this talk is still being disseminated in public.

Many years ago, well-known French political philosopher Jean-Francois Revel observed that there lurked within many people a preference for submission to authoritarian rule. Could it be that the totalitarian regimes of China and Iran are attractive for some people? Could it be that people raised in America prefer to submit to religious fanaticism and the call to jihad embodied by Hamas?

In words that ring as true today as when they were written more than 45 years ago, Revel wrote in The Totalitarian Temptation that, “Even in the best-informed societies, there exists a domestic third world of ignorance” that has been “told over and over that the free societies of the industrial West are history’s most horrendous cases of oppression and misery, that any change is preferable to the awful present.”

It could well be that Hamas intransigence is due, at least in part, to the backing they enjoy from a coalition of powerful totalitarian states and their fellow travelers in the West. The coalition supporting Hamas has little interest in seeing the conflict end. These dictatorships enjoy free tickets and front row seats to what must be for them an edifying spectacle: a democracy under siege, the dissipation of US power, and infighting within and among liberal democracies. 

It is no wonder that Hamas does not see itself as a weak player or that the supposed “pressure” being exerted on it to reach a deal is effective – there does not seem to be any pressure being exerted on the terrorist group by the totalitarian patrons it relies on the most.

By broadening our focus away from the Israel-Hamas conflict, we see the strong currents pushing for a continued worldwide struggle against liberal democracy. Even a victory by Israel over its immediate enemies will not necessarily reverse the global winds blowing against liberal democracy.

This is a sobering realization, but a necessary one in order to come up with the necessary solutions. A fuller response to the war initiated by Hamas needs to include support for democracy around the globe. The time is now for the US and its allies to take a proactive approach against totalitarian rule in Iran and elsewhere.

The writer is deputy chairman of the Movement for Quality Government in Israel.