Anti-Israel Chants are Not Just Wrong - They Are Dangerous and Counterproductive

This article was written by Oz Bin Nun, head of LIBRAEL's content team. The opinions expressed are his alone.

Anti-Israel protest. If claiming that Israel is a colonial enterprise was true, then like other colonial powers it would have collapsed.

Anti-Israel chants - like "From the river to the sea" or accusations that Israel is a colonialist project - are not only historically inaccurate; they are also deadly and counterproductive.

In a brilliant piece in The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg explores Hamas’s leader Yahya Sinwar's critical miscalculation that led to the collapse of Iran's anti-Israel coalition after October 7. Sinwar was caught up in his own propaganda - he believed his own rhetoric that Israelis see themselves as foreigners who do not truly belong in their own state. His logic was straightforward: hit them hard enough and they will collapse.

"Sinwar believed his own rhetoric, that Israelis see themselves as foreigners... His logic was straightforward: hit them hard enough and they will collapse."

The outcome of that miscalculation is painfully clear: the war Sinwar ignited did not cause Israel to collapse. On the other hand, the Gaza Strip lies in devastation. Hezbollah - under the leadership of Hassan Nasrallah, who also believed Israel is a fragile society - is weakened to an extreme degree. Iran itself has suffered devastating strikes at the hands of the IDF and the Mossad.

But the lesson we must draw goes beyond Sinwar and Nasrallah. It extends to the far-left rhetoric surrounding Israel. For years, this rhetoric has insisted on the same thing Sinwar thought: that Israel is a settler-colonial state built by European immigrants and therefore uniquely fragile and reversible. You see this belief in chants at anti-Israel protests - slogans labeling Israelis as white colonizers and calling for their removal, as if they were French colonists in Algeria or British soldiers in North America. The perception, as Adam Kirsch describes, is that Israel is a colonial project that can simply be undone.

"Labeling Israelis as white colonizers and calling for their removal, as if they were French colonists in Algeria or British soldiers in North America."

Yet this view is profoundly flawed. It ignores the diverse reality of Israeli society - a nation where more than half of the Jewish population hails not from Europe but from the Middle East and North Africa. It ignores that most Israelis feel deeply rooted in their homeland, every bit as indigenous to this region as anyone else - including the Palestinians. And it adopts a false historical parallel - hoping that, like the FLN against the French, violence will cause Israelis to give up and leave.

Truth is an aptness between what one says about something and the thing itself. If one says that the sun is hot and the sun is hot, that is the truth. Applying this standard, if anti-Israel chants truly reflected reality - if Israelis were merely fragile colonizers with no genuine connection to the land - then continuous violent attacks would eventually break them. As that is not the case, and in fact the October 7 attacks increased the levels of patriotism among Israelis (including Arab Israelis), it is proof that these beliefs do not match the reality on the ground, then those chants are false.

"Anti-Israel myths do not reflect a fragile settler colony, because in reality Israel is a robust, stable society, ties to its land and identity, that grows more resolute under attack."

In William James’s pragmatism, the value of an idea is measured by its practical effects - by how it shapes behavior and how the world responds. Seen through this lens, we recognize that Israeli society acts as an anti-colonial, deeply rooted community with profound ties to its land and identity (just check the lyrics of the Israeli anthem).

If we imagine a spectrum with fragile societies on one end - easily shattered by pressure - and robust, stable societies on the other - societies that grow stronger by challenge - it's evident that after 21 months of intense war, Israel belongs on the robust and stable end. In this pragmatic sense, anti-Israel myths do not reflect a fragile settler colony, because in reality Israel is a robust, stable society that grows more resolute under attack.

This is not just a philosophical debate. If it is false to assume that Israelis will collapse like colonial powers of the past, then the only logical response is to abandon this fantasy and find other ways, peaceful ways, to resolve the conflict. Like the United States, where nobody seriously expects returning Turtle Island to Indigenous tribes by expelling the entire settler-descended population, it is impossible and dangerous to pretend that Israel can simply be reversed.

A Jewish and a Muslim soldiers pray. Israel is not a fragile society, but grows more resolute under attack, and level of patriotism spiked after October 7 among Jews and Arabs alike.

Recognizing that these Anti-Israel chants are not effective is not merely an intellectual exercise; it is a moral imperative. Twenty-one months into an intense and devastating war, this out-of-touch fantasy that Israel can simply be wished away is only fueling more suffering.

Understanding that these myths do not align with reality is the first step toward preventing further bloodshed and moving toward genuine solutions that provide a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike.