How the campaign against the Jewish state mirrors the tactics of narcissistic abuse
There is a particular kind of conversation that leaves you needing a nap, a therapist, and possibly a pastrami sandwich the size of a family-size challah. You know the kind. You say something simple like, “Jews have a right to self-determination,” and suddenly you are not in a conversation anymore. You are in a courtroom. You are the defendant. The jury hates you. The prosecutor is holding a sign that says “Free Palestine,” wearing a keffiyeh from Amazon, and somehow you are expected to explain 3,000 years of Jewish history before lunch.
You say, “Israel has a right to exist,” and they hear, “I personally endorse every decision ever made by every Israeli politician since King David first looked at Jerusalem and thought, nice views, terrible parking.” You say, “October 7 was evil,” and they say, “Context.”
And there it is.
That word.
Context.
The moral chloroform of the modern coward.
Not real context, of course. Real context would include Jewish indigeneity. Real context would include millennia of exile, persecution, pogroms, expulsions, dhimmitude, the Holocaust, Arab armies invading in 1948, Mizrahi Jews expelled from Arab lands, suicide bombings, rockets, tunnels, hostages, and the small detail that Hamas is not a yoga retreat with poor branding. No, no. Not that context. Their version of context means, “Let me explain why dead Jews are complicated.”
And this is where antizionist abuse begins to resemble narcissistic abuse.
Not because every person who criticizes Israel is a narcissist. That would be lazy, unfair, and frankly ridiculous. Israel is a real country with real politics, real failures, real arguments, and real leaders who deserve real criticism. Jews criticize Israel more before breakfast than most activists do after three documentaries and a semester abroad.
Valid criticism says, “This policy is wrong.”
Antizionist abuse says, “Your people are wrong for existing.”
That is not a debate. That is emotional violence dressed up as moral sophistication.
Narcissistic abuse, in broad terms, is not simply someone being vain, selfish, or obsessed with their reflection like a Greek myth with Wi-Fi. It is a pattern. Gaslighting. Projection. DARVO, which means deny, attack, reverse victim and offender. Moving goalposts. Double standards. Public charm, private cruelty. The constant rewriting of reality until the target starts questioning their own memory, their own boundaries, and their own right to say, “No, that happened.”
Now look at how antizionism treats Jews.
Gaslighting
First comes the gaslighting. A synagogue is threatened. Jewish students are harassed. Posters of kidnapped children are torn down with the emotional detachment of someone removing expired yogurt coupons. People chant “globalize the intifada” in Western cities and then act shocked when Jews hear violence in the word intifada, as if history is supposed to politely erase itself for their convenience.
Jews are told to hide their Stars of David, tuck away their Hebrew, lower their voices, stop being so dramatic. And when we say, “This feels dangerous,” we are told we are paranoid.
Paranoid.
Jews.
The people whose family trees look like they were edited by arsonists.
We are told not to trust our instincts by people who could not identify a pogrom if it came with subtitles and a QR code. That is gaslighting. It is not merely disagreement. It is the attempt to make Jews doubt the meaning of what is happening right in front of our faces.
The most insulting part is not even the hatred. Jews know hatred. We have the punch card. Ten persecutions and the next exile still comes with free kugel. The insulting part is the insistence that we are hysterical for recognizing it. That our memory is an overreaction. That our fear is manipulative. That our survival instinct is somehow offensive to the people making us need it.
Projection
Then comes projection. Antizionists accuse Jews of the very things historically done to us. They call us colonizers, as if Jews are strangers to Jerusalem, as if Hebrew fell out of the sky in 1948, as if our prayers did not face that land for two thousand years while empires came and went like bad tenants. They call us Europeans, as if our grandparents were not chased through Europe precisely because Europe did not consider them European enough.
They call us genocidal, supremacist, imperialist, and every other academic-sounding insult that lets them avoid saying the quiet part directly. The absurdity would almost be funny if it were not so dangerous. One of the oldest surviving peoples on earth, with an unbroken attachment to the land of Israel, is accused of having no roots there. A people who buried one third of itself within living memory is accused of inventing victimhood. A nation whose anthem expresses the hope to be “a free people in our land” is treated as if freedom itself becomes suspicious when Jews ask for it.
Not rulers of the world.
Not conquerors of mankind.
Just free.
Apparently, this is too much.
This is how projection works: the accusation tells you more about the accuser than the accused. If your worldview requires you to pretend Jews are foreign invaders in Judea, the problem is not Jewish history. The problem is that your ideology cannot survive contact with a map, an archaeology exhibit, a Hebrew prayer book, or one honest conversation with a Jew who refuses to apologize for remembering.
DARVO
Then comes DARVO. Deny. Attack. Reverse victim and offender.
On October 7, Jews were slaughtered, raped, burned, kidnapped, and paraded through streets. The response from much of the so-called moral world was not grief. It was choreography. Before the bodies were counted, before families knew who was dead and who had been dragged into Gaza, before the blood had dried, the reversal had already begun.
Israel was the aggressor.
Jews were the problem.
The victims had somehow become the villains by sundown.
This is exactly how abusive systems work. The wound is still open, and the abuser says, “Look what you made me do.” Hamas invades, murders civilians, hides behind civilians, fires from civilian areas, steals aid, holds hostages, and then the world turns to Israel and says, “Why are you making everyone so uncomfortable?”
It is the geopolitical version of someone punching you in the face and then accusing your cheek of being provocative.
And somehow, Jews are expected to respond politely. We are expected to perform calmness for people who have already decided our grief is propaganda. We are expected to prove our humanity to people who have made a career of explaining it away. That is abuse. Not metaphorically. Not theatrically. Functionally.
There is a special cruelty in demanding that Jews mourn in a way that flatters the people who abandoned us. Cry, but not too loudly. Grieve, but do not mention who did it. Remember, but do not generalize. Defend yourself, but gently. Be traumatized, but make it inclusive.
In other words: bleed quietly.
No.
Double Standards and Moving Goalposts
Then come the double standards. Every country may defend itself, except Israel. Every people may define their own identity, except Jews. Every indigenous people may speak of ancestral connection, except Jews, whose indigenous claim is somehow the only one treated as settler-colonial cosplay. Every minority gets listened to when they describe their own oppression, except Jews, who apparently need antisemitism explained to us by the sophomore who just discovered Edward Said and now explains Jewish history over oat milk lattes.
When Jews say antizionism often functions as antisemitism, we are told, “You don’t get to weaponize your trauma.”
Interesting.
Everyone else gets lived experience. Jews get cross-examination. Everyone else gets safety. Jews get “prove it.” Everyone else gets complexity. Jews get “but Israel.”
This is the abusive trick: you are never allowed to be the injured party. Your pain must first pass through their ideology. If it does not fit, it is rejected.
And then there is the moving goalpost. In abusive relationships, nothing is ever enough. Apologize, but not like that. Explain, but you are being defensive. Stay quiet, but silence is violence. Speak up, but you are centering yourself. The demand is never truly about repair. It is about control.
For Jews, it sounds like this: condemn Netanyahu, condemn settlements, condemn extremists, condemn racism, condemn civilian suffering, condemn every bad thing any Israeli has ever said, done, considered, imagined, tweeted, liked, or accidentally forwarded in a WhatsApp group called “Cousins 2021.”
Fine.
Many Jews and Israelis do that constantly.
But then comes the actual question: can Jews have self-determination in our ancestral homeland?
And suddenly the answer is no.
There it is. The issue was never merely policy. It was existence. The demand is not accountability. Accountability has standards. Accountability has evidence. Accountability has moral consistency. The demand is submission. They want the Jew bent low enough to be tolerated.
A Jew may be religious, as long as it stays quaint. A Jew may be cultural, as long as it serves bagels and trauma in digestible portions. A Jew may be progressive, as long as he agrees to amputate half his peoplehood. A Jew may mourn, but only quietly. A Jew may survive, but not too confidently.
A Jew may exist, but sovereignty?
Chas v’shalom.
Heaven forbid.
The Line Between Criticism and Erasure
This is the line. The antizionist does not merely say, “I oppose this Israeli government.” Many Israelis oppose Israeli governments, and they do it loudly, publicly, with signs, drums, arguments, traffic jams, and the kind of organizational skill only Jews arguing in public can achieve.
The antizionist says the Jewish state itself is illegitimate.
Not flawed.
Not in need of reform.
Not accountable.
Illegitimate.
And when you strip one people of the right every other people claims, you are not doing human rights work. You are laundering bigotry through a nonprofit vocabulary.
That is the difference between criticism and erasure. Criticism says Israel must live up to its ideals. Erasure says Israel has no right to exist at all. Criticism is part of democratic life. Erasure is a demand that Jews return to dependency, vulnerability, and prayerful hope that the next ruler will be kind.
We tried that.
It did not go well.
Why It Feels Like Abuse
This is why it feels so familiar to people who have survived emotional abuse. The abuser names your reality for you. The abuser tells you your memory is wrong. The abuser makes you responsible for their rage. The abuser isolates you from support. The abuser punishes you for boundaries. The abuser claims victimhood while harming you. The abuser demands endless empathy while offering none. And if you finally say, “Enough,” they call you cruel.
Jews know this pattern in our bones. We have lived for centuries under civilizations that told us: convert and we will love you, disappear and we will tolerate you, assimilate and we will promote you, stay weak and we will pity you, defend yourself and we will condemn you.
This is the ancient bargain.
Be small enough, and maybe they will let you live.
Zionism broke that bargain. That is why antizionism is so furious. Zionism is not a claim that Jews are better than anyone else. It is the radical and apparently unbearable claim that Jews are not required to be helpless in order to be moral.
That is what they cannot forgive.
They liked us better as memorial candles. They liked us better as museum exhibits. They liked us better behind glass, tragic and quiet, useful for teaching tolerance to schoolchildren before everyone goes home and ignores Jewish students being harassed on campus.
But a Jew with sovereignty?
A Jew with an army?
A Jew who says, “Never again,” and means, “We will physically prevent it”?
Oy, suddenly everyone becomes an expert in proportionality.
The world loves dead Jews. Dead Jews are easy to honor. Dead Jews ask nothing. Dead Jews can be turned into lessons, plaques, poems, and carefully scheduled remembrance ceremonies. Living Jews are harder. Living Jews have boundaries. Living Jews interrupt the narrative. Living Jews say, “That slogan you love means my destruction.” Living Jews say, “No, you may not redefine my identity for your convenience.” Living Jews say, “Our history did not begin when your politics noticed us.”
And that enrages the abuser, because nothing makes an abusive system angrier than a target who stops begging to be understood and starts insisting on being respected.
The Sacred Word: No
That is the moment everything changes. You stop arguing with the gaslight. You stop bringing footnotes to a ritual humiliation. You stop trying to win empathy from people addicted to your guilt.
You learn the sacred Jewish word:
NO
No, you do not get to call for the dismantling of the Jewish state and pretend it is love.
No, you do not get to chant for intifada and then act surprised when Jews hear violence.
No, you do not get to hold Jews worldwide responsible for every Israeli policy while insisting antizionism has nothing to do with Jews.
No, you do not get to demand Jewish safety in theory while opposing the only Jewish state in practice.
No, you do not get to use our trauma as a costume and our history as a punching bag.
NO
Full sentence.
Very Jewish, actually. We received 613 commandments and somehow still needed one more for modern discourse: Thou shalt not let lunatics gaslight thee on the internet.
And yes, Palestinian civilians are human beings. That should not need to be said, but apparently everything does now. Jewish morality does not ask us to celebrate suffering. It also does not ask us to pretend Hamas is a weather event that just happened to Gaza. We can mourn innocent life without laundering the guilt of the people who built tunnels under children and called it resistance.
But compassion cannot require Jewish self-erasure. Empathy cannot mean accepting lies. Justice cannot mean the one Jewish country is placed on trial for existing while actual tyrannies get standing ovations from the world’s professional hypocrites.
Zionism as Moral Memory
This is where the positive case matters. Zionism is not just a response to antisemitism. It is not merely a bunker built after catastrophe. It is the living expression of Jewish memory, Jewish continuity, and Jewish responsibility. It says that Jewish life is not only something to be protected after the world threatens it, but something to be built, renewed, argued over, defended, and loved.
That matters.
A homeland is not just a military necessity. It is a civilizational anchor.
It is Hebrew spoken in grocery stores.
It is Jewish holidays on public calendars.
It is refugees becoming citizens instead of statistics.
It is the impossible made ordinary:
Jews farming Jewish land.
Jews building Jewish schools.
Jews raising Jewish children.
Jews burying Jewish dead.
Jews debating Jewish policy in a Jewish democracy.
Zionism is the refusal to let Jewish identity exist only as memory of suffering. It is not simply “never again” as a warning. It is “we are still here” as a civilization.
There is a reason the Shema matters here. Shema Yisrael. Hear, O Israel. Not apologize, O Israel. Not shrink, O Israel. Not explain yourself until your enemies are satisfied, O Israel.
Hear.
Remember who you are.
A people does not survive 3,000 years by accepting every accusation as truth. A people does not carry Torah through exile, rebuild language, return to ancestral soil, bury its dead, rescue its refugees, argue with God, laugh at danger, and still make brisket, only to be morally lectured by people whose activism depends on historical amnesia.
We have been here before. The vocabulary changes. The accusation changes. The costume changes. But the emotional machinery is ancient. First they isolate the Jew. Then they accuse the Jew. Then they reverse the story. Then they demand the Jew confess. Then they call the confession healing.
But we are done confessing to crimes we did not commit. We are done mistaking abuse for dialogue. We are done treating antizionist rage as moral seriousness.
The answer to gaslighting is memory. The answer to projection is truth. The answer to DARVO is clarity. The answer to abuse is boundaries.
And the answer to those who say Jewish sovereignty is uniquely illegitimate is simple:
Am Yisrael Chai. The people of Israel live.
Not as guests. Not as ghosts. Not as footnotes in someone else’s empire. We live as a people with memory, dignity, grief, humor, stubbornness, and yes, a homeland.
And if that makes the abusers uncomfortable, good.
Healing usually does.
post by
Matthew Feinberg
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