Twenty or 15 years ago, maybe even 10, if you had told Israelis that by 2025 they would become ostracized, detested, and verging on being a pariah state, they would have dismissed you as delusional, anti-Israeli, a self-loathing Israeli, or just a spiteful merchant of doom. That can’t possibly happen. Yet it has.

Israel, Israelis believed, was a pioneer society that turned into a “start-up nation,” a center of technological innovation, agricultural ingenuity, scientific excellence, cutting-edge medical research and development, formidable military prowess, a booming economy that had tripled its gross domestic product per capita since the turn of the century. Israel was affluent. It was rich with artistic creativity, blessed with cultural wealth and diversity. It was self-assured and optimistic about the future despite the ongoing occupation of Palestine, the lack of any political solution, and the specter of a single binational state being formed by inertia and default. It was supported unequivocally by and aligned closely with the world’s only major superpower, the United States. Then came Benjamin Netanyahu, and here we are in 2025.

In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s savage terror attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the whole world stood behind Israel in support and an understanding that Israel would need to retaliate massively. But how, in less than two years, did a just war (jus ad bellum) turn into a harsh, vociferous criticism of how the war was waged (jus in bello) and total distrust of Israel in respect to justice after the war (jus post bellum)?

It wasn’t merely criticism of the prosecution of the war or alleged evidence of possible war crimes or the destruction and devastation of Gaza and the killing of 65,000 people. It was about how Israel acted in total disregard, derision, and casualness over what it had caused to Gaza. “We are being singled out hypocritically,” the sanctimonious reply predictably came. What about what Russia is doing in Ukraine? people defiantly asked. Good point. Russia is under severe sanctions but is also a member of the U.N.........

© New Republic