Debate teaches a simple lesson: the strongest argument is not the one you believe most deeply, but the one that survives contact with a skeptical audience. Competitive Debate is a game; it has rules, time limits, and moderation to ensure every voice is heard equally.

But outside the debate chamber, there are no rules. There is no moderator. And persuasion comes down to whose argument resonates.

Winning a debate requires the buildup of a winning narrative, a narrative that, thus far, supporters of Israel have been unable to find. Worryingly, new polls suggest that a majority of Americans now view Israel unfavorably. If we actually want to persuade anyone outside our own shrinking camp, we need to stop repeating slogans and start making arguments that hold up under pressure.

There are three arguments we should be making and almost never do.

The Irreversibility Argument (The 9 Million Reality)

There are currently over 9 million Israelis. Of those, approximately 7 million are Jewish. About 10% hold more than one citizenship. That means that the overwhelming majority do not.

This matters because a growing narrative in Western discourse assumes Jewish Israelis can simply leave. That we are temporary, transplantable, and ultimately reversible.

Most Israelis were born here, have built their lives here, and “have nowhere else to go.” The common narrative that the “Pro-Palestinian” camp has been building is that Israel is a colonial power that pushed out the Palestinians in 1948. Our current argument is based on the denial of this, and it’s a mistake. Acknowledging that the Palestinian people went through a real tragedy in the 1940s costs us nothing and gains us credibility.

To resolve the refugee crisis of roughly 700,000 Palestinians in 1948, some now advocate policies that would effectively dismantle Israel as a state. In practice, that would mean the displacement or political erasure of up to 7 million people, the largest displacement of people since world war 2 in 2026.

The Misframing Argument (Who Israelis Actually Are)

The argument that Israel is a European colonial project is weakened by the fact that a majority of the population is not European. The “go back to Europe” slogan, which underlies a lot of more politely worded versions of the same argument, falls apart when confronted with the fact that the Jewish people living in Israel are not European.

Roughly half of Israeli Jews are Mizrachi, according to a study published in 2018. However, in Western discourse, Jewish people are often framed as a predominantly European or ‘white’ population, a perception that overlooks the Middle Eastern and North African origins of a large portion of Israel’s Jewish population.

The “Kumbaya” Argument (Good Intentions With Bad Outcomes)

No, we can’t all just get along.

This is the hardest argument to make, because it requires engaging directly with how your audience sees the world. Many in Western audiences are raised to believe that separation between groups is inherently unjust, and that the moral endpoint of any conflict is integration, equality, and coexistence within a single political framework.

So, when presented with the first two arguments, the natural response is simple: Fine. Then let everyone live together in one state, with equal rights.

On paper, this sounds not only reasonable but morally obvious.

The reality, though, is that this plan is dangerously naïve.

A single binational state requires the immediate integration of two populations with opposed national identities, no baseline of trust, and a long history of violence.

In this scenario, it is far more likely to produce instability and violence than the peaceful coexistence its advocates envision.

Power-sharing systems built on unresolved conflicts seldom endure. Take Lebanon, where a power-sharing system built to manage deep communal divisions instead collapsed into a fifteen-year civil war and continues to struggle with instability decades later. Rejecting this model and reminding your opponent about the reality on the ground. A reality they are often unfamiliar with is not a rejection of coexistence. It’s an acknowledgement that coexistence requires conditions that do not currently exist.

So What Needs To Change?

For too long, the pro-Israel argument relied on declarations instead of arguments.

Statements of belief like “we have the right to exist,” “it’s ours” and “history justifies us” do not further us with an audience that thinks in terms of equal rights, equality and perceived oppression.

We need to meet the audience where they are, talk about people, not ideology, acknowledge Palestinian grievances, and actually use it as a tool to increase our legitimacy. Meet the “Pro-Palestinian” slogans with the reality of what they represent.

Because it’s not just a debate, it’s a fight for our own legitimacy.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)