I write to you this week from Jerusalem, a city I am visiting for the first time in 12 years.
Despite all of the warnings of the city’s dramatic changes, I find myself relatively at home — although it took me a good three to four minutes to deduce where I was after exiting the new (well, new to me) Yitzhak Navon train station. What struck me overwhelmingly is how little the rest of the world knows about Israel, especially those who vociferously critique it, many of whom have their information second, third or fourth hand.
Do they know that were they to board a train from the airport they would sit across from Arabic-speaking hijabi women, religious and secular IDF soldiers, and chasidic men?
Words like “genocide” and “apartheid” are bandied about, but anyone using “apartheid” to describe Israel has clearly never been to Israel. One might debate ease of access and bias, but apartheid? A systemic division of citizenry across all facets of life based on race?
If one spends but a moment in Jerusalem he or she would realize how erroneous the “apartheid” label is. One change I have noticed is more Arabic-speaking people in Jerusalem’s city center, in cafés, on the streets and elsewhere. It is actually laughable to slur Israel this way and, ironically, disrespects the achievements of Arab Israelis.
Next time someone calls Israel “genocidal” or “apartheid,” I propose responding with a simple question: What is apartheid? I wonder how much people even know about the various terms they employ.
A former professor of mine at the LSE warned us against using emotive adjectives to describe socio-economic conditions. For example, instead of “exploitation,” detail the conditions of the working poor in Victorian England. It’s easy to call Israel genocidal and apartheid, but do the people leveling the accusations even understand them?
Ahead of Israel’s invasion of Rafah in 2024, there was an image created and widely shared online and elsewhere, “All eyes on Rafah.” It was being used everywhere, almost as if it were a marketing logo, as if it were the Olympic Games or Sunday Night Football. How many people had even heard of Rafah a day prior?
And how many think of Rafah today? World events have been reduced to a form of entertainment, where the audience is handed a script for the interactive show.
How the world “sees” Israel — or Palestinians for that matter — is simply not the reality. Though I never doubted that, being back is the gut check I didn’t know I needed.
Shana Goldberg may be reached at shana@ijn.com
© IJN 2025
