Talk:Criticism of Israel

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Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 21 May 2025

Russian oppositionist, publicist, blogger of socio-political topics Maxim Katz, now living in Israel, assesses the new anti-Israel propaganda as follows:

In modern Russia, a truly unique situation has developed - no one wants to berate Israel. Official Russian propaganda exploits the theme of good Russian-Israeli relations: ‘Israel is good, and very smart, and therefore, unlike the West, which has lost its bearings, wants to be friends with Russia.’ Russian-speaking Israelis are routinely invited to Russian talk shows to praise Russia as if they were Israelis. However, the few independent media outlets that remain in Russia are also reluctant to criticise the Israeli state, for various reasons, including the fact that they don't want to be like the Soviet observers who buzzed their audiences with horror stories about the Israeli military. The modern Russian citizen, being in his information bunker, is not even aware of the monstrous scale and ingenuity of anti-Israeli propaganda in the rest of the world. The Qatari media company Al Jazeera, which broadcasts to the entire planet in both Arabic and English, is particularly successful here. At one time Israel, even though it has no diplomatic relations with Qatar, invited one of the largest Arab TV channels to its territory to show its openness. However, Al Jazeera, on the one hand, engaged in blatant incitement of the Palestinian population, and on the other hand, for the Western viewer, it began to paint a picture of terrible war crimes and crimes against alleged humanity, such as those committed by Israel against the Palestinians. Without exaggeration, for millions of viewers in the West, Israel was likened almost to Nazi Germany. Of course, Al Jazeera is silent about terrorist attacks against Israelis. Moreover, it incites them by inciting hatred among Palestinians. But Al Jazeera is not alone. Anti-Israeli propaganda is a large-scale phenomenon, about which entire academic papers have been written. Many media outlets, social media accounts, and supposedly human rights organisations are working for this propaganda. All this has given rise to a new phenomenon - left-wing anti-Semitism, which has swept the developed Western countries. While anti-Semitism used to be a characteristic feature of nationalists, now Western nationalists, with the exception of the most radical marginalised, mostly avoid anti-Jewish rhetoric in order not to be associated with Nazis from the last century. So it is mainly people of left-wing views in Western countries who are now against Israel. Participants in anti-Israeli rallies and actions in support of Palestinians, which before the pandemic took place regularly in the West, like to emphasise - ‘We are not against the Jews, we are against Israel!’. In practice, however, separating one from the other almost never works. [...] In relation to Israel, such stories of Al Jazeera are thrown in all the time, and unlike Russia Today, Al Jazeera is not a project for cutting state finances, it is a real successful propaganda tool that has a serious impact on the Western audience. This has led to a surprising effect - the democratic state of Israel, economically developed, with a developed legal system, independent courts, free media, a representative parliament, where a significant faction of Arab residents of Israel, and in general all the signs of an advanced Western democracy, is perceived by people in Western countries almost hateful country.

Чупчік927 (talk) 22:10, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Day Creature (talk) 00:29, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

I would just like to add this quote to the article, because it describes the current anti-Israeli sentiment quite well. and there is no way to add a more reliable source, because this quote was said in the video, and it seems to have not been used by other media. Чупчік927 (talk) 11:39, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

The quote is way too long to be added to the article, and it is from a YouTube video, not a reliable source. Day Creature (talk) 21:44, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

References

Essay vs Article

Is this an Essay or an Article? 39.40.52.102 (talk) 13:16, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

It's an article. You can tell this from the namespace it is allocated to in the database, which is namespace 0. If it were an essay, it would be in namespace 4. Wikipedia:Essays is an essay about essays, and it too is in namespace 4. I hope that addresses your question. For future reference, this article is covered by WP:ARBECR so edit requests should follow the WP:EDITXY guideline. Sean.hoyland (talk) 13:25, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

‘Responses to criticism’ vs ‘Claims of bias and disproportionate attention on Israel’

I find the last two sections of this article to be slightly confusing/repetitive in the way they are laid out. Most of the last section, ‘Claims of bias […]’, seems to be covering what could be called responses to criticism, and indeed the ‘Responses to criticism’ section has two different subsections covering ‘claims of bias’, one of which specifically covers bias on the part of the UN, while there is also subsequently a UN subsection under the ‘Claims of bias […]’ section… Hopefully you see what I mean. I’m not sure what is substantially different about most of the info in the last section that it couldn’t just be part of the section above. Could they be combined? Perhaps with a separate heading for the ‘disproportionate attention’ part? Sorry if this has been discussed before, and please feel free to disagree! Just seems like it could really use some tightening up… Gravelove (talk) 08:29, 21 June 2025 (UTC)

"Anti-Israel" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Anti-Israel has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 September 7 § Anti-Israel until a consensus is reached. Sandro1041 (talk) 05:50, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

"Isnotreal" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Isnotreal has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 December 5 § Isnotreal until a consensus is reached. Thepharoah17 (talk) 00:11, 6 December 2025 (UTC)

Requested move 22 February 2026

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: No consensus to move * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:35, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

---

Criticism of Israel → Criticism of the State of IsraelCriticism of the State of Israel – In a previous RM, this article was moved from Criticism of the Israeli government to the present title, on the rationale that it discusses criticism of the whole state, including its government, judiciary and parliament, as well as the changing governments. However, Criticism of Israel is still an unusual and contentious title, as Israel refers to an entire nation and its people, not just its state. State of Israel would be more precise and neutral. It'd also be in line with the related Legitimacy of the State of Israel, which was moved from Legitimacy of Israel on grounds of NPOV.

P.S. I'm not endorsing/defending Israel or anything, I'm just proposing a more neutral and precise title. 9ninety (talk) 06:47, 22 February 2026 (UTC) — Relisting. Jeffrey34555 (talk) 04:52, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME إيان (talk) 07:44, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

It's a descriptive title, not a name. 9ninety (talk) 08:04, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Jewish history, WikiProject Judaism, and WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration have been notified of this discussion. TarnishedPath^talk 04:57, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

• I'm probably in the minority here, but I'll die on the hill that this type of article shouldn't really exist at all. "Criticism of X" articles, no matter how valid the criticism of X is, make it look like we are taking a side. We don't have any "Praise of X" style articles. This type of information can be included in Israeli apartheid, Legality of Israeli settlements, Legality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, Palestinian genocide allegations, and others, all of which contain descriptions of Israel in a largely negative light but do not define their scope to focus solely on these kinds of descriptions. You can think Israel is the worst country in the world and still find this article strange: I doubt anyone thinks we need a "Criticism of Nazi Germany" article because the negative things Nazi Germany did are already widely discussed in other articles, as is the case here. Anyway, I don't expect to get much support given that this is a move discussion and not a deletion one, but that's my opinion. — An anonymous username, not my real name 15:30, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

  This is a great suggestion, yes. Definitely worth voicing out. No precedents exist for an article like this as it is indeed unencyclopedic. _signed, Kvinnen (talk) 23:54, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

  There are plenty of precedents, from Criticism of Google to Criticism of Islam to Criticism of Wikipedia and so on. You can search "Criticism of" in the main wiki search and find 10s or even 100s more. None of those pages make it look like we are taking a side, they document criticism of the subject. Smallangryplanet (talk) 15:01, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

  @Smallangryplanet, yes other stuff exists. Can you show me articles where we praise topics? — An anonymous username, not my real name 17:21, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  I was responding to a specific comment about there being no precedents for a "Criticism of..." article, not making an Other Stuff argument. There are precedents. Feel free to debate if those articles should exist on those talk pages. The existence or non-existence of Criticism or Praise articles is immaterial. Smallangryplanet (talk) 17:49, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  I agree with An anonymous username, not my real name. Delete this article. Articles like Israeli apartheid, Israeli war crimes etc are more specific and focused. Or maybe make a WP:CATEGORY for criticism of Israel for easy navigation, but this article is redundant.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 16:38, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  I will admit, this is an excellent point- the aforementioned articles are more specific and focused. KneeHallHawk (talk) 17:24, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Support - The new title would help separate the ancient Israel from the modern State of Israel. Guz13 (talk) 01:01, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

• Support Would help disambiguate between criticism of the modern country and the people. Agnieszka653 (talk) 22:42, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

  Agnieszka653 please explain. إيان (talk) 18:10, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose. The proposed title doesn't really disambiguate from the historical state of Israel, and I don't see why anybody would take the current title to mean it includes criticism of the Israeli people. –CWenger (^ • @) 00:05, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

  It does disambiguate from historical/ancient Israel, which is never referred to as "the State of Israel". Whether or not such disambiguation is necessary is another matter. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 00:09, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

• Support- Per WP:TITLECRITERIA, article titles should be precise and unambiguous. “Israel” has multiple meanings (ancient polity, people, geographic region), whereas “State of Israel” clearly refers to the modern sovereign state. The proposed title better reflects the article’s scope. ScottyNolan (talk) 13:57, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

  I concur with this point. One could potentially misinterpret the article as one of the aforementioned topics. KneeHallHawk (talk) 13:58, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

  If this were an issue, Israel would redirect to Israel (disambiguation) إيان (talk) 16:44, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

  To solve this, we could add a disambiguation to the top of the page. KneeHallHawk (talk) 16:57, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose - there's precision and then there's precision, you know? One point that Wikipedia:TITLECRITERIA makes is that consistency is important, and we don't make a differentiation like this in any other "Criticism of..." articles I can find. For example: Criticism of Google does not specify that it is referring to specific Google employees, or functions of Google, because we trust the reader to understand that the article does not metonymically refer to every single Google employee throughout all of time, it refers to criticism of Google the entity. We are being precise when we say that this is an article about Criticism of Israel because that is what it is about. If we did make this change, we should then make a corresponding change to other, similar articles - Criticism of Google would become Criticism of the Corporate Policies of Google and so on. I can't remember the name of the shortcut for this off-hand if indeed there is one but I don't think we should change things on here to protect ourselves from a theoretical bad-faith misinterpretation. Smallangryplanet (talk) 20:30, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

  • Support and reply

  Your analogy presents a false equivalency. There are not many interpretations that an individual, assuming they possess common sense, can conceive of when they look at something named Criticism of Google. At its core, it unambiguously refers to Google the company. Whereas "Israel" as pointed out by many above can refer to ancient or modern Israel, and, people or government ( which is only a small subset of the people of Israel).

  Whereas the short description per se clearly outlines that the criticism pertains to "disapproval towards the Israeli government".

  I also find the rationale behind the closing of the previous RM the way it did to be somewhat strange. The judiciary, parliament, the government are all elements of the State of Israel, last I checked, these are not private institutions operating outside of the state machinery. A title such as " Criticism of the Israeli government" or "State of Israel" is perfectly comprehensive and representative of what the article is about rather than the status quo that is providing undue weight to components that have nothing to do with what the article is about. _signed, Kvinnen (talk) 00:20, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

  A lot of the critique involves settlers. It’s not just the people elected to government. إيان (talk) 01:50, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

  Which is criticized as a part of Israeli state policy. _signed, Kvinnen (talk) 01:54, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

  Citation needed. إيان (talk) 01:55, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

  The following cited excerpt from the article.

  "The participating High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, numerous UN resolutions, the International Court of Justice and other instances have ruled that Israel's policy of establishing civilian settlements in territories considered occupied, including in East Jerusalem, is illegal. Israel disputes the notion that the West Bank and in particular East Jerusalem are occupied under international law, though this view is dismissed internationally."

  Besides it is descriptive in nature. WP:SKYISBLUE needs no citation. _signed, Kvinnen (talk) 02:00, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

  That's really not very convincing against the reasoning put forward by Smallangryplanet. Again, if Israel were ambiguous, it would point to Israel (disambiguation). إيان (talk) 15:47, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

  I answered a similar comment a while ago- this could be resolved by referring to Israel (disambiguation) at the top of the page. KneeHallHawk (talk) 17:22, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

  I would argue that There are not many interpretations that an individual, assuming they possess common sense, can conceive of when they look at something named Criticism of Google. At its core, it unambiguously refers to Google the company is exactly the point I am making. Criticism of Israel unambiguously refers to Israel (the country). I don't think we should make changes here based on a theoretical worst-faith interpretation. Smallangryplanet (talk) 19:03, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

  Respectfully, they aren't exactly the same- as someone pointed out earlier, "Israel" has many meanings, while Google, as you said, unambiguously refers to the corporation. KneeHallHawk (talk) 12:20, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

  Google does not unambiguously refer to the corporation. Google (disambiguation) makes that perfectly clear. But at any rate, I'm not sure I buy the argument that we ought to change the title of the article because someone might think it refers to, for example, the Bee Gees song. We have Criticism of Islam and I don't think anyone is making the case that it might accidentally refer to one of these individuals. Smallangryplanet (talk) 17:22, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

  Fair point. KneeHallHawk (talk) 17:24, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

  You are just refuting a straw man at this point. "At its core" it refers to Google the company, but that does not make it unambiguous when you take it outside of its vacuum and refer to the contents of what is at Google (disambiguation). Whereas "Israel" does not still refer to any one thing as I and several others have pointed out. _signed, Kvinnen (talk) 21:34, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

  You can try proposing a page move at Israel and then if that passes we can discuss moving this page. إيان (talk) 05:32, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  I concur- this was the point I was trying to make. KneeHallHawk (talk) 12:26, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  The first sentence of the article makes it perfectly clear what the article is about, so even if someone were to come to this from the title alone wondering if it's about something else, they would be immediately corrected.

  Israel has faced international criticism since its establishment in 1948 relating to a variety of issues, many of which are centered around human rights violations related to the Nakba and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

  But, sure, why not. I'll add a see also to the top of the page just in case people get confused. Smallangryplanet (talk) 16:39, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:CONSISTENT (as expanded in WP:CONSUB), "Israel" means the current "State of Israel" on Wikipedia as it is at the article Israel, so this sub-topic should be consistent with the parent. DankJae 20:46, 3 March 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose, two different things. Yes it's subtle, but both topics are heavily documented on their own. State of Israel is ambiguous and refers mostly to the nation created post WW2. Criticism of Israel is a whole, and would also cover the idea of a jewish country as a reason for criticism. The way it is right now is fine, and it gets unnecessarily specific when the topic is only on the State of israel. Global Donald (talk) 15:51, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

  Criticism of Israel is a whole, and would also cover the idea of a jewish country as a reason for criticism That's outside the scope of this article, and we have both anti-Zionism and Legitimacy of the State of Israel for that. This article is very clearly is about the post-WW2 State of Israel and its actions, policies and government, rather than about the idea of a Jewish state in Israel. 9ninety (talk) 10:54, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

  +1 Smallangryplanet (talk) 16:32, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:CONCISE and WP:CONSISTENT, since the main article is just "Israel". Rreagan007 (talk) 18:23, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Should we include a section discussing criticism of the government for granting generous subsidies to Haredi communities and previously exempting them from mandatory IDF service?

This article does not include any mention on controversies related to how Israel often gives generous benefits to Haredi communities: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/article-886994

Haredi men were formerly exempted from the draft and this was a major source of tension for a long time. Many Haredi men today now criticize the state for requiring mandatory IDF service. When considering that this article's former title was Criticism of the Israeli government, I think that this deserves a mention. SnappyDragonPennyroyal (talk) 08:44, 19 March 2026 (UTC)