To ask where someone stands on Israel is to ask where they stand on power, on trauma, on narrative, on who gets to be human—and who does not. It is not just about geopolitics. It is not even just about Palestine. It is about everything. A barometer, indeed, because the Israeli-Palestinian situation is a microcosm of global injustice: settler colonialism, militarism, racial supremacy, and sacred texts twisted into justifications for walls and weapons.
Someone’s attitude toward Israel tells you: can they hold complexity? Can they acknowledge Jewish suffering without weaponizing it? Can they recognize Palestinian humanity without being accused of hate? Can they see beyond the propaganda, the slogans, the inherited guilt?
You see, Israel is not merely a country. It is a mythological construct. For some, it is the final stand of a persecuted people, a divine promise fulfilled. For others, it is a high-tech apartheid regime cloaked in the language of democracy and survival. Both of these realities coexist—and if someone can only see one, if they erase the other, they’re telling you something profound about their lens.
If they defend Israel unconditionally, regardless of how many children are buried in Gaza rubble, it tells you they have sanctified the state over the soul. It tells you their morality is tribal, not universal. It tells you they fear truth, because truth threatens their myth.
If, however, they can mourn both the Jewish past and the Palestinian present, they’re telling you something else: that they understand trauma can’t justify trauma. That history doesn’t confer moral immunity. That the victim can become the perpetrator unless they awaken.
This is why the Israel question is a litmus test—not because of the region’s uniqueness, but because it demands you choose between empathy and ideology. Between seeing with the eyes of the wounded, or retreating into inherited dogma.
And in this, it reflects all things: war and peace, justice and memory, who we protect, and who we are willing to forget.
So yes, ask someone about Israel. Listen closely. You will hear not just their opinion on a nation, but the architecture of their conscience.