The 'Normalization' of Israel

Israel is a normal country. It is following a global trend: the steady drift of liberal democracies toward authoritarianism, especially after major security shocks.

Defenders of Israel often argue that it is unfairly singled out for criticism. That claim is not without basis—Israel has received disproportionate attention for religious, historical, and geopolitical reasons. Many Jewish people interpret this as proof of enduring anti-Semitism.

But there is another way to look at it. We can accept that Israel is a special country and we should expect more of it, especially the Jewish people. Founded in the shadow of genocide, built as a democratic refuge for an historically persecuted people, Israel represents a higher moral standard, and therefore expecting more from our ancestral homeland should be a point of pride for Jewish people. Instead, many Israelis and Jews seem to want Israel judged by the standards of a “normal” country.

And in that sense, they have succeeded. Israel is behaving as other democracies have under similar circumstances.

The U.S. after 9/11 is the most obvious comparison. October 7th has been called Israel’s 9/11, but on a far greater per-capita scale—equivalent to 40,000 American deaths in one day. The American response to its terrorist attack was swift and transformative: the Patriot Act, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and two decades of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. In retrospect, many analysts see this as the moment the U.S. began its slow erosion of civil liberties and expansion of executive power.

The same pattern has emerged elsewhere:

Turkey (2016): After the failed coup, President Erdoğan used emergency powers to purge over 100,000 civil servants, shut down media outlets, and rewrite the constitution to expand presidential authority.

Hungary (2010–present): Viktor Orbán’s government used the migrant crisis and later COVID-19 to justify sweeping powers, weaken judicial independence, and rewrite election laws.

India (post-2019): Security fears following the Pulwama attack and border clashes with China have coincided with curbs on dissent, tightened control over media, and controversial laws targeting minorities.

The dynamic is consistent: war and national emergencies accelerate authoritarian measures. The process is self-reinforcing—security crises demand extraordinary powers, which in turn lower the threshold for further conflict. Wars of defense can morph into wars of choice; necessary reactions slide into dangerous overreactions. Once the cycle begins, it is very hard to reverse.

Seen through this lens, Israel is not uniquely flawed nor uniquely virtuous. It is moving along a well-trodden path, one shared by other democracies in moments of perceived existential threat. The tragedy is that Israel, with its moral history and democratic ideals, could have been an exception. Instead, it risks becoming just another “normal” country in the worst sense of the word.

History rarely forgives nations that squander their highest ideals. For Israel, the true danger is not defeat by its enemies, but becoming indistinguishable from them. The measure of a “normal” country should not be how quickly it abandons its principles in the face of fear, but how stubbornly it defends them when they are most inconvenient to keep.