Israel Battering as Political Escapism

Europe’s crisis of confidence gives unpopular leaders a powerful incentive to change the subject. When voters doubt a government’s ability to improve their lives, an international confrontation offers another stage on which to appear decisive. Condemning Israel can supply the moral authority that domestic performance no longer provides. The danger is that outrage becomes a substitute for governing.

The public disillusionment is measurable. In September 2026, an Ifop survey found just 17 per cent of French respondents satisfied with Emmanuel Macron. Germany’s ARD-DeutschlandTREND put satisfaction with Friedrich Merz at 13 per cent. These are separate national surveys, rather than a common European ranking, but both reveal how little confidence two major leaders command. Low popularity does not prove cynical motives. It does make the temptation to seek authority elsewhere easier to understand.

When Emmanuel Macron spoke about Israel at the United Nations, his fist striking the lectern turned the intervention into a performance of anger verging on rage. The scene recalled the famous, disputed story of Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe at the UN. For a president struggling to command confidence at home, such theatrical indignation offers the appearance of strength. Yet the violence of a gesture cannot substitute for the effectiveness of a policy. However hard Macron strikes the lectern, France’s economic difficulties and his own crisis of public confidence remain.

My argument is that this fixation on the only Jewish state represents a politicised revival of millennia-old antisemitism: turning Jews into an all-purpose explanation for wider crises and directing public anger away from those responsible for governing. Israel did not design Europe’s tax systems, obstruct its capital markets or decide its migration policies. Yet attacking Israel offers beleaguered leaders a ready-made target while their own failures escape scrutiny. The accusation is one of scapegoating: repackaging the old reflex of blaming the Jews in contemporary political language, so that Europe debates the Jewish state instead of demanding answers from its own governments.

Pedro Sánchez has built a different political identity around humanitarian leadership, including outspoken pressure on Israel and a comparatively welcoming approach to immigration. He has made Spain a prominent advocate of regularisation: in April 2026, his government approved an extraordinary programme initially estimated to cover around 500,000 potential beneficiaries already living in the country.

Belgium offers a smaller but revealing example of how symbolic disputes absorb institutional attention. After months of debate, VRT confirmed its participation in Eurovision 2027, explaining its decision through concerns about Gaza, the contest’s values and changes within the European Broadcasting Union. Its announcement insisted that participation did not imply approval of events in Gaza. Even entering a song contest had become an exercise in geopolitical justification.

The controversy invites a question about proportion. How much moral and editorial energy should a broadcaster devote to the presence of an Israeli performer? Cultural exclusion produces visible gestures. Explaining how to improve Belgian competitiveness or repair public finances demands more patient work. An institution’s priorities are revealed partly by which questions receive sustained scrutiny, and by how readily a symbolic dispute becomes a test of everyone’s moral credentials.

This is where the distinction between criticism of Israel and antisemitism becomes indispensable. Criticism of Israeli policy, including severe criticism, is legitimate. Antisemitism enters when Jews are held collectively responsible, when Jewish citizens must prove their innocence through political declarations, or when hostility to Israel revives fantasies about Jewish power. Political escapism becomes especially poisonous when public anger is redirected towards a minority whose citizenship should never be conditional.

The danger does not require proof that every leader privately holds antisemitic beliefs. It can arise through political tolerance of prejudice when that prejudice appears useful. A government claiming to defend universal rights must protect Jewish life with the same conviction it brings to Palestinian suffering. Selective compassion weakens the principle on which both depend.

A related temptation appears in the debate over artificial intelligence. The subjects are fundamentally different, but the political mechanism can be similar: anxiety about domestic failure is redirected towards a highly visible external force. When leaders portray technology primarily as a threat, they can avoid explaining why Europe has struggled to create the conditions in which its own technology businesses flourish.

Stanford’s 2026 AI Index describes a frontier still dominated by American and Chinese model producers, with the performance gap between the two countries narrowing sharply. Europe cannot secure its place merely by criticising the companies that lead the race. Effective safeguards matter, particularly where security and children are concerned. But safeguards need to accompany the capital, computing infrastructure and commercial opportunities that make European participation possible.

Europe already has a diagnosis of its weaknesses. The Draghi report identified an additional annual investment requirement of roughly €750–800 billion. A subsequent European Parliament study highlighted enduring problems including fragmented capital markets, insufficient investment in innovation and high energy costs. These are structural obstacles to growth. Blaming AI cannot remove them, just as condemning Israel cannot make a European factory more competitive.

Taxation makes this failure of priorities especially tangible. Eurostat reported that taxes and net social contributions reached 40.4 per cent of EU GDP in 2024, with France and Belgium both above 45 per cent. That ratio alone does not establish that tax rates rose. But France’s extension into 2026 of an exceptional levy on large-company profits provides a concrete example of governments continuing to extract additional revenue while promising an economic revival.

Instead of finding a cure for Europe’s economic weakness, unpopular leaders too often reach for another levy. Loading new taxes onto an economy struggling to invest can be like putting stones on a drowning man. Each stone may come with a respectable explanation: an urgent budget gap, a temporary emergency, a worthy spending commitment. The weight still accumulates. Businesses have less room to expand, households have less room to save, and the promise of recovery becomes harder to believe.

The consequences reach beyond one election. If symbolic conflict keeps replacing reform, public frustration can deepen and give anti-system parties stronger arguments. Economic dependence may increase as ambitious businesses seek better conditions elsewhere. And if hostility to Israel spills into suspicion of Jewish neighbours, Europe damages its own democratic life while neglecting political failures at home. These are risks of sustained evasion, not inevitable outcomes.

Europe’s future will depend on whether its leaders recover the discipline of governing. A denunciation cannot finance a pension. A boycott cannot raise productivity. Another tax cannot, by itself, create the prosperity it claims to redistribute. The public deserves a programme of recovery substantial enough that its authors no longer need a foreign controversy to make them look effective.