How Should the World Treat the Good Citizens of Nations that Have Gone Bad?

This piece ran as a newspaper op/ed in early July, 2026.

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We Americans who care about what our nation is supposed to be, and who recognize that our nation has become in the eyes of the world, are deeply embarrassed. (Embarrassed enough that people talk — maybe seriously — about saying they are Canadians if asked while traveling in Europe, in the nations who used to be our best friends.)

But they also know that a great many of us utterly reject how our nation has conducted itself under its current President: demeaning and threatening Canada as our “51st state,” threatening to seize by force territory belonging to our dear NATO ally Denmark, bombing boats near Venezuela in violation of law, and launching a bizarrely reckless as well as illegal war that has cost everybody on the planet a good deal.

And so the Europeans will probably never trust this country again to the extent we used to be trusted. How can you trust a nation that could make so catastrophic a mistake as to make a man like this the most powerful man in the world? But we Americans will not be treated as pariahs, despite the terrible damage our nation has inflicted on itself and the rest of the world. People will distinguish between our political breakdown and the great, decent, and creative nation we’ve always been and still are.

Our artists continue to be welcomed around the world.

That contrasts in a perhaps telling way with how some Israeli artists — who passionately oppose the fascistic, war-mongering government that has been calling the shots in their country — have been treated, especially since Hamas’s atrocious October 7 attack and the devastating Israeli response that followed.

Israel is like the United States in that it has become an evil and destructive force on the world stage, with terrible decisions being made by Netanyahu and a coalition that includes formerly un-includable fascist extremists. But it also contains a large segment of the population yearning to bring down its rulers and lead their nation in a better direction– much as the millions of Americans who attended “No Kings!” rallies expressed their yearning for better leadership to begin repairing the widespread damage that Trump has wrought.

Among that segment of Israelis are artists who have eloquently opposed the ugliness into which their nation has descended.

But it seems that some elements of the Western cultural world—which are willing to distinguish between our ugly President and the Americans who oppose him—are not equally willing to distinguish between the ugly direction Israel has taken and the Israelis struggling to lead their nation back toward something better.

Recent articles [e.g. LINK Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid withdraws from Marseille festival after boycott controversy and LINK Opinion | Some Leftists Are Boycotting This Film. Everyone Should Watch It. – The New York Times] have described a disturbing pattern in the cultural world. Israeli artists who have been among the strongest critics of Netanyahu and of the ugly direction their country has taken are nevertheless being subjected to campaigns of ostracism and exclusion. Israeli creatives passionately opposed to the evil being done in their nation’s name are increasingly being treated as though they themselves embody that evil.

Why would there be that difference? We make a hero over Navalyi, though he is a Russian and Russia under Putin is an evil/destructive power. The Europeans would not tar Bruce Springsteen with Trump’s crimes. Why are these artists, who oppose the ugly force (the worst part of Israel) that now rules their country, being kicked out to make them, as well as their nation, an international pariah?

Is it because Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians has been far from exemplary for a long time? Certainly there is much to condemn. But the history suggests that both peoples have contributed substantially to the tragedy that has unfolded. So why do some elements of the Western cultural world treat the story as though all the wrongdoing belongs on one side?

(And we see other peoples suffering oppression as bad or worse — Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya, or China’s treatment of the Uyghurs — without those oppressor nations being the objects of anything like the same degree of antagonism.)

Is it because much of the world denies Israel’s right to exist? But why would that be, when Israel can legitimately claim to be the only nation created by a collective decision of the world community, which voted to partition that land into two small states, one Jewish and one Palestinian?

The Israeli conduct may be ugly now, but one would expect fair-minded people to combine their legitimate condemnation of Israeli policy with some compassion for the repeated traumas that have shaped the Israeli response to the continuous threats to which their nation has been subjected.

So why are these Israeli artists not treated like Navalny or Springsteen — whose nations have also gone bad, and who have also shown commitment to turning their countries onto a more righteous path? One is left with the sense that involved in the case of Israel is some kind of hatred powerful enough to obliterate essential moral distinctions. xxxxx BTW, the piece could stop there.