I remember a conversation in Karachi in which Gaza came up over tea. The discussion began with Israeli policy. Then someone said, almost casually, “They are all the same.”

No one needed to ask who “they” meant.

That small shift matters. A government can be criticised for its decisions. Ministers can be challenged over policy, military commanders over conduct, and institutions over their actions. But when responsibility moves from identifiable actors to Jews as a people, political criticism has become collective blame.

That is not a defence of any Israeli government. It is an argument for precision.

The Evidence Shows Why the Distinction Matters

Antisemitism remains a serious problem well beyond Israel.

In the United States, the Anti-Defamation League recorded 6,274 antisemitic incidents in 2025. That was 33 percent below the 2024 total, but still the third-highest annual figure in the organisation’s records. Physical assaults reached a record high. The ADL also reported that 45 percent of the incidents it classified as antisemitic in 2025 contained elements related to Israel or Zionism.

Those numbers need careful interpretation. The ADL is an advocacy organisation with its own methodology, and debates exist over how Israel-related speech should be classified. Its audit also includes both criminal and non-criminal incidents. It should therefore not be treated as identical to police hate-crime statistics.

Europe provides another window. The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights reported in 2026 that 96 percent of respondents in its latest survey had encountered at least one form of antisemitism during the year before the survey. The underlying survey was conducted from January to June 2023, so it predates the Hamas-led attack of 7 October and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza.

One finding is particularly relevant to collective responsibility. In the FRA survey, 75 percent of respondents said people held them responsible for actions of the Israeli government because they were Jewish.

That is the distinction my Karachi conversation exposed in miniature: a dispute about a state can spill into assumptions about people who neither made its decisions nor necessarily support them.

A Jewish Person Is Not a Government

Israel describes itself as a Jewish state. Many Jews around the world feel a religious, historical, familial or political connection to Israel. Others have sharply different relationships with Zionism and Israeli governments.

None of this makes Jews outside Israel collectively responsible for decisions taken by the Israeli cabinet, parliament, military or other state institutions.

The same principle should be familiar in other contexts. Citizenship, ancestry and religion do not automatically transfer responsibility for a government’s conduct to every person who shares an identity associated with that state.

Accountability becomes meaningful only when we identify who exercised authority, what decision was taken, and what evidence connects that actor to the outcome.

Criticising Israel Is Not Automatically Antisemitic

This is where the discussion becomes more difficult.

People sometimes respond to concerns about antisemitism by arguing that the label is being used to silence criticism of Israel. That concern cannot simply be dismissed. There is genuine disagreement over where political criticism ends and antisemitism begins.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition says criticism of Israel comparable to criticism directed at other countries cannot in itself be regarded as antisemitic. Its illustrative examples also identify holding Jews collectively responsible for Israel’s actions as antisemitic.

Some scholars and civil-liberties advocates argue that aspects of the IHRA framework can be interpreted too broadly. The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, developed by scholars in antisemitism and related fields, offers an alternative framework.

The Jerusalem Declaration explicitly treats evidence-based criticism of Israel as non-antisemitic in itself. It also says that holding Jews collectively responsible for Israel’s conduct, or treating Jews simply because they are Jewish as agents of Israel, is antisemitic.

The two frameworks disagree on important questions surrounding Israel and Zionism. On this point, however, they converge: Jewish identity does not make an individual responsible for the Israeli government’s conduct.

Precision Also Protects Palestinian Advocacy

This distinction matters for Palestinians and their supporters as well.

Arguments about civilian casualties, settlements, occupation, humanitarian access, military operations or the conduct of Israeli officials can be examined on their evidence. International law provides mechanisms for evaluating the conduct of states and individuals.

Replacing those arguments with hostility toward Jews does not strengthen the Palestinian case. It changes the subject.

Instead of asking whether a particular policy is lawful or whether an official should be held accountable, collective blame turns a political dispute into an identity conflict. That makes careful argument harder and gives critics of Palestinian advocacy an opportunity to portray legitimate political criticism as prejudice.

A rigorous argument should not need antisemitic assumptions to make its case.

The Problem With the Phrase “They Are All the Same”

Collective blame works by removing distinctions.

It treats a Jewish shopkeeper in London, a student in New York and a family attending a synagogue in Berlin as extensions of a government thousands of kilometres away. Their own political opinions become irrelevant.

This is one reason the old accusation of dual loyalty remains dangerous. It assumes that Jewish citizens have a political allegiance determined by their identity rather than by their own choices.

History gives us many examples of minorities being treated this way. Once individuals are viewed primarily as representatives of a suspect group, personal responsibility starts disappearing from the argument.

That is precisely when political language requires more discipline, not less.

Anger Does Not Remove the Need for Evidence

The Israel-Palestine conflict produces powerful emotions for understandable reasons. Israelis have experienced terrorism, hostage-taking and war. Palestinians have experienced displacement, military occupation, destruction and enormous civilian suffering.

Recognising one population’s suffering does not require erasing the other’s.

Nor should grief become a licence to assign inherited guilt.

If an Israeli minister makes a statement, quote the minister. If a military unit is accused of misconduct, examine the evidence concerning that unit and its chain of command. If a government adopts a policy, identify the government and policy.

“The Jews” tells us almost nothing about any of those questions.

Collective Blame Is Also Politically Ineffective

There is another reason to reject collective guilt: it obscures the people who actually possess power.

Governments act through institutions. Policies are written by officials and implemented through bureaucracies. Military decisions have command structures. Courts, legislatures and international bodies have defined responsibilities of their own.

If the objective is accountability, those are the structures that must be examined.

Blaming an unrelated Jewish family in Europe or the United States does nothing to clarify who authorised a military operation, approved a settlement policy or negotiated a ceasefire position.

Collective guilt can feel politically forceful because it simplifies a complicated conflict into a moral binary. In practice, it sacrifices analytical accuracy.

The Test I Now Use

I return to that conversation in Karachi because the sentence has stayed with me.

“They are all the same.”

It is an easy sentence. It removes the need to distinguish governments from citizens or institutions from identities. It also removes the burden of evidence.

I now think there is a useful test whenever a discussion about Israel moves toward Jews as a group.

Who actually made the decision we are criticising?

If we can name the official, institution, government or organisation, we can discuss responsibility. We can examine evidence and challenge policy.

If the answer becomes simply “the Jews,” we are no longer describing political responsibility.

We are assigning guilt by identity.

That does not make criticism of Israel stronger. It makes it less precise at exactly the moment precision matters most.