On the eve of the third anniversary of October 7, Israel’s National Security Council has issued an exceptional warning to Israelis and Jews abroad, claiming an increased danger of attacks by Iran, its allies, Hamas and
“global jihad”
organizations.
Israelis have been told to conceal travel plans, avoid demonstrations, refrain from revealing military service online and even limit speaking Hebrew in crowded places in certain countries. Travel to Jordan, Qatar, Somaliland and Egypt — including Sinai — is strongly discouraged.
There may be genuine security threats, and attacks against Israeli or Jewish civilians anywhere in the world should be condemned without hesitation.
But there is another dimension to this messaging that deserves examination.
Israel increasingly presents a world angry at Israeli policy as a world threatening Israelis.
Protests against the occupation, demonstrations over Gaza, opposition to Israeli military operations and anger over settlements are repeatedly placed in the same public-security narrative alongside terrorism, Iran and jihadist organizations.
That distinction matters.
A person demonstrating against Israel is not automatically an antisemite.
A government criticizing Israeli policy is not supporting Hamas.
And opposition to occupation is not terrorism.
Yet politically, collapsing these categories together has a powerful effect: Israel once again appears principally as the threatened victim, while the reasons millions of people are protesting Israeli policy disappear into the background.
And the international atmosphere has undeniably changed since October 7, 2023.
A Pew Research Center survey published in June 2026 found that majorities in most of the 36 countries surveyed held an unfavorable view of Israel, while confidence in Benjamin Netanyahu was also extremely low. In the United States itself, Pew found that attitudes toward both the Israeli government and Israeli people have become substantially more negative compared with the years before the Gaza war.
That transformation did not happen simply because Israel suddenly became bad at public relations.
It followed years in which the world watched Gaza devastated, tens of thousands of Palestinians killed, mass displacement, expanding settlements and an increasingly confrontational Israeli political leadership. Three years after October 7, even reporting from major Western outlets acknowledges the enormous gulf between the Israeli perception of permanent existential threat and the international focus on Palestinian suffering.
In demonstrations and political movements across different countries, Israel is increasingly described by its harshest critics as a “terrorist state.” Israel’s image has deteriorated dramatically.
The danger now is that Israeli authorities interpret this global rejection almost entirely through a security lens: if people protest Israel, they are dangerous; if governments pressure Israel, they are hostile; if activists confront Israeli officials abroad, Israel is again being
“targeted.”
This risks turning legitimate international opposition to occupation and military policy into an endless security confrontation with the outside world.
And ultimately, ordinary Israelis should ask a difficult question:
Can an entire planet really be becoming hostile for no reason — or is Israeli state policy producing consequences that security warnings and accusations of antisemitism can no longer conceal?
Jewish civilians must not be held responsible for the actions of the Israeli government.
But neither should the rest of the world be treated as a security threat simply because growing numbers of people refuse to remain silent about occupation, Gaza and Palestinian rights.