The Western Label: Perceptions of Israel and Their Impact on International Diplomacy
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The article examines how the widespread perception of Israel as a “Western” state shapes international attitudes toward the country and its role in the Middle East. It argues that this characterization overlooks Israel’s deeply regional character, including its large Mizrahi, Sephardic, and Arab populations, and can distort the way Israeli conflicts and diplomatic relations are understood. At the same time, Israel has contributed to this perception through decades of political and cultural identification with the West. The article contends that developments such as the Abraham Accords demonstrate the potential benefits of viewing Israel as an integral Middle Eastern actor rather than as a Western outpost, and argues that a more accurate understanding of Israel’s regional identity could improve diplomacy and regional cooperation.
In the international community, it is widely believed that the governments of nearly all Middle Eastern nations are authoritarian. However, the main exception to this notion is Israel, which has had a democracy since independence was declared in 1948 and is much more accepting of Western values compared to other Middle Eastern nations. The presence of democracy and general freedoms leads Western nations like the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, etc., to believe that Israel is, in fact, a Western nation like them. In some ways, they are correct. Israel holds elections, upholds modern Western societal norms like acceptance of LGBTQ+ people, maintains social systems like universal healthcare and paid long-term maternity leave, and provides connectivity within the country via rail and bus systems. However, when looking at the demographics of Israel, many would be surprised to see that this “Western” nation is made up of many people coming from non-Western countries. Approximately 10 million people are living in Israel as of 2026, with 20% of that population being Arab, which includes Israeli Arabs, Druze, Bedouins, Christians, and others. According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, nearly half of the eight million Jews living in Israel consider themselves to be from Mizrahi or Sephardic backgrounds. This figure could be even larger than it is, as before the 1960s, nearly one million Jews lived in other Middle Eastern nations such as Iran. As a result of the conflict in the Middle East around the formation of the state of Israel, these Jews faced violence and displacement from their homes and, in some instances, were even massacred just for being Jews, like in the Baghdad Farhud that David Rabeeya discusses in his article about Iraqi Jews. This expulsion was even documented by American newspapers like the New York Times, stating in 1948 that the Jews in these areas were in “grave danger” due to the threat of their expulsion. Since many of these Jews died, most immigrants into Israel were from Eastern European nations in the early stages of Israeli independence, portraying Israelis as more “white” than Arab. This predisposition that Israel is a white nation has maintained itself in diplomatic relations today, even as it obscures the reality of the population, which has been deeply rooted in the region itself.
It is this gap between the perception of Israel’s composition versus its reality that causes conflict on the global stage. When Israel is treated as a Western transplant in the Middle East rather than a Middle Eastern state with a majority population of people from the region, diplomatic relationships with its neighbors and the world are shaped by a critical misconception. This misconception plays out in multiple ways. It casts regional conflicts as civilizational clashes between a “Western” transplant and Arab states, rather than disputes between states with intertwined histories. This misconception complicates normalization efforts between Israel and Arab League nations by reinforcing a foreignness that people weaponize across the political spectrum. This weaponization can manifest through critics who say Israel is a colonial state, or through allies who approach Israel as a Western state rather than on regional terms.
Consider how the world discusses conflicts in Middle Eastern states differently. When there are wars in Syria, Iraq, or Yemen, they are portrayed as being political or territorial disputes, yet whenever Israel is involved, it is seen as a clash between Jews and the West versus the sovereignty of the Arab world. Take the example of the conflict between Kurds and Iranians. Both groups have engaged in fighting over the past century over sovereignty and land, yet the Western media and public do not take nearly any notice of the conflict when compared to the attention that Israeli military actions receive when responding to attacks. This is because the Kurdish conflict is seen as a regional spat that does not affect the Western world, when in reality, the Kurdish people are also a stateless nation with thousands of years of history who are being suppressed by Iranians, Turks, and Iraqis. Yet, there is no international outrage about this. However, when it comes to Israel defending itself from terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, it is boiled down in the media as a conflict between states, like the Israel versus Palestine or Israel versus Lebanon notion. And due to the misconception of Israel as a “Western transplant,” conflicts are seen in the metaphor of a big guy beating up a little guy, when that is far from the truth. This metaphor only holds if Israel is truly an outsider to the region, and when considering the demographics of the state, there is a different story. Nearly half of all Jews in Israel are non-Ashkenazi, with their family histories stretching into the Middle East and North Africa long before the founding of the state. This is not an instance of a Western power taking advantage of foreign soil, but of a group of people that have been displaced for centuries, finally reasserting themselves in their homeland. The consequence of this misframing goes far beyond public opinion. Israel has been condemned more times in the United Nations than nearly every other country combined, despite conflicts of similar or greater severity. This is not necessarily because Israel’s actions are worse than others, but because the Western versus Arab narrative causes a level of scrutiny and judgment that regional conflicts, often cast as internal disputes, are not.
Despite the international narrative of foreignness, recent diplomatic efforts have demonstrated that when Israel is approached as a regional actor in the Middle East rather than a Western transplant, normalization is very possible, as shown with the Abraham Accords between Israel, Morocco, the UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan. The Abraham Accords were not signed by these countries for show, but because they stood to gain relations with another Middle Eastern actor. Take the UAE as an example, which has invested in Israeli tech such as desalination plants and defense systems in exchange for Israel having diplomatic support in the region. In this instance, normalization was achieved by Middle Eastern states for their own interests, not as an extension of Western diplomacy. However, this normalization does not always translate into public support within these Middle Eastern nations. Even countries in the Abraham Accords, like Morocco and Bahrain, have extremely high polling numbers of opposition when asked if they would recognize Israel as a state. This divide between state and public reveals something different about the nature of the misconception itself. Normalization agreements are simply signed pieces of paper, and public opinion, especially that of Middle Eastern countries against Israel, takes generations to change, and is even more difficult to change when Israel is viewed from a binary East-West angle, rather than Israel actually being a state with deep Middle Eastern roots.
This gap between diplomacy and public opinion does not exist in a vacuum but is actively exploited today. The “Western” label is not only a misconception, but is a rhetorical title wielded by critics who seek to delegitimize Israel, and by allies who wish to support Israel as an emulation of their own Western state. These viewpoints are only convenient for political fluff and do nothing to justify Israel’s history as a regional character. Critics of Israel use the “Western implant” framing to cast the state as a colonial project like European colonies in Africa and the Americas. Ironically, this framing ignores the fact that half of the Jews in Israel do not come from Ashkenazi backgrounds, and 20% of the state itself is made up of non-Jewish Arab peoples, which has nothing to do with colonial European states at all. Although critics of the Israeli state are loud in their views, allies of the state are also contributing to the false narrative of Israel as a “Western nation.” Western commentators often refer to Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East and make that claim proudly. While this claim is true, this line of reasoning treats Israel as an ideological extension of the West and doesn’t treat Israel as a state within its own regional context or priorities. This can lead to miscommunication in policy, for instance, in diplomacy in the Middle East. Although Israel and the United States are both democratic and close allies, they do not agree on how to solve the conflict in the Middle East, with Israel opting to preemptively deal with threats, and the United States preferring channels of diplomacy. It is differences like these that can lead to policy mix-ups, which could be preventable if Western allies viewed Israel for what it is: a Middle Eastern nation deeply intertwined with Arab history. Critics deny Israel’s right to its own regional identity and its existence. Allies treat Israel as a Western outpost rather than as an independent state with regional priorities and thousands of years of history in the Middle East. This leads to an international environment where Israel is stuck between a rock and a hard place, where everyone treats Israel in ideological terms rather than in terms of its actual standing as a Middle Eastern country.
However, those who think that Israel is a Western country are not incorrect in their assumption. The modern Israeli state has conducted itself in such a way that, to outsiders, Israel does sometimes appear Western. Israel has always prided itself on being the only democracy of the Middle East, participating in Western cultural activities like Eurovision and being a UEFA member for football, and even founding Zionist leaders like Herzl or Ben-Gurion envisioned the state in explicitly Western and European terms. This self-branding continues today, as Israeli officials frequently describe the country as “the only democracy in the Middle East” in diplomatic speeches, and Israeli tourism and trade campaigns often market the country to Western audiences using imagery of tech innovation, nightlife, and secular liberalism rather than its Middle Eastern geography or Mizrahi/Sephardic majority. These actions were necessary to ensure the survival of the state in its early years, as they secured economic, military, and diplomatic support from Europe and the U.S., while today, this same branding helps Israel maintain strategic alliances and appeal to Western tourism and investment. Although this branding can be seen as rooted in Western ideology, it is not necessarily reflective of the demographics or public opinion of the state. These branding decisions, both historic and ongoing, are what cause misconceptions today: the “Western” label reflects political strategy and alliance-building, not the true demographic makeup and public opinion of the state. In other words, Israel’s “Western” image is not simply an outside misconception; it is one that the state itself helped construct. But a label’s strategic usefulness does not make it accurate, and the diplomatic consequences of mistaking branding for demographic reality remain the same
The definition of Israel as a Western nation is a shortsighted one. Common conceptions of Israel overlook the significant Arab population living in the state, as well as the number of Jews who come from Mizrahi and Sephardic backgrounds. This isn’t to say that Israel has not built meaningful connections with the United States and European nations, but shaping the complex nature of the Middle East into an Eastern versus Western or Arab versus non-Arab is a dangerous binary thought process that carries costs across multiple arenas. It recasts regional conflicts as major struggles rather than the political and territorial disputes that they actually are. This is seen when comparing the international coverage of any Israeli military action in the region to actions done by other Middle Eastern actors, like those between the Iranians and Kurds. These misconceptions create a diplomatic environment where Middle Eastern governments can strive to achieve normalization through processes like the Abraham Accords, but they do not actually change public sentiment in those nations or in the Middle East. Finally, it allows for the “Western nation” label to be used by both critics and allies, where the critics use it to challenge and threaten the legitimacy of the state of Israel itself, and allies use it to reduce Israel to a regional ally with no care for Israel’s own priorities in the region. For diplomacy to improve between the West, Israel, and Middle Eastern nations, all parties must move beyond this binary view and acknowledge that Israel has been shaped by millennia of conflict and change, just like its neighbors. Only through this new narrative can conversations about real peace, cooperation, and conflict mitigation be had, not via a narrative meant to serve the agendas of others.
Solomon Nathan is an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Summer 2026 intern at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
Works Cited
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Rabeeya, David (Hikmat). “The Farhud and the Enduring Legacy of Iraqi Jews.” Hebrew Union College, https://huc.edu/news/the-farhud-and-the-enduring-legacy-of-iraqi-jews/. Accessed 2 July 2026
“JEWS IN GRAVE DANGER IN ALL MOSLEM LANDS” The New York Times, 16 May 1948, p. 112. Times Machine, timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1948/05/16/96425356.pdf.
Neuer, Hillel. “UN Condemns Israel 17 Times, Rest of World Combined 6 Times.” UN Watch, 19 Dec. 2024, https://unwatch.org/un-condemns-israel-17-times-6-on-rest-of-world-combined/. Accessed 2 July 2026
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