“Not like everyone else”
“We are not like everyone else, and that is why the laws that apply to everyone else do not apply to us.” That was a sitting member of Israel’s Knesset, on camera. He is not a fringe figure, and the sentiment is not fringe: it runs through the government’s posture toward international law and through a large share of Israeli-Jewish opinion.
The quotes and the polling are graded FACT. That they reflect a mainstreamed ideology of exemption — not a slip — is graded PROBABLY TRUE. Read §0 first: this documents a political ideology and specific statements, not Jews as a people or Judaism, and we reject the antisemitic version of this claim outright.
A political ideology and a set of statements — not a people.
This page documents a specific political idea: that Israel, or the Jewish people as a national-religious collective, is not bound by the laws that bind other nations and is entitled to preferential status over non-Jews. We establish it two ways only — through the on-record words of named Israeli officials, and through mainstream opinion polling of Israeli Jews. That is the whole evidentiary basis.
What this is not: it is not a claim about Jews as a people, about Judaism as a religion, or about Jewish communities outside Israel. The antisemitic trope — that Jews collectively believe themselves a master race entitled to rule over others — is a lie and a driver of real violence, and we reject it without reservation. Documenting that a Knesset member said a supremacist thing, or that a survey found a troubling attitude among Israeli Jews, is the opposite of that trope: it is specific, sourced, and bounded, and it includes the large numbers of Israeli Jews who reject these views. Criticism of an ideology held by a government and measured in a population is not hatred of the people who hold, or reject, it.
What this page argues
In September 2026, video circulated of Hanoch Milwidsky — a sitting Likud member of Israel’s Knesset — telling a session, in the plainest possible terms, that Israel is exempt from the rules that bind others: “We are not like everyone else, and that is why all the laws that apply to everyone else do not apply to us.” He grounded it in a religious claim — “the Jewish people are born a high people” with “a duty to create here a land of miracles and virtue” — and dismissed the views of international diplomats in favor of religious authority. The clip was translated and shared by the Israeli historian Shaiel Ben-Ephraim and reported by Middle East Monitor.
The reason this is worth a page is that it is not one backbencher having a bad day. The same logic — that the laws binding other states do not bind Israel — is the operating posture of the government toward international law. When the International Court of Justice ruled in July 2024 that Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian territory is unlawful, and when the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and his former defense minister in November 2024, Israel’s response was not to contest the facts on their merits but to reject the courts’ authority outright — Netanyahu calling the warrants “antisemitic” and denying that any international body has jurisdiction over Israel.
And it is not confined to the government. In its 2016 survey of Israeli society, the Pew Research Center found that 79% of Israeli Jews agreed that Jews deserve preferential treatment in Israel, and 48% agreed that Arabs should be “expelled or transferred” from the country (46% disagreed). Those are not fringe numbers; they describe a plurality or majority of a national public. Taken together — a Knesset member’s open declaration, the state’s rejection of international courts, and mainstream polling — they document a current of exemption and preferential status that is woven through Israeli political life, not a stray remark.
We grade the quotes and the poll numbers FACT. We grade the conclusion that they add up to a mainstreamed ideology — rather than isolated outbursts — PROBABLY TRUE, because that is a judgment about pattern and prevalence, and because it is genuinely contested inside Israel: nearly half of Israeli Jews reject the expulsion view, hundreds of thousands have marched against the government, and Israeli human rights groups have been among the sharpest critics of exactly this thinking. Documenting the current is not the same as saying every Israeli, or any Jew, holds it. It is saying: this is said out loud, by people in power, and believed by many — and a world that lets one state place itself above the law it demands of everyone else should know that.
We are not claiming that Jews, or Judaism, hold that they are above the law — that is an antisemitic falsehood we reject. We document statements by named Israeli officials and findings from surveys of Israeli Jews, and we carry the large share who disagree. We are not attributing these views to Jewish communities in the U.S. or elsewhere.
We are not asserting that every Israeli, or a monolithic “Israeli society,” believes this — Israeli politics is bitterly divided, and much of the sharpest opposition to these ideas is itself Israeli and Jewish. And we are not claiming the religious concept of chosenness inherently means supremacy; the subject here is a political deployment of that concept to claim exemption from law, made by a specific lawmaker, not a statement about a faith.
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“Not like everyone else.”
'We are not like everyone else, and that is why the laws that apply to everyone else do not apply to us' — a sitting member of Israel's Knesset, on camera. Not a fringe figure, and not a fringe sentiment: it runs through the government's posture toward international law and a large share of Israeli-Jewish opinion.
The lawmaker, the government, the public — and the pattern.
A sitting Knesset member said, on camera, that the laws binding other nations do not bind Israel.
FACTIn September 2026, video circulated of Hanoch Milwidsky, a Likud member of the Israeli Knesset, telling a session: 'We are not like everyone else, and that is why all the laws that apply to everyone else do not apply to us.' He grounded the exemption in a religious claim — 'the Jewish people are born a high people' with 'a duty to create here a land of miracles and virtue' — and urged deference to religious authority over the views of international diplomats. The remarks were captured on video, translated and shared by the Israeli historian Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, and reported by Middle East Monitor. Milwidsky is a sitting legislator in the governing party, not a fringe activist.
The current cabinet says it out loud: the two most powerful ministers under Milwidsky's own coalition.
FACTThis is not a backbench problem. Two of the most powerful ministers in the sitting government hold the views on the record. Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, is a self-described 'proud homophobe' — Haaretz headlined a 2023 interview with him 'I'm a Fascist Homophobe, but I Won't Stone Gays'; in 2016 he defended segregating Jewish and Arab women in hospital maternity wards, saying it was natural his wife would not want to lie beside an Arab mother (Times of Israel); he organised a 2006 anti-gay 'Beast Parade' against Jerusalem's Pride march (Haaretz); and he has called for the state to carry out 'reprisal' operations against Palestinians (Haaretz). Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, built his career as a disciple of Rabbi Meir Kahane — whose anti-Arab program (banning Jewish–Arab intermarriage, mass expulsion of Palestinians) was judged so extreme that Israel barred Kahane's Kach party from the Knesset under its own anti-racism law and the United States listed it as a terrorist organisation. Ben-Gvir was convicted in 2007 of incitement to racism and supporting a terrorist organisation (Kach), and for years kept in his home a portrait of Baruch Goldstein, the settler who murdered 29 Palestinian worshippers in Hebron in 1994. These are their own records and their own words — not an inference drawn from anyone's religion.
- Haaretz — 'Israel's Far-right Finance Minister: I'm a Fascist Homophobe, but I Won't Stone Gays' (Jan 16, 2023)
- Times of Israel — 'Lawmaker backs segregated Jewish-Arab maternity wards' (Smotrich, 2016)
- Haaretz — Smotrich's call for state 'reprisal' operations against Palestinians
- Haaretz — Smotrich and the anti-gay 'Beast Parade' against Jerusalem Pride
- The Jerusalem Post — 'Ben-Gvir convicted of inciting to racism' (2007; also supporting a terrorist organisation)
- The Conversation — Ben-Gvir's Kahanism and the Baruch Goldstein portrait
And it did not start with them: officeholders on the record, across more than a decade.
FACTThe sentiment is older than this government. In December 2013, Deputy Minister of Religious Services — and later deputy defense minister — Rabbi Eli Ben Dahan told the newspaper Maariv that 'a Jew always has a much higher soul than a gentile, even if he is a homosexual.' In July 2014, then-Knesset member Ayelet Shaked — later Israel's justice minister — posted on Facebook, approvingly, an article by the late settler writer Uri Elitzur declaring that 'the entire Palestinian people is the enemy' and justifying its destruction; the post drew international condemnation. In 2012, Interior Minister Eli Yishai said of migrants that most 'do not even believe that this country belongs to us, to the white man' (Haaretz). In 2009, Housing Minister Ariel Atias said it was not 'appropriate' for Jews and Arabs 'to live together' and that the 'spread' of the Arab population 'must be stopped' (Haaretz). In a 2004 New Yorker profile, Moshe Feiglin — later a Likud deputy speaker of the Knesset — said 'you can't teach an Arab to be democratic' and that 'the Arab destroys everything he touches.' And the same holds for a state-appointed office: Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, the government-salaried chief rabbi of the city of Safed, said in 2011 that 'Arab culture is very cruel… [Arabs] use different codes and violent norms that amount to an ideology' (Haaretz) — after leading a rabbis' ruling against renting homes to Arabs. The rule for this list is the one that survives scrutiny: anyone who held public office, or led a political party, and said these words in earnest belongs — including when the framing is religious, as with Deputy Minister Ben Dahan or a state-appointed municipal chief rabbi. What we set aside are only the quotes from private clergy, activists, or religious texts by people who neither held office nor led a party, because there the subject would drift from politics into theology — which is not what this page is about.
- +972 Magazine — Deputy Minister Eli Ben Dahan: 'a Jew always has a much higher soul than a gentile' (Dec 2013; originally Maariv)
- Haaretz — Interior Minister Eli Yishai on migrants and 'the white man' (2012)
- Haaretz — Housing Minister Ariel Atias: spread of the Arab population 'must be stopped' (July 2009)
- The New Yorker — 'Among the Settlers' (May 31, 2004): Moshe Feiglin on Arabs and democracy
- Haaretz — Safed chief rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu (state-appointed municipal office); the attorney general's probe of his remarks (2011–2012)
- Institute for Middle East Understanding — 'Fanning the Flames of Hate: Israeli Officials in Their Own Words' (2014 compilation; aggregator, sources traced to their original outlets)
It was not only elected officials: the spiritual heads of governing-coalition parties said it too.
FACTSome of the most explicit statements came from the religious authorities who directed entire coalition parties — men whose rulings were, in practice, those parties' policy. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef — the founder and supreme spiritual leader of Shas, which sat in Prime Minister Netanyahu's government from 2009 to 2012 — said in a 2010 sermon that 'goyim [non-Jews] were born only to serve us… They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat,' likening the purpose of non-Jews to that of a work animal. The sermon was reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and condemned by Jewish organizations in the United States and Israel. We include Yosef under the same rule, and with a caution stated plainly: this is not a claim about Judaism — most rabbis and most Jews reject this reading, and Jewish groups said so at the time — but about the political boss of a governing party, whose word was that party's law. A party leader's doctrine is a political fact; a private congregation's is not.
At the state level, that exemption is policy: Israel rejects the authority of international courts over its conduct.
FACTThe same logic operates as government posture. In July 2024 the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion finding Israel's continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory unlawful and its policies in breach of the international prohibition on racial segregation and apartheid. In November 2024 the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over the conduct of the Gaza war. Israel's response in both cases was to reject the courts' jurisdiction rather than answer the findings on the merits — Netanyahu denounced the ICC warrants as 'antisemitic' and denied that any international tribunal has authority over Israel. Whatever one thinks of the rulings, the response embodies the exact claim: the laws that apply to everyone else do not apply here.
It is not only the leadership: mainstream polling shows the belief is widely held among Israeli Jews.
FACTThe 'how many' question has a data-backed answer. In its 2016 study 'Israel's Religiously Divided Society' — a major survey of Israeli society — the Pew Research Center found that 79% of Israeli Jews agreed that Jews deserve preferential treatment in Israel, and that 48% agreed with the statement that Arabs should be 'expelled or transferred' from Israel, while 46% disagreed. The findings were widely reported by mainstream outlets including Reuters, VOA, and the Times of Israel. These are attitudes among Israeli Jews specifically, measured in a rigorous poll; they show that preferential status for Jews is a majority view and that expulsion of Arabs is a view held by roughly half — not a fringe.
Put together, this is a mainstreamed ideology of exemption — not a set of gaffes.
PROBABLY TRUEThis is the synthesis, and because it is a judgment about pattern and prevalence it is graded as a strong inference. A single quote could be dismissed as one hardliner; a single poll as a snapshot. But the same claim recurs at every level and across more than a decade — open declarations from a line of officials from Knesset members to cabinet ministers, a government that rejects the jurisdiction of the world's highest courts over its conduct, and a national public in which preferential status for Jews is the majority view. That convergence is what turns isolated statements into a documented current: the belief that Israel is exempt from the rules it and its allies demand of everyone else. We grade it PROBABLY TRUE, not FACT, and we carry the genuine dissent: 46% of Israeli Jews rejected the expulsion view, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have marched against their government, and some of the fiercest critics of this ideology are Israeli and Jewish.
The line this page walks, on purpose.
The slur we refuse: that Jews, as a people, believe themselves superior and above the law. That is antisemitism — a collective libel, false, and historically a pretext for murder. Nothing on this page asserts it, and the framing box at the top says so plainly.
The ideology we document: that a specific set of Israeli officials, and a measurable share of the Israeli-Jewish public, hold that the state is not bound by the laws binding others and that Jews merit preferential status. The difference between the slur and the documentation is the difference between an essence and an evidence file. One assigns a belief to millions by birth; the other quotes named people and cites a named poll, and counts the dissenters too.
Why the distinction has to be loud: because the ideology itself relies on blurring it. The move Milwidsky makes — and the move a government makes when it calls a war-crimes court “antisemitic” — is to fuse the state with the entire Jewish people, so that any scrutiny of the state’s exemption can be recast as an attack on Jews. That fusion is the subject of our companion page, The Conflation. Refusing it is how you criticize a government’s claim to stand above the law without indicting a people — which is exactly what this page sets out to do.
Where a religious authority also ran a party: we include him. When Ovadia Yosef led Shas or Eli Ben Dahan sat in the cabinet, their words shaped a government, and a government’s conduct is our subject. But we still refuse the leap from “this party leader said it” to “Judaism teaches it” — that leap is the antisemitic move itself. The test is office or party, not faith: a private rabbi’s sermon is theology and stays off the page; a coalition boss’s ruling is politics and belongs on it.
A law that binds everyone except one is not a law.
This belongs in Israeli Influence because the exemption is not self-executing — it requires a guarantor. Israel can reject the ICJ and the ICC, and treat the laws of war as optional, only because the United States shields it: with the vetoes that stop the Security Council, the weapons that keep the war supplied, and the diplomatic cover that answers “war crime” with “antisemitism.” An ideology of exemption in Jerusalem is underwritten by policy in Washington, which is why an American accountability project has to document it.
It sits with In Their Own Words, which records how Israeli officials described Gaza and its people after October 7, and with Colonization, by Its Own Name, which traces the movement’s self-description back to its founding. The through-line is not about who Jews are; it is about a state that says, out loud, that the rules are for other people — and the difference between a rules-based order and its absence is whether that claim is accepted or refused.
Questions worth taking seriously
Isn't documenting this just antisemitism with footnotes?
Isn't 'chosen people' just a religious idea, not supremacy?
Why lead with a poll from 2016?
If you are named on this page
If you are named on this page, or are a party materially affected by the claims made here, and you wish to respond, correct the record, or add context, use the Contact page. Responses are published verbatim alongside the original claim, with the sender identified and the date of receipt. The channel stays open for the life of the page.
This site aggregates and grades a record that other outlets and primary sources have already put on the record. Every FACT-graded claim above is sourced to court filings, government reports, sworn whistleblower disclosures, published investigative journalism, or named-source statements. The citations are the accountability mechanism; this section is how you get on the record too.
Named officials, a world court, and a mainstream poll.
Every claim on this page grades to one of FACT · PROBABLY TRUE · SOME SMOKE · PURE SPECULATION · FALSE / MISLEADING. Milwidsky’s on-record remarks, Israel’s rejection of the ICJ/ICC, and the Pew 2016 figures are graded FACT. The conclusion that these amount to a mainstreamed ideology of exemption is graded PROBABLY TRUE, carried with the substantial Israeli-Jewish dissent. Milwidsky’s quotes are drawn from a video of his Knesset remarks, translated by historian Shaiel Ben-Ephraim and reported by Middle East Monitor; a mainstream Israeli confirmation would strengthen the record further and we will add one if it surfaces.
- Middle East Monitor (Sept 17, 2026), via Israel-Palestine News — Hanoch Milwidsky’s Knesset remarks, with the source video shared by historian Shaiel Ben-Ephraim
- Pew Research Center — “Israel’s Religiously Divided Society” (March 8, 2016): preferential treatment and expulsion attitudes among Israeli Jews
- Reuters — “About half of Israeli Jews want to expel Arabs, survey finds” (March 8, 2016)
- International Court of Justice — advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s policies in the occupied Palestinian territory (July 19, 2024)
Full method: Methodology. Home hub: Israeli Influence.
Last updated September 21, 2026. Likud Knesset member Hanoch Milwidsky’s on-record remarks that the laws binding other nations do not apply to Israel; Israel’s rejection of the July 2024 ICJ advisory opinion and the November 2024 ICC arrest warrants; and the Pew Research Center’s 2016 findings (79% of Israeli Jews say Jews deserve preferential treatment; 48% agree Arabs should be expelled or transferred, 46% disagree) are graded FACT. The conclusion that these amount to a mainstreamed ideology of exemption, rather than isolated statements, is graded PROBABLY TRUE and carried with the substantial Israeli-Jewish opposition. This page documents a political ideology and specific statements — not Jews as a people or Judaism as a faith — and it rejects the antisemitic trope of collective Jewish supremacy without reservation. If a detail is wrong or a link 404s, tell us and we’ll fix it publicly.