Anyone passing the Chamber of Deputies in Prague cannot miss the large Israeli flag at its entrance, which MPs raised after the terrorist attack committed by Hamas last year. Nearly 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, fell victim to this unprecedented attack. More than two hundred individuals were kidnapped as hostages, with approximately one hundred still remaining in captivity.

Expressions of condolence and solidarity were absolutely natural in the first moments after such a tragedy, and few questioned the displays of unconditional support for Israel. However, few also assumed that this unconditionality would be taken quite literally and that uncritical Czech support would continue even after more than 45,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, lost their lives in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government’s retaliatory action. For comparison: the pro-Israeli Jewish Virtual Library, operated by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, estimates that between 1920 and 2022, approximately 25,000 Israelis and over 90,000 Palestinians fell in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Forensic Architecture (FA), a research group at Goldsmiths, University of London, led by Israeli architect Eyal Weizman, estimates based on publicly accessible image and satellite data that by September 2024, over 74 percent of civilian infrastructure in Gaza had been destroyed. Gaza is devastated, and the population of the occupied strip is starving due to the imposition of an almost complete blockade, exacerbated by attacks by Israeli armed forces on international humanitarian organisations, of which FA had recorded more than three hundred by 16 September 2024 (including, for example, the attack on the World Central Kitchen on 1 April 2024, during which seven of its workers died). UNRWA, the UN organisation on whose distribution network the vast majority of aid in the region depends and from whose ranks nearly two hundred humanitarian workers have fallen victim to Israeli attacks according to FA, was even banned by Israel on 28 October 2024 and designated as a terrorist group (a move criticised by many countries, including the strongly pro-Israeli United States).

This decision comes less than three months after Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s statement that Israel allows humanitarian aid into Gaza (in however limited quantity) only because the international community “would not allow two million civilians to starve to death, even though it would be justifiable and moral”. As the offensive still shows no sign of ending—on the contrary, it has meanwhile expanded beyond Gaza to Lebanon and the West Bank—families of Israeli hostages captured by Hamas are increasingly critical of a war without a clearly defined achievable goal, which in their view only reduces the likelihood of their loved ones returning. This criticism has further intensified after revelations that associates of Prime Minister Netanyahu allegedly knowingly allowed outdated and debunked information about Hamas’s plans to leak in order to undermine public support for a ceasefire, which would have included the return of the kidnapped Israelis.

In such a situation, the proud raising of the Israeli flag and expressions of unconditional support for the Netanyahu government’s actions are incomprehensible. It testifies not to support for the affected families, but only to a highly uncritical attitude towards Israel (or rather Israeli nationalism). This is not an isolated incident, nor is it a position held only by the Czech political representation. Equally uncritical are significant cultural institutions, where such a one-sided and unsympathetic attitude is perhaps even more surprising. For example, the National Theatre until recently displayed the Israeli flag alongside the Ukrainian flag, creating a rather misleading comparison between Ukraine’s effort to repel the Russian invasion and the brutal Israeli offensive (both flags were replaced by Czech flags during preparations for the 17 November celebrations).

Such strong societal support for Israel is unique in the international context—even in the United States, which is its main military sponsor, the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is much more controversial than in the Czech Republic, as this year’s protests at American universities and their suppression by police demonstrated. How is it possible, then, that the majority of Czech society, including political and cultural elites, lives in an alternative reality in which Israel deserves our support absolutely unconditionally, even during the brutal siege of Gaza, which UN experts describe as genocide?

The Myth of Czech Exceptionalism

A fundamental reason for this blind support is the affinity of political myths on which both countries are based. Both myths stem from the motif of a small, isolated and constantly threatened bastion of civilisation, surrounded by hostile forces seeking its destruction. Let us first look at the Czech version of this narrative. The basis of the Czech myth of exceptionalism comes from the History of the Czech Nation in Bohemia and Moravia (1848-1872), the life’s work of politician and founder of Czech historiography František Palacký. Palacký’s magnum opus interprets the history of the Czech kingdom as a dialectical process driven by interaction between the original Slavic population and the German population that began to settle in this region in the 13^th century. In this work, we also find for the first time the characterisation of the Czech nation as a people who are inherently peace-loving and democratically minded.

Through gradual development (and distortion), this motif eventually became a central part of the Czech national myth, particularly closely associated with the period of the First Republic, according to which Czechoslovakia was a torch of freedom and Western democratic values in Central and Eastern Europe—precisely because of the natural peacefulness and democratic tendencies of its dominant nation, the Czechs. First Republic mythology constantly emphasised this narrative. For example, author Karel Čapek called Czechoslovakia an “island of democracy”, whilst Edvard Beneš, as leader of the London based exile government, spoke of it in 1941 as a “democratic state that was able to maintain its democratic regime until the end, even at a time when it was already surrounded on all sides by dictatorships and semi-dictatorships”.

Such statements were not entirely unfounded; nevertheless, examinations by historians Andrea Orzoff and Mary Heimann question their credibility and show that they conceal deep systemic deficiencies similar to those observed in other young democracies of that region, including the German Weimar Republic. These deficiencies include, among other things, a weak and ineffective parliament, strong antisemitism, and a system under pressure from growing tensions between various national minorities who lacked adequate political representation. Therefore, although Czechoslovakia was relatively successful by post-Habsburg standards, a certain similarity with its neighbours, as well as a considerable continuity between the First and Second Republics, shows that there was not much exceptional about the Czechs themselves. Paradoxically, Czechoslovakia’s founder -president Tomas G. Masaryk himself, despite the significant role he played in shaping the myth of exceptionalism, confirmed this analysis with his statement: “Well, we’ve got democracy now, we just need some democrats.”

The Myth of Czech-Jewish Friendship

Nothing strengthened this dangerous belief in Czech exceptionalism as much as the Second World War, which seemed to confirm the extraordinary peacefulness of the Czech nation. The first significant establishment of relations between Czechoslovakia (represented by Beneš’s government-in-exile) and the international Zionist movement, which can be dated to this period, significantly contributed to this conclusion. It is during the war that both actors begin to intensively promote narrative parallels between the Czech and Jewish fates—parallels that are emphasised in Czech-Israeli mythology to this day. As Martin J. Wein convincingly shows in his book The Slavonic Jerusalem, this identification allowed Czechoslovakia to present itself not as a collaborationist state (despite a significantly low level of open resistance to Nazi occupation compared to Poland, for example, and the openly pro-Nazi orientation of the independent Slovak State), but as an unambiguous victim of German aggression. Identification with the Jews gave Czechoslovakia the necessary martyrdom narrative (including Jews in undifferentiated statistics of Czechoslovak victims of occupation increased their number approximately tenfold), while it brought the Zionist movement the desired support of an officially recognised government, which moreover embodied a precedent for establishing a new nation-state.

This support paid off for Israel particularly in the years 1947 to 1949, when Czechoslovakia (at the behest of the Soviet Union and despite the American embargo) played a key role in the secret arming of the Jewish Agency (later the Israeli government) before and during the Nakba (i.e., the violent expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians, of whom approximately 15,000 died) and the first Israeli-Arab war. During the years 1952 to 1989, Czechoslovakia was forced to take a pro-Palestinian position due to a change in Soviet foreign policy. That this was not out of conviction, however, was shown by the considerable improvement in relations with Israel during the Prague Spring, ended by the Soviet occupation in August 1968. After the fall of the communist regime and the departure of Soviet troops, Czech society returned to its traditional pro-Israeli position, which remains one of the key points of Czech foreign policy to this day.

The Beneš Decrees and Their Long Shadow

In the context of the Second World War, this Czech-Jewish narrative only further deepened the alleged moral gulf between Czechs and Germans, thus strengthening the application of the principle of collective guilt, by which the criminality of Nazi supporters was projected onto the entire nation. In the words of Beneš from May 1945: “This nation has ceased to be human at all in this war, has ceased to be humanly tolerable and appears to us now only as a single great human monster. We have said to ourselves that we must definitively liquidate the German problem in the republic.” Thus began one of the still most taboo episodes of modern Czech history.

Beneš’s infamous decrees led to the deprivation of citizenship and property of most German-speaking inhabitants (including German-speaking Jews!), who were subsequently expelled from their homeland as foreigners—sometimes after years spent in slave labour in concentration camps (including Terezín) originally used by the Nazi regime. Others were killed in often very brutal mass murders organised by Czech-speaking inhabitants. In total, approximately three million people were expelled (about a third of the pre-war population of Czechoslovakia) and about 15 to 30 thousand people died. Even eighty years after these events, the areas worst affected by displacement show considerable backwardness compared to the rest of the republic in socio-economic indicators and in the level of general education, thus becoming a breeding ground for various extremist and often xenophobic anti-system movements.

Despite the magnitude of this tragedy, the last survey conducted on this topic by the Centre for Public Opinion Research (CVVM) in 2019 revealed that 41% of respondents considered this terrible event to be just, and conversely, only 13% of respondents were of the opinion that the Czech Republic should at least apologise for this event; an equally low percentage of respondents then agreed that the Beneš Decrees, which are still part of Czech law, should be abolished.

The myth of exceptional Czechs, a chosen nation in the midst of a sea of human monsters, which led to this post-war genocide, strengthened by the myth of Czech-Jewish friendship, thus still justifies these cruel events as “appropriate” self-defence for a significant part of the population, thereby also demonstrating the power it still holds over Czech national consciousness. It remains a prism through which the Czech nation views its history and on which it also relies in trying to navigate the present.

The Myth of Exceptional Israel

The same prism of exceptionalism, associated with similar rhetoric, is commonly used in the context of Israel—with the difference that its basis comes not from Palacký, but from the Old Testament. Moreover, it is applied to the current political situation perhaps even more frequently than in the Czech case. A textbook example of this mythological framework, with all the figures we have already seen in the Czechoslovak version of the myth, was provided by current Prime Minister Petr Fiala in an interview from 2018: “Israel is an island of freedom in the Middle East. The only truly democratic state, which is moreover civilisationally and culturally very close to us. It is waging a fight for us too, for our security and for our values.” This rhetoric almost exactly corresponds to the imaginary dichotomy between exceptionally peace-loving and democratically minded Czechs (forming an “island of freedom”) and demonic Germans who threaten the country from within and without. New in Fiala’s statement is the motif of “civilisation”, significantly less emphasised in the case of current assessments of modern intra-European conflicts. The dichotomy of exceptionalism thereby gains a new dimension, contrasting civilised and uncivilised people, of whom the latter are dangerous and need to be controlled.

This motif has long appeared in Israeli and Zionist narratives, beginning with the work of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism. Already in his work The Jewish State (1896), he writes about the proposal for the settlement of Palestine by Zionists: “For Europe we would there form a part of the rampart against Asia, we would serve as the vanguard of culture against barbarism.” This new contrasting opposition between free and civilised Europe and subjugated and despotic Asian barbarism is itself part of the orientalising rhetoric that for centuries justified the subjugation of indigenous inhabitants by European colonial powers, which were portrayed as saviours coming to fulfil their civilising mission.

The idea of civilisational affinity thus reveals the close connection of Zionism to European colonialism—a connection that has been analysed and described in detail by a number of authors, including Edward Said, Rashid Khalidi, and the wave of Israeli “new historians” who have been challenging the traditional Israeli narrative since the 1980s based on newly accessible archival documents. This colonialist dimension, of course, has no direct equivalent in the Czech version of the myth and is specific to the Israeli situation. However, as Fiala’s statement shows, thanks to its dichotomous structure, it integrates very easily with the shared mythical imagery.

Like the Czechoslovak myth, the Israeli myth also justifies the continuing dehumanisation and demonisation of “non-exceptional” people. Beneš’s words about a “great human monster” could just as well have been uttered by an Israeli politician, especially in the current situation. For example, in a now-famous interview from 2013, Eli Ben-Dahan, then Deputy Minister of Defence in Netanyahu’s government, declared that for him, Palestinians are “like animals, they are not human beings”. Amir Ohana, the current Speaker of the Israeli Knesset, who received a warm reception in Prague from Prime Minister Fiala and the chairs of both chambers of parliament in July this year, said of Muslims that they are inclined to “cultural murderousness”, thereby justifying his view that Israel should be an exclusively Jewish state. Let us also recall the recent statements by the Israeli Finance Minister about the morally defensible starvation of Palestinians, which we mentioned above. Or the words of Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant from last autumn: “I have ordered a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Nothing will get through. We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly.”

Such statements and the actions that flow from them should be clearly condemned by Czech politicians, especially when we see the terrible consequences of this long-term dehumanisation in real time. Instead, applause for Netanyahu’s government emanates from parliament, accompanied by expressions of anger towards international organisations that try to hold it accountable under international law—whether Czech politicians questioning the legitimacy of the International Criminal Court in The Hague (of which the Czech Republic is a member) for issuing an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Gallant, or the absurd proposals of Defence Minister Černochová for the Czech Republic to leave the UN because its General Assembly calls for a ceasefire in Gaza.

If Czechia is to stop acting as a tool of Netanyahu’s propaganda in the EU and UN and take a principled stance not only towards Hamas’s terrorist attacks but also towards Israel’s unacceptable conduct in Palestine, which is a prerequisite for contributing to any long-term sustainable peaceful solution, it must overcome its uncritical attitude towards the Israeli myth of exceptionalism. This task is hindered by the fact that Czech society recognises its own imaginary past in the imaginary presence of Israel: a supposed island of democratic freedom and civilisation surrounded by barbaric forces of evil.

At least some Czech representatives are aware of this comparison and explicitly invoke it—including Miloš Zeman, who, while still Prime Minister in 2002, during a visit to Israel, compared Palestinian National Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat to Adolf Hitler and recommended the transfer of Palestinian inhabitants following the example of the Czechoslovak transfer of Germans; he proposed the same “solution” again in October 2023 (since 1998, based on the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, forced transfer has been considered a crime against humanity). For other Czech representatives, this identification is more subconscious. It is certainly no coincidence that Ephraim Kishon, a well-known Israeli writer, once stated that “Israel is the only country that understands Czechoslovakia, and conversely, only the Czech nation fully understands Israelis”. However, it is not, as Prime Minister Fiala would like to claim, the result of some civilisational affinity (a concept from which we learn more about Fiala himself than about Israel or Palestine), but the result of a mythological affinity that these two nations decided to establish for historically self-interested reasons. It is precisely this mythological affinity from which stems that unconditional support, often expressed through passionate speeches defending Israeli ethnic cleansing.

Therefore, if we want to rid the current Israeli situation of its naive mythological accretion, we must do the same with our own past. We must finally recognise that the tragic events of the post-war years were not a commendable effort to restore an exceptional democratic state of the naturally peace-loving Czech people, but a genocide whose victims were our fellow citizens who had lived here in relative peace for centuries. As the current crisis shows, overcoming historical nationalist mythology is not just the interest of archivists and historians without broader social impact, but an urgent and fundamental task that we must undertake if we are to avoid the traps consciously or unconsciously set by countries whose governments, based on their own versions of these myths, carry out systematic repression or even genocide—traps in which current Czech society is caught. As long as we remain faithful to myths of exceptionality and cannot stand up to the violence they incite, we have blood on our hands.

Jan Preiss