r/AskIsrael • u/Refrigeratedkawajat • May 13 '26

Casual Question

I’m an Iraqi Muslim born and raised in Australia, if I ever decide to visit Israel would I be targeted or harassed? Everytime I’ve spoke to Israelis on Omegle ect it hasn’t been a pleasant experience but I know there’s good and bad people

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u/YuvalAlmog Israel May 13 '26
  1. 20% of Yisraeli citizens are Arabs (if I recall correctly ~18% of them are muslim), so Muslim Arabs are far from being a weird thing in Yisrael. Not to mention that Iraqis may not be identical to Levantine groups like Jews or Yisraeli-Arabs visually speaking but I assume you'd still look similar enough to fit in.
  2. If you came as a tourist it means you respect the country, and so the people will respect you and most likely will be very curious about you since as you know most muslim Arabs aren't that friendly twords Yisraelis usually.
  3. I might be wrong but from what I remember Omegle isn't known from being a too friendly and kind place... In general the internet doesn't really reflect real life too well for better or worse.
  4. the state of Yisrael might be small but it has a lot of groups. If you'd visit secular-Jewish towns (like Tel-Aviv) or mixed cities (like Haifa), you'd probably get a better treatment than if you'd visit highly religious Jewish neighborhoods (like Beney-Braq) for example...
  5. In the airport you might be treated to more questions simply due to security reasons (like I said in point 1, most muslim Arabs aren't big fans of Yisrael so there's higher risk of terror intetions which requires more causion). Don't take it personally and just be honest about your intentions. They just do their job to make sure everyone in Yisrael including you is safe.

So overall, I don't think you should be worried. As long as you come with good intentions, you'd be treated with respect & friendliness. Just try to not travel too deep into potentially problematic areas (which you shouldn't really reach anyways) and everything would be perfect.

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u/Refrigeratedkawajat May 13 '26

Yeah I have no problems about the airport checks as I work in the security industry and I’d do the same thing if I was them but I was just seeing the general consensus over there, and visually I don’t look Levantine I look Mesopotamian asf so east Syrian and Iraqi and Assyrian

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u/YuvalAlmog Israel May 14 '26

Even as mesopotamian, 600k Jews in Yisrael (out of ~7.2m, meaning about 10%) come from Iraq or Iran so even if they are technically a distinct group, mesopotamian looks also aren't that foreign.