FEATURE: Why A Raging Greek Antisemite Stopped Hating Israel | WATCH

In a world where entrenched beliefs often seem unshakeable, the story of a Nikos Sotirakopoulos who transformed from a fervent antisemite to a passionate defender of Israel offers a powerful testament to the potential for change. Now in his early 40s, Sotirakopoulos has shared a deeply personal account of unlearning hatred, driven by intellectual curiosity, exposure to historical facts, and admiration for Israel’s resilience.

A Dark Past Rooted in Prejudice

Until age 28, he consumed by antisemitism, steeped in conspiracy theories and lies about Jews and Israel. “I spread every lie and every conspiracy theory about Jews,” he admits, recalling his immediate suspicion after 9/11 that Mossad was involved. Growing up in Greece, a country he describes as rife with antisemitism across the political spectrum, he absorbed a worldview where Jews were scapegoated for global woes. By 21, he was reading *The Protocols of the Elders of Zion*, a notorious antisemitic forgery, initially disappointed by its debunked status but reassured by the publisher’s claim that its conspiracies were unfolding in reality.

His prejudice deepened during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, when he sought out anti-Israel protests while on vacation in Crete, driven by a “fear of missing out” on opportunities to vilify Israel, despite knowing little about Lebanon, Hezbollah, or the conflict’s roots. By 2010, his Facebook profile featured a cartoon of Israel as an octopus strangling its neighbors, a classic antisemitic trope he embraced without hesitation. Moving to the UK, he collected pamphlets praising Hamas’s “pragmatic” leaders, like Ismail Haniyeh, whom he later saw celebrating the October 7, 2023, attacks from Qatar.

Reflecting on his mindset, he attributes his antisemitism to a mix of personal and cultural factors. In Greece, leftists viewed Israel as an imperialist outpost, while the far-right and even religious households blamed Jews for historical grievances, such as the crucifixion of Jesus. As a member of the Communist Party’s youth wing, hating Israel was “part of the package.” A 2001 poll revealing that 25% of Greeks justified the 9/11 attacks and only 4% supported U.S. retaliation, lower than in Pakistan, illustrates the anti-American, anti-Israel climate that shaped him. He saw Palestinians as modern-day freedom fighters, akin to Greeks under Ottoman rule, idolizing figures like Faris Odeh, whose iconic image throwing a rock at a tank adorned his bedroom wall.

Yet, he confesses, his passion was rooted in ignorance. “I knew absolutely nothing about the conflict,” he says, unable to distinguish between the West Bank and Gaza or Hamas and Hezbollah. His support for Palestinians was less about their welfare and more about fueling his hatred for Israel, a mindset he now recognizes as bigoted and intellectually lazy.

The transformation began around 2013, when cracks appeared in his leftist worldview. Discovering the Austrian School of Economics and Ayn Rand’s objectivism offered a positive, humanistic perspective absent in his Marxist roots. Initially, his libertarian leanings kept him skeptical of Israel, as many libertarians view it as a U.S.-backed aggressor. But intellectual curiosity led him to question his assumptions. “What if I’m wrong about Israel, too?” he wondered, prompting a dive into the conflict’s history.

A pivotal moment came when a Jewish friend gave him *A Durable Peace* by Benjamin Netanyahu, written decades before the politician’s current prominence. Initially dismissing it as propaganda, he was stunned by facts he’d never encountered. Israel’s small size, 65 kilometers wide on average, and just 16 without Judea and Samaria, revealed its existential vulnerability, challenging his view of Israel as a Goliath. Learning that five Arab armies invaded Israel in 1948, that the UN’s 1947 partition plan offered Palestinians a state they rejected, and that Arab states controlled the West Bank and Gaza before 1967 without creating a Palestinian state upended his narrative. Israel’s return of the Sinai to Egypt after the 1979 peace treaty further contradicted his belief in its imperialism.

Cross-referencing these claims in mainstream sources like Britannica and university texts, he was shocked to learn Palestinians had rejected statehood offers at least five times. By 2018, at age 35, his antisemitism had dissolved, replaced by sympathy for Israel and guilt for his past ignorance.

What cemented his shift was not just facts but Israel’s moral case, articulated through objectivist philosophy. He rejected tribal or religious arguments, instead valuing Israel as a society “geared toward life,” where diverse individuals, Jews, Arabs, Christians, can pursue their dreams. In contrast, he saw its enemies, particularly religious fundamentalists like Hamas, as oriented toward “death and destruction.”

Heroic stories brought this abstract ideal to life. He was moved by Israel’s daring rescue of Ethiopian Jews from Sudan in the 1980s, dramatized in *The Red Sea Diving Resort*, and Operation Entebbe in 1976, where Israeli commandos flew 3,500 kilometers to Uganda to free hostages from Palestinian and leftist terrorists. The mission’s leader, Yoni Netanyahu, who died in the raid, became a personal hero, embodying a commitment to “leave no one behind.” These accounts transformed Israel in his eyes into a “land of modern heroes,” where the focus is not on the number of enemies but on how to confront them.

Reflecting on his past, he admits that his supposed advocacy for Palestinians was hollow, using their suffering as a prop to fuel his hatred of Israel. “I probably wanted more of them to be martyrs,” he confesses, acknowledging that this was not true care. Today, he expresses genuine concern for innocent Palestinians, particularly children and those seeking peace, which is why he opposes the theocratic rulers of Gaza and the West Bank [sic]. He supports addressing their legitimate grievances and envisions a Palestinian state committed to individual rights, free from tribalism, a state worthy of solidarity.

His journey culminated in two viral videos defending Israel, released after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack that killed 1,200 Israelis. Though not his academic focus, these videos resonated due to the “moral scream” behind them, urging others to avoid his past mistakes. A deeply emotional moment came when Jewish survivors of October 7 gifted him a “Bring Them Home Now” medallion in Australia, symbolizing his transformation from a purveyor of hate to an ally standing against antisemitism.

His story offers a profound lesson: people can change, even from the darkest beliefs, when exposed to better ideas. He credits his shift not to being shamed but to encountering facts, heroic narratives, and a vision of life-affirming values. “Hate isn’t destiny,” he concludes. “Bad ideas can lose to better ones, and a dark vision of death can be defeated by an inspiring vision of life.”