I’ll agree that not everyone who opposes some aspect of Israeli policy is an anti-Semite. However, those who oppose Israel’s right to defend itself from terrorism – and its right to exist at all – usually anti-Semitism lies at the heart of the issue.

Take, for example, this situation from Canada.

Re: Anti-Zionism Is Not Anti-Semitism, letters to the editor, Jan. 21.

Why don't your letter writers come and tell their analytical garbage to my son's 20-year-old friend, who last week ended up in hospital after being beaten up in Toronto? His "crime"? He was wearing a Magen David (the Jewish, not Zionist, Star of David). As he fell to numerous blows, his attackers shouted, "Jewish [not Zionist] scum. Let's see how strong you are without your army now!"

The police were most helpful: "We will lay charges only if we know who they are."

Now a couple of observations here.

1) This was a hate crime. The attack was upon a man wearing the symbol of his religious faith, and had epithets hurled at him based upon his religion. The scum who attacked him had no way of knowing what his position on Israel or the war in Gaza were – they simply picked out a convenient Jew to assault simply because he was a Jew. They make no distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism – why should we in this instance?

2) The Canadian police and media seem quite unwilling to give this hate crime the treatment it deserves. Maybe that is because they don’t see the difference between Jews and Zionists either. Would the incident have been treated the same way if it were a Muslim attacked for wearing some symbol of his/her faith, and insulted with anti-Muslim slurs during the attack? Or would the incident have been a priority for both as an example of the “growing intolerance” against Muslims?

3) Of course, we don’t see incidents like the hypothetical I proposed above. Maybe that is because Jews, Zionists or otherwise, and those of us who are supportive of Israel are motivated by something other than the hatred that underlies the anti-Semitic ideology of all too many of Israel’s opponents. That’s why in every instance of violence surrounding rallies and demonstration the associated acts of violence were committed not by the supporters of Israel, but rather by the “peace-loving” supporters of the terrorists of Hamas. Similarly, Jews, not Muslims, are regularly the victims of these sorts of incidents – in which the targets of “anti-Zionist” hate are targets because they are Jews, not because they are Zionists..

Now are you sure that you really want to try to argue that antipathy towards Jews as Jews isn’t the underlying motivation behind a significant part of the “anti-Zionist” activity we are assured is not anti-Semitism?

Posted by: Greg at 02:48 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 484 words, total size 3 kb.