Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia

Petra Marquardt-Bigman
The Warped Mirror/JPost
11 July '10

In a recent article, New York Times critic Edward Rothstein used two newly published studies on anti-Semitism to list some of the points that are often brought up by people who feel that this is an issue that has not all that much relevance for our time.

Inevitably, the notion that critics of Israel risk being unfairly denounced as anti-Semitic is among the points mentioned by Rothstein. While Rothstein repeats the often acknowledged view that "criticism of Israel is not necessarily anti-Semitic any more than criticism of any particular Jew is," he ultimately argues that it is "easy enough to discern when responsible criticisms of Israel veer into something reprehensible: the structure of anti-Semitic belief is not subtle." As Rothstein explains:

There is a wildly exaggerated scale of condemnation, in which extremes of contempt confront a country caricatured as the world's worst enemy of peace; such attacks, and the use of Nazi analogies, are beyond evidence and beyond pragmatic political debate or protest. Israel's autonomy - its very presence - is the problem."

Unfortunately, Rothstein is completely wrong to assert that there is a clear red line that separates what he calls "responsible criticisms of Israel" from "reprehensible" demonization that echoes anti-Semitic sentiments. Indeed, it is depressingly easy to illustrate that there is no such red line, or rather, that no such red line is accepted by Israel's many ardent "critics."

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