Israel and 'Anti-Semitism'

Right in the wake of House majority leader Dick Armey's explicit call for several million Palestinians to be booted out of the West Bank, and East Jerusalem and Gaza as well, came yet one more of those earnest articles accusing a vague entity called "the left" of anti-Semitism.

This one was in Salon, by a man called Dennis Fox, identified as an associate professor of legal studies and psychology at the University of Illinois. Leaving nothing to chance, Salon titled Fox's contribution "The shame of the pro-Palestinian left: Ignorance and anti-Semitism are undercutting the moral legitimacy of Israel's critics."

Over the past twenty years I've learned there's a quick way of figuring just how badly Israel is behaving. There's a brisk uptick in the number of articles accusing "the left" of anti-Semitism. These articles adopt varying strategies. Particularly intricate, though I think well-intentioned, was a recent column by Naomi Klein, who wrote that "it is precisely because anti-Semitism is used by the likes of Mr. Sharon that the fight against it must be reclaimed." Is Klein saying the global justice movement has forgotten how to be anti-anti-Semitic? I don't think it has. Are all denunciations of the government of Israel to be prefaced by strident assertions of pro-Semitism?

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