Anti-Israel, Antisemitic. Same Thing?

Yesterday, an MSNBC anchor told his audience that you can be anti-Israel without being antisemitic. Why wouldn’t you be?

The Israeli military is committing war crimes! They’re occupiers and oppressors bent on genocide! Jews in general? No problem!

Imagine being anti-Nazi but pro-Germans in World War II. How would that work?

Would the Allies have stopped bombing the Nazi war machine (military and industrial targets), a process that killed tens of thousands of civilians? Would they have paused their final push into Berlin to provide humanitarian aid to Germans “caught in the crossfire”?

In fact, America and Britain bombed the shit out of Germany’s civilian population, reducing entire cities to rubble, killing tens of thousands of non-combatants.

I’m not suggesting any such fate for Gaza. We’ve come a long way since then, in terms of precision munitions and intelligence gathering.

But is Israel’s cause any less righteous than the fight against Nazi Germany? Is Hamas and its ilk any less bent on killing Jews?

The October 7th massacre answers that question. As well as public pronouncements by Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian leaders. As chronicled here, they’ve sworn to destroy the State of Israel and, we can easily assume, every single Jew within it.

We can debate the accusation of “settler colonialism.” What’s not debatable: Israel’s right to exist and its right of self-defense, enshrined in the U.N. Charter, Article 51.

Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.

As I’ve stated before, Israel’s fight against homicidal Islamic extremism is our fight. They’re coming after us. Again. Still.

That’s because we hold the same values as the Middle East’s only democracy.

Neither of us are ruled by a theocracy that stifles freedom of speech, assembly and religion. Neither of us has an unaccountable judiciary that condones torture and executes homosexuals.

Note: Hamas does the actual killing of Gaza’s gays, including members of its own military.

At the moment they’re busy violating international law: targeting Israeli civilians with unguided rockets (some fired from schools), holding civilians hostage and embedding their military within Gaza’s civilian population (e.g. beneath hospitals).

Meanwhile, calling Israel “genocidal” – when Hamas has proudly identified itself as such – is a sick joke that renders the word meaningless.

Yes, Israel’s war on Hamas is killing Palestinians prevented from leaving the war zone by Hamas. But the idea that Israel is trying to exterminate all Palestinians, that their bombing and infantry assault is intentionally indiscriminate, is inaccurate and ridiculous. Propaganda.

Bottom line: if you oppose Israel’s war against Hamas, if you’re on board with the call to “free Palestine” and nod approvingly at “protesters” chanting “from the river to the sea,” you’ve chosen a side. The wrong side.

Are you antisemitic for doing so? What other reason is there?

MSNBC trotted out two professors to make the anti-Israel/antisemitic distinction, relying on the war crime and genocide justification. Two Jewish professors. They went further.

They lamented the “backlash” against students supporting “the Palestinians” (studiously avoiding the “H” word). Apparently, these “pro-Palestinian” students should be able to express their opinion without fear of retribution of any kind, sort or description.

With the host’s approval and encouragement, they positioned pro-Hamas students as victims. A supposition encouraged by Vice President Harris’ post-massacre emphasis on Islamophobia.

I’m all for freedom of speech, of course. But if I was a college student demonstrating on behalf of an organization calling for the removal and violent death of, say, all black Americans, I’d face severe consequences.

At the least, I’d expect to turfed-out of school. Arrested and prosecuted for hate speech and incitement to violence? That too. Unemployable? For sure.

As far as I know, college-educated pro-Hamas demonstrators only face the latter, and only because there are Americans who believe in the civilized values that patriots hold dear.

Oh dear. I used the “p” word. We’re not supposed to believe our country is anything but evil. Like Israel, we are oppressors. Settler colonialists. Capitalist swine. Planet killing polluters. Just ask the professors. They’ll tell you.

Here’s what I’ll tell you…

I have no illusions about politicians’ perfidy, no matter which country they run. Nor do I consider Jews any less flawed than any other member of the human race.

But there is no comparison between what Israel is doing in Gaza and what three thousand Hamas “fighters” did in Israel, and vowed to repeat until Israel is destroyed and every last Jew is dead.

Those who would curtail Israel’s campaign to rid Gaza of Hamas aren’t just antisemitic, they’re anti-human. As are those are those who give an uncritical voice to their hidden and not-so-hidden hatred for the Jewish people.