Is criticizing Israel anti-Semitic?
The fight for the moral high ground in Gaza
“The line that separates legitimate disapproval of Israel from anti-Semitism may not always be obvious,” said Jeff Jacoby in The Boston Globe. But there are demonstrators in the U.S. and Europe shouting "Nuke Israel!" and accusing the Jewish state of genocide because of its war against Hamas. That's going too far—“siding with some of the world’s most virulent Jew-haters” makes you one, too.
The real moral crime, said the Tehran Times in an editorial, would be standing silent while “a defenseless, imprisoned, and starved nation is experiencing attacks by a cruel adversary.” It’s hard to hold back tears, and anger, when you see Palestinian babies being killed.
“We've all seen endless pictures of dead Palestinian children now,” said Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic. The death of a child is “a terrible, ghastly, horrible thing,” but the only reason this ghoulish “pornography” is out there is that Hamas routinely uses its own civilians as human shields and uses pictures of the victims to rally supporters.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Israel’s propaganda machine would have us believe that Palestinians are a heartless bunch of anti-Semitic “religious fanatics,” said Avi Shlaim in Britain’s The Guardian. Certainly, Hamas isn’t blameless. But that doesn’t justify “all the death and destruction that Israel has inflicted” in its quest for domination over the Palestinians.
Welcome to the “upside-down world of Israel haters,” said Jonah Goldberg in National Review, where Zionists are the “new Nazis,” and Palestinians are miraculously surviving a brutal effort to wipe them out. The Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel, you see, and the only way for the haters to make such a Hitlerite agenda defensible is to convince the world “that the Israelis deserve it.”
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
September 13 editorial cartoons
Cartoons Saturday's political cartoons include court-approved racial profiling and America's moral compass
-
Giorgio Armani obituary: designer revolutionised the business of fashion
In the Spotlight ‘King Giorgio’ came from humble beginnings to become a titan of the fashion industry and redefine 20th century clothing
-
Kim Jong Un’s triumph: the rise and rise of North Korea’s dictator
In the Spotlight North Korean leader has strengthened ties with Russia and China, and recently revealed his ‘respected child’ to the world