DR. FRANK weighs in on British vs. American views of Israel, and on British leftists’ disclaimers that what they’re saying is anti-semitic:

Americans, reading the Guardian, Independent, or New Statesman, tend to find the hostility towards Israel and Jews fairly shocking, if not always actually anti-Semitic. The British lefties think such shock is misplaced. They maintain that Americans are too dumb to see the difference between true anti-Semitism and legitimate criticism of Israel and its policies. . . .

Well, of course criticism of Israel’s policies isn’t the same thing as anti-Semitism; I don’t know of anyone who has ever maintained that it is. But there’s something about the sheer intensity of this hostility and determined ill will that gives pause. I suppose their ideology (broadly speaking, ’68-era Marxism) requires that international conflict be understood in terms of a “sophisticated” analysis of the “underlying structure,” a dichotomy of Oppressor vs. Oppressed in which the only decent thing is to side with The Oppressed and excoriate The Oppressor. . . .

In a way, the British Leftists have the same difficulty: they find America’s lack of hostility towards Israel and the Jews to be utterly unfathomable, and can’t account for it without recourse to conspiracy theories about Jewish control of the media or secret Jewish enclaves in the government. Those who point out that such rhetoric echoes the rhetoric of classic anti-Semitism and thus sounds a bit, well, anti-Semitic, are themselves alleged to be part of the Jewish conspiracy to silence legitimate criticism, which is not necessarily the same as anti-Semitism, etc.

The weird thing is, writers for publications like the New Statesman don’t seem to have any clue that positing Jewish conspiracies isn’t the most convincing way of establishing your bona fides where anti-Semitism is concerned. It sounds, at minimum, a bit “off” to us; it sounds just fine to them. “Come, come, my dear fellow! I say! I was merely stating the simple fact that the Jew lurks in the highest echelons of power and has a stranglehold on the American media, crushing dissent with merciless claws. What’s all the fuss about?”

And why do Americans think this kind of “criticism” sounds anti-Semitic? Real answer: because it kind of does.

The post is much more sophisticated than these excerpts indicate. Read it.