"Anti-Semites Have Never Really Distinguished among Zionists, Israelis & Jews"

In Belfast, Northern Ireland, young children, anti-"Zionists" in the making, are recruited into helping to rid a supermarket's shelves of Israeli goods.  See the video below; at about 0.25 (or do my ears deceive me?) a mother's voice tells her children that the cart of removed produce is the "Jewish cart".

Windows of the local synagogue  were smashed by thugs last month.

And now a plaque on the house that was the birthplace in 1918 of Chaim Herzog, whose father was at that time the city's rabbi, has been taken down ostensibly for nearby residents' safety:

'[A]ccording to one DUP [Democratic Unionist Party] councillor, the plaque has had to be removed due to a spate of attacks.

Brian Kingston said there was concern for the safety of those living in the area.

"Attacks have included the scrawling of anti-Israeli graffiti on the building and items being thrown at the plaque and the house," he said.

"Recently some youths were stopped in the process of trying to remove the plaque with a crowbar.

"Out of concern for staff and for residents living in neighbouring houses, the community group and the Ulster History Circle have decided that it was best to remove the plaque for the foreseeable future, and it was removed at the end of last week.'

These incidents in Belfast, while not as serious as many that are occurring elsewhere, are indicative nonetheless of the antisemitism that has erupted in Britain  during the current Gaza crisis.

"While I may not be Israeli, I am a Zionist — an ideology so misunderstood of late that it has become akin to a four-letter word. Used as a term of abuse for Jews by jihadis, alongside ‘crusaders’ for Christians, ‘Zionist’ has found its way into popular parlance", observed a (decidedly non-Likudnik) British Jew  in a London newspaper recently.

"Being a Zionist simply means that you believe the Jews have the right to a homeland, a safe haven....

The other day, a friend said to me: ‘I have no problem with Jews, just Zionists.’ She couldn’t understand why this might be perceived as anti-Semitic.

Let me state for the record that I — and almost every other Jewish person I know — think what’s happening in Gaza is awful....

But I also believe in Israel’s right to defend itself from years of rocket attacks by Hamas, a terrorist group which uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, deliberately stores its weapons in schools and hospitals and has stated many times that it wants to see the outright destruction of Israel.

....Seeing the suffering of a Palestinian child injured in an Israeli bomb attack is heartbreaking. But is it any more heartbreaking than the suffering or death of a child in Syria or Iraq?

Yet everyone, from Facebook friends to Hollywood stars such as Penelope Cruz, seems to think that what’s happening in Gaza merits special attention — and that the Israelis deserve special condemnation.

Why? I can only think it’s because Israelis are mostly Jewish, and the world is only comfortable when Jews are victims, underdogs, kept in our place. It’s no coincidence that, for centuries, anti-Semites have perpetuated the myth that a international conspiracy of Jews runs the world.

The difference now is that criticising Israel is seen as the politically correct thing to do. Facebook friends whom I’ve never seen make a political statement, or discuss any topical issue, now post link after link to articles and videos that decry what the Israelis are doing in Gaza.

Often their posts betray ignorance about the facts and history of a very complicated, very old conflict. Some posted links are years out of date, others inaccurate or fabricated propaganda, like an oft-shared video purporting to show an Israeli child beating a captured Palestinian child which, in fact, turned out to be film of a Lebanese child beating a Syrian child.

These posts do little but spread confusion and stir up hatred. People who would never dream of writing anti-Muslim sentiments — because it’s not politically correct and, perhaps, because they would be scared to — quite happily post anti-Jewish ones, thinking they have the moral high ground.

In their criticisms of Jews they betray old prejudices: Jews are too rich, too successful, too clever for our own good, we have a ‘superiority complex’.

If you dare to respond negatively, you face a barrage of criticism and, worse, the accusation that you are supporting ‘genocide’."

And, as Professor Efraim Karsh, formerly of London and now of Jerusalem, writes:

'Let's admit it: Israel can never win the media war against Hamas. No matter what it does, no matter how hard it tries.

Not because the Islamist terror group that is raining missiles on its cities and villages and using its own hapless subjects as human shields is the underdog in this conflict, but because the sight of Arabs killing Jews (or other Arabs for that matter) is hardly news; while the sight of Jews killing Arabs is a man-bites-dog anomaly that cannot be tolerated....

Just as western politicians and the media have ignored Hamas's indiscriminate missile attacks on Israeli civilians but jumped up and down over Israel's military response, so they have been bending over backward since 9/11 to embrace their Muslim citizens and to accommodate their perceived needs and sensitivities while remaining willfully blind to the fact that it is Jews, not Muslims, whose lives have been most adversely affected by increasing hostile attitudes on the ground – after all it is the Jews, not Muslims of Europe, who are emigrating in record numbers to find a safe haven. It is Jews who feel vulnerable to attack, and who have faced the most violence, and whose institutions from synagogues to community buildings to Jewish newspaper offices have been under heavy police guard for years, because of events in the Middle East – no Muslim community in the West has had to undertake similar security precautions.

The truth of the matter is that since anti-Semites have never really distinguished among Zionists, Israelis and Jews (notwithstanding repeated protestations to the contrary), and since Israel is the world's only Jewish state, it has been tacitly construed as epitomizing the worst characteristics traditionally associated with Jews and has attracted the full brunt of anti-Jewish bigotry and hatred hitherto reserved for individuals and communities, not least because it has reversed the millenarian Jewish condition of dispersal, minority status and powerlessness. If prior to Israel's establishment Jews were despised because of their wretchedness and helplessness, they have hitherto been reviled because of their newly discovered physical and political empowerment.

So much so that 64 years after its establishment by an internationally recognized act of self-determination, the Jewish state remains the only state in the world whose right to self-defense, indeed to national existence, is constantly challenged....'

Read the professor's entire article here

And for a casual antisemitic reference to New Zealand's halachically Jewish prime minister see here