Anti-Israeli or Anti-Semitic?

Stanley Fish takes on the question of whether critics of Israel are in fact anti-Semites. Fish writes:

[Some say that] there is no reason to assume that those who criticize Israel and argue that America’s uncritical support for a flawed state is strategically unwise and morally wrong are anti-Semitic.

Maybe so, but there is some empirical evidence to the contrary.

He cites a study conducted by Edward Small (Yale) and Robert Kaplan (Harvard) which concludes that 56% of those who are anti-Israel are also anti-Semites. Based on this evidence, and his own impressions of college campuses, Fish concludes:

I believe that the viral version of anti-Semitism is always capable of regaining its full and deadly form even when it is apparently dormant or weakened. All it needs is a pretext, and any pretext will do. If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict didn’t exist, it would attach itself to something else; but it does exist, and anti-Semitism couldn’t be happier.

What is especially interesting is that Fish concludes his column by pointing out that he has a colleague who "tells, and believes, the 'criticism of Israel is one thing, anti-Semitism another' story," but that Fish himself cannot do the same because he was alive during World War II.

First, if 56% of critics of Israel are also anti-Semites, does that imply that the other 44% are automatically delegitimized? Does this mean that anytime a majority of the critics of a particular group's actions are motivated by a deeper hatred of that group, those actions can be immunized from criticism? That appears illogical, and yet such is the logic of Fish's conclusion.

Second, Fish's observation that he was alive during WWII drives home the point of origin of the kind of vicious anti-Semitism which led to the Holocaust, Europe. Even today, the neo-antiSemitism that worries Fish seems to be rooted in Europe's political elite. But the anti-Semitism which is lurking in the background is located in the Arab and Islamic world. Whereas the former is based on the notion that Jews are responsible for deicide and has been around for literally 2000 years, the latter is of much more recent vintage, and stems for the most part specifically from the creation of the state of Israel, and the dispossession of Palestinian Arabs that followed. To be sure, many have pointed out that anti-Jewish sentiment was present among Muslims prior to the 20Th century, and usually the relationship between Jews and the Holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is given as the paradigmatic example, along with passages in the Holy Qur'an which are interpreted as being anti-Jewish. I will not attempt to refute such allegations at length here (because it would consume too much time), but suffice it to say that irrespective of the merits of such allegations the history of Muslim-Jewish relations until modern times has been largely amicable, and that Jewish communities have flourished in Muslim lands over the centuries. No one can dispute that serious anti-Semitism, in the form of pogroms etc., only became a problem with the rise of the Zionist movement.

Thus, to the extent that anti-Israeli sentiment is simply a proxy for anti-Jewish sentiment, that group historically finds its origin in Europe, and not the Middle East or the Islamic world. Why is this significant? Because, hypothetically, if the Israel-Palestine problem was resolved in a manner perceived as just and equitable by Arabs and Muslims, as a historical matter they have no further reason to be hostile to Jews. Of course, as a practical matter, decades of hate-mongering by extremist elements who have used all materials at their disposal to whip up anti-Semitism may be hard to forget, but that is a separate problem. On the other hand, even if the Israel-Palestine problem was equitably resolved, history tells us that European hatred of the Jewry would continue unabated. So, logically, the 56% who are anti-Jewish in their heart of hearts are not the ones who are being victimized and humiliated by Israel's policies in Palestine. (As an aside, calling Arabs anti-Semitic, when they are in fact Semites themselves, is quite ironic; alas, such is the history of language.)

If we focus on the victims of Israel's policies, rather than ancient European anti-Semitism, the following statement by Steven Walt and John Mearsheimer appears eminently reasonable:

Why, they ask, should our foreign policy be held hostage to the interests of a small country that is perfectly capable of defending itself and is guilty of treating the Palestinians, whose land it appropriated, in ways that are undemocratic and even, in the opinion of many, criminal?

Indeed, why should it?