Can you be critical of Israel and not be anti-Semitic? Duh!

On Faith, the joint venture of the Newsweek/Washington Post, asked its panelists to reply to this simplistic question: "Can you be critical of Israel and not be anti-Semitic? Can you be critical of Israel and be a faithful Jew?"

It is an easy one to answer, if one chooses to follow the exact wording of the question: Yes, it is possible. Is there anyone around thinking you can't criticize Israel without being anti-Semitic? I couldn't find such view among the 22 panelists featured in On Faith, hence concluding it was a dumb question. If everyone agrees, what's the point of asking?

Being the paranoid Jewish-Israeli that I am, I didn't like this question anyway. Asking such a question is based on a wrong, biased premise according to which there are, indeed, people who believe that you can't be a good Jew if you criticize Israel. This premise is not only wrong, but is ironically playing to the hands of those who both criticize Israel and are anti-Semitic. Some of the panelists challenged the phrasing of the question. "The question is whether one can deny Israel the right to exist," wrote Arnold Eisen, chancellor-elect of the Jewish Theological Seminary. He could have suggested more provocative alternatives. For example: Can you hide anti-Semitism behind the excuse of being merely critical of Israel? Or: Can you stay socially acceptable by masquerading your anti-Semitism as criticism of Israel?

Since I like the idea of On Faith (the actual content is often somewhat disappointing, but I'm sure it will get better), I dived in anyway. Most of the short articles were reasonable if predictably so - "If there is another place on this planet where we are required to be more spiritually sensitive and achingly careful than Israel and Palestine, I don?t know where it is," wrote reverend William Tully - but in some cases the reading was worth the trouble.

Sulayman Nyang of Howard University was the one elaborating on the actual motivation for which the question was raised: Jimmy Carter's book and the Alvin Rosenfeld article (read my blogs on these two issues: Is Carter an anti-Semite?, On anti-Semitism, anti-anti-Semitism and anti-anti-anti-Semitism). However, most of the other panelists chose to ignore the core reason for the relevance of the question, even if they do touch on it in their own way ("It is certainly possible to be critical of Israel and not be anti-Semitic. But it may not be possible to be critical of Israel and not be accused of anti-Semitism," John Dominic of DePaul University manipulatively suggests).

"The unworthy critics today are easy to find," writes Prof. Jonathan Sarna of Brandeis. Alas, he does not name names. The whole On Faith discussion suffers from this lack of open and honest finger-pointing that is an inherent part of this ongoing heated debate. Neither Sarna nor others answer the questions of the day: Was Carter crossing the line? Was Rosenfeld raising hell for nothing? Are Jewish progressives feeding anti-Semitism? Is Jewish right-wing paranoia responsible for the attacks on Wesley Clark?

I found the piece by Pamela Taylor, co-founder of Muslims for Progressive Values, the most interesting, as she was bold enough to be provocative. Taylor is making an argument in defense of people who condemn Israel while walking in the gray area separating anti-Israel from anti-Semitic. Since Israel has laws aimed at maintaining its Jewish character, she says, "criticism of them can bleed into anti-Semitism."

I also liked (and was more prepared to agree with) the conclusion made by Allan Sloan, Newsweek's Wall Street editor, summed it up nicely: "Just because some critics of some Israeli policies aren?t anti-Semites doesn't mean that all critics aren't anti-Semites."