It’s the Anti-Semites Who Conflate Criticism of Israel with Anti-Semitism

The Houthis’ official slogan contains the phrase “Death to Israel” alongside “Curse on the Jews,” lest anyone mistake them for mere critics of Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy decisions. The possibility of such confusion is very much on the minds of the “Jewish writers, artists, and activists” who signed an open letter, recently published in a New York-based literary magazine, complaining about the “widespread narrative that any criticism of Israel is inherently anti-Semitic”—which then went on to accuse the Jewish state of possessing “genocidal intent” and to defend Hamas apologetics. But, notes Phoebe Maltz Bovy, supporters of Israel are not advancing such a claim. Rather, the blurring of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism begins elsewhere: