Anti-Semitism

Most liberal people would agree that everyone throws around claims of anti-Semitism much too loosely these days. The basic causes of all this anti-anti-Semitic talk are pretty easy to see. The US is at "war" with traditional enemies of Israel, and the ideological component of the war is naturally going to evolve into a pro- or anti-Israel conflict. Of course, this has evolved in a ridiculous way, so even suggesting that Israel overreacted to Hezbollah provocation gets people shouting that you are against the Jews, want Israel to be pushed into the sea (what is it with that metaphor?) etc.

The people who react to these essentially harmless remarks with such horror have nobody to blame but themselves. When anti-Semitic remarks are effectively censored from polite society, this kind of thing is bound to happen. Consider: Person A says "kill all Jews." The opinion makers react with justified horror, and Person A will never work in this town again. Person B, taking the lesson of Person A, says something more mild, e.g. "imprison all Jews". This is also not a decent opinion, and Person B is also shut out of public discourse. But moreover, people assume that Person B means "Kill all Jews" but is afraid to say it because of what happened to Person A.

This continues with Person C who, taking the lesson of Person B, says "register all Jews". Likewise, people assume he means "kill all Jews" or "imprison all Jews" but is just afraid to say it. We can continue inductively to Person Y who says "Israel should not bomb civilian targets in Lebanon." Now it may be the case, and it probably is, that Y merely means, "Israel should not bomb civilian targets in Lebanon." However, since this is currently on the fringes of acceptable discussion about Israel, it may be the case that Y means "kill all Jews" but can't get away with saying anything stronger in public. You can't tell, and that makes people nervous. So next time the debate on Israel starts up, the edges of the debate will be pushed back to Person Z, who says "Israel should not deliberately kill Lebanese civilians," or something like that. And so on forever.

This is kind of ridiculous. More importantly though, I don't see what you can do about it. We definitely do want to exclude A, B, and C from public debate. They aren't helping. But it doesn't seem like we can ostracize them without inexorably ostracizing Z. This is a pattern that happens in all kinds of controversial topics: race, sex, homosexuality; anti-Semitism is just the most important and obvious right now. I'm not sure how you break the cycle.