They’re pretty much equating criticism of Israel, including what it’s doing in Gaza, with antisemitism. From Jonathan Cook at unz.com:
Western capitals no longer treat Israel like a state, a political actor capable of slaughtering children, but rather as a sacred cause. So any opposition has to be a blasphemy
If you read the establishment media, you might conclude that a serious battle is being waged by Israel and its most ardent supporters to tackle an apparent new wave of antisemitism in the West.
In article after article, we are told how Israel and western Jewish leadership bodies are demanding our concern, and outrage, at a rise in anti-Jewish hate incidents. Organisations such as the Community Security Trust in the UK and the Anti-Defamation League in the US produce lengthy reports on the relentless increase in antisemitism, especially since 7 October, and warn that action is urgently required.
Undoubtedly, there is a real threat of antisemitism and, as ever, it comes largely from the far right. Israel’s actions – and its false claim to be representing all Jews – only help to stoke it.
This moral panic is transparently self-serving. It directs our attention away from the pressing, all-too-concrete evidence that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza – one that has slaughtered and maimed many tens of thousands of innocents.
It redirects our attention instead towards tenuous claims of a deepening antisemitism crisis, one whose tangible effects appear limited and for which the evidence is all too clearly exaggerated.
After all, a rise in “Jew hatred” is all but inevitable if you redefine antisemitism, as western officials have recently done via the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s new definition, to include antipathy towards Israel – and at the moment when Israel appears, even to the World Court, to be carrying out a genocide.
The logic of Israel and its supporters runs something like this:
Many more people than usual are expressing hatred of Israel, the self-declared state of the Jewish people. There is no reason to hate Israel unless you hate what it represents, which is Jews. Therefore, antisemitism is on the rise.
This argument makes sense to most Israelis, to its partisans, and to the overwhelming majority of western politicians and career-minded establishment journalists. That is: the very same people who interpret calls for equality in historic Palestine – “from the river to the sea” – as a demand for a genocide against Jews.
It seems only fair that there is a rise in antisemitism. It’s a reaction to atrocious Jewish behaviour in occupied Palestine. And, in truth, Israel is the biggest antisemite of all!