For Israel’s Detractors, It’s No Fair Fighting Back

-- If there is anything more dispiriting than the monomania of terrorists bent on the destruction of Israel, it is the perspective of those in the West who behave as though some moral equivalence existed between the two sides. In fact, the asymmetry is striking -- an asymmetry concerning not just the combatants, but also how the two sides are treated.

Never mind that Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine intentionally target Jewish civilians -- and use Palestinian civilians as human shields -- while Israel puts its own soldiers' lives at risk in order to minimize civilian casualties.

Never mind the world's ho-hum indifference as thousands of rockets -- more than 10,000 since 2001 -- rain down on Israel, and the world's sudden explosion into righteous fury when Israel finally hits back. Note rather the targets of the recent fury:

A synagogue in France. A Jewish congregation in Sweden. A Jewish neighborhood in London. In other words: Jews. Not Arab embassies, not the Palestinian leadership, not the terrorists who fire rockets at Israelis. Not even Israeli embassies, although those have been hit, too.

Jews.

And therein lies a tale.

The assaults are only part of a broader wave of anti-Semitism worldwide, of which these are but three snapshots: A Greek newspaper heralded Barack Obama's election as "the end of Jewish domination." A Norwegian entertainer recently joked about all the "fleas and lice" that died in Nazi gas chambers "without having done anything wrong other than settling on persons of Jewish background." Someone spray-painted "Heil Hitler" graffiti outside a California synagogue. Anti-Semitism is so prevalent in the Arab world and its official media organs that the staff at the Middle East Media Research Institute works full-time to keep up with it. Go to memri.org for a bitter taste.

RECENTLY the anti-Semitism has taken a particularly vicious turn. In New York and Chicago, in Tampa and San Diego, in D.C. and San Francisco, in Boston and Dallas, anti-Israel demonstrators have been vomiting the vilest insult of all: equating Israel with Nazi Germany -- e.g., calling Israel "the Fourth Reich" and depicting the Jewish flag with a swastika.

Analogies equating Israel with Nazi Germany have become so prevalent that the Anti-Defamation League has created a dedicated Web page to catalog some of them: "Gaza Is Today's Warsaw Ghetto." "Every ZioNazi Is a Legitimate Military Target." "Stop the Israeli Third Reich." And so on, ad nauseam.

The insult is intentionally cruel. It is also exceptionally curious. Because no matter how much one might question Israel's airstrikes and blockades, there is a far better parallel with Nazi Germany -- an analogy much more apt. The Nazis sought to exterminate Jews, deliberately and systematically, even when doing so diverted materiel from the defense of the Reich itself. Who else behaves like that? Give yourself a few seconds to think really hard . . . .

Oh, yes: Hamas. And its principal supporter, Iran -- whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has vowed to wipe Israel off the map.

Yet when is the last time demonstrators in Boston or San Francisco marched in the streets comparing Hamas with Nazi Germany, or denouncing Iran as the Fourth Reich, or complaining that Tel Aviv is today's Warsaw Ghetto? Tel Aviv is, fortunately, not the Warsaw Ghetto -- but not for lack of trying by Israel's enemies. Only the Israeli Defense Force has kept Israel from becoming an abbatoir.

Why, then, the vicious protests against Israeli self-defense?

Israel's critics say it has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Rather, they profess to lament the effects of that self-defense on innocent civilians. Please. If the suffering of innocents truly were at issue, then the streets long ago would have been overrun by protests against, e.g., the relentless butchery in the Congo -- where more than 3.8 million people have died.

ISRAEL'S CRITICS also profess to resent the blockades of Gaza that have kept necessities from getting in. Really? When was the last time they marched in the streets against the mass starvation inflicted by North Korea's regime, or the deprivations in Cuba imposed by decades of Communist rule? Is it blockades they resent -- or simply the source of those blockades?

Israel's critics do not protest Israel's self-defense tactics because they harm civilians. They protest the harm done to civilians because it is inflicted by Israel. Israel, a nation founded so Jews would have one place in the world they could call safe.

And a safe haven for Jews is the one thing Israel's critics cannot abide. What else explains the fact that they never seem to start calling for a cease-fire until Israel starts fighting back?

My thoughts do not aim for your assent -- just place them alongside your own reflections for a while.

--Robert Nozick.
Contact A. Barton Hinkle at (804) 649-6627 or .