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A Mindset of Pure, Unadulterated Anti-Semitism
(Toronto Star-Canada) Michael Levitt - An inordinate amount of the content on Twitter is directed against Jews and Israel, reflecting a toxic, widespread obsession online and off which betrays a disturbing anti-Semitic bent. The endless defamation of Israel is of little surprise, marked by a troubling double-standard and righteous indignation reserved only for the Jewish homeland. In addition to social media, this preoccupation also plays out in news coverage, the UN, NGOs, in academia and in the arts community. Of course, like all other countries, Israel is and should be subject to criticism. But when its very existence is questioned, it's an attack on the Jewish people. Anti-Israel activists often wrap themselves in the "anti-Zionist" flag, as if denying Jews the right to their own state in their ancestral homeland were a badge of honor. This has a negative impact for Jews, with many feeling they're having their safe space stripped away. Let's be clear, diaspora Jews and Israelis criticize Israel all the time. It's something else entirely when celebrities and social media influencers with millions of followers use their platforms to regularly denigrate Israel with highly charged misinformation and falsehoods, sometimes even justifying violence and terror against it and its civilian population. One has to wonder why they devote such wildly disproportionate attention to a liberal democracy - that just happens to be the world's only Jewish state. The writer is president and CEO of Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies.