A fundamental theme of Israeli propaganda — and virtually its sole theme under the governments of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — has been that anti-Semitism is responsible for the growing criticism of or hostility toward Israel and its policies expressed in Europe and the United States (especially among college students and teachers, and liberal intellectuals generally).
Netanyahu has beaten this drum constantly in his campaign for his own and the Likud Party's re-election in the parliamentary election that will take place in mid-March.
This is a fallacy. Much of what he calls anti-Semitism is simply justified outrage at Israel, and not only that of Muslims. Israel's repression of the Palestinians whose land it occupies, and its brutal treatment of its enemies and their families, as in Gaza recently, and its unwillingness to settle the hatred its policies have engendered in its region have — since the beginning of the Netanyahu era — steadily and inexorably increased enemies for his country everywhere.
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