In search of anti-semitism: what Christians provoke what Jews? Why? By doing what? - And vice versa

Alterman goes on, nudging up against a critical point everywhere acknowledged abstractly, but with which some anti-anti-Semites have practical difficulties.

The equation of anti-Semitism with opposition to Israel's government and with the "pressure" its supporters and operatives exert on the American political process demeans the lives of those who have suffered under true anti-Semitism-and there is no shortage of those--and silences legitimate debate on U.S. policy in the Middle East. A recent fundraising letter sent out by the American Jewish Congress and signed by its executive director, Henry Siegman, veered uncomfortably close to this territory as well. The letter accuses James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, of being a proponent of "the new anti-Semitism" and appears to link him with neo-Nazi David Duke, as well as with the proudly anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan, on the basis of Zogby's campaign to limit the influence of pro-Israel PACs in American elections. The AJC's objection, according to the letter, is that Zogby insists that five U.S. senators who received a great deal of pro-Israel PAC money are "not operating in the interests of the people who elected them."

Is this action by AIPAC discriminatory in the objectionable sense?

No, not really. Alterman cannot here be denied:

A pro-Israel PAC would have to be stupid to raise money for people whom it did not expect to behave in its interest. Aipac and its related PACs have been accused of a great many things, but stupidity--particularly in the raising and spending of campaign contributions--is not one of them.

Alterman is amused, or rather not amused, by AIPAC's gyrations on the matter of freedom of expression:

Following on Rosenthal's column, Aipac sent an advisory to its 50,000 members, encouraging them to meet with newspaper editors in order to "ask them if they believe the Buchanans are presenting information their readers want." Aipac suggests that its members offer the names of Norman Podhoretz and other far-right-wing Shamir government cheerleaders as alternatives, or such "liberals" as (I kid you not) Alan Dershowitz, Charles Krauthammer, and one A. M. Rosenthal. "No one is saying the Buchanans should have no right to express their views." Who-Aipac? Of course not. But just the same, Aipac would like to see Buchanan silenced and replaced with pundits who are "fair-minded when it comes to the Middle East."

Buchanan is perhaps being a bit paranoid when he suspects a "pre-planned, orchestrated smear campaign" designed to deprive him of his readership. But with Aipac and Rosenthal after him, need we remind ourselves that even paranoids have real enemies?

We are left here with an American Jew who opposes Israeli policies 1) calling attention to the anomaly that any non-Jew who also opposes those policies runs the risk of being called anti-Semitic; and 2) defending an "Israeli" line as defined by Israeli lobbies, while raising the question whether defiance of that line warrants the anti-Israel tag, in particular to the extent that "anti-Israel" evolves into "anti-Semitic." And we are left with the question of how to train the moral faculties to distinguish between those whose anti-Israel positions evolve (whether or not they know it) from anti-Semitic impulses, and those anti-Israelis unaffected by the Jewishness of the Israeli nation. I find it impossible to defend Pat Buchanan against the charge that what he did and said during the period under examination amounted to anti-Semitism, whatever it was that drove him to say and do it: most probably, an iconoclastic temperament.