If your starting position is that Israel has no right to exist – to “push it into the sea” as the Iranian regime charmingly puts it – this probably isn’t the book for you. Israelophobia by Jake Wallis Simons is not a simple defence of Israel, nor an attempt to deny its responsibilities in the tragedy of Israeli-Palestinian relations, but an examination of the way Israel has been weaponised in the culture war by an evolving strain of antisemitism. As editor of The Jewish Chronicle, Wallis Simons’ perspective is not unexpected and his thesis is to link the spike of antisemitism in the West to attitudes towards Israel, the roots of which stretch back centuries.
Why shouldn’t you be able to criticise Israel without being called antisemitic? Well, you can. Millions of people do every day. Israelis do too – they criticise their government and its policies. Israelophobia, as defined here, is a coalition of enmities disguised as political activism and tolerated by a section of western society who single Israel out for infamy or “making the old bigotry palatable to the mainstream”. The book argues that the progressive left has co-opted anti-Israel militancy into a menu of social justice issues – “luxury beliefs” – so that Israel takes its place beneath the worst regimes in the world. The evidence for Israel’s villainous reputation (political violence, discrimination etc) bears little comparison to China, Iran, Syria and tens of other nations, let alone the historical crimes of the US, Britain, Germany and Russia.
