How to criticize Israel and not be antisemitic ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Thursday, August 28, 2025

How to criticize Israel and not be antisemitic

The Nasser Hospital incident appears to show that the IDF made significant mistakes.

Here is an analysis by military expert Ryan McBeth:

Israel’s Channel 12 has reported that the first strike targeted a man who had been monitoring IDF forces with a camera on the hospital’s fourth floor, a justification repeated by the IDF. Israel’s military also claims to have killed six terrorists in the strike from both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. None of this, however, absolves the IDF for what happened next.

Video footage showing a second strike that killed emergency workers responding to the initial impact is deeply troubling. Normally, precision strikes are carried out with drones or guided munitions, not by tank shells. Whether this was a legitimate strike, an operational error, a breakdown in communication or something more sinister will need to be determined through a full investigation. There remain significant questions about proportionality and anticipated collateral damage in this strike.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior IDF commanders have already suggested that something went wrong. The IDF has promised to ‘examine several gaps’ in the strike, including who authorised it. Netanyahu was far more emphatic. He said Israel ‘deeply regrets the tragic mishap’ that led to the strike, and promised a ‘thorough investigation’. The IDF owes Israelis, Palestinians and the international community a clear and transparent explanation.

Both military experts do not hold back when they see something problematic. Yet they don't come close to crossing the line into antisemitism.

Today's "anti-Zionists" insist that they are not antisemitic, that they are only criticizing Israel, and that Zionists are conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism for political reasons stop all criticism of Israel. Their claims fall apart when you compare their hysterical accusations against what McBeth and Fox are doing here.

The difference between the approaches is simple.

"Anti-Zionists" start from the assumption that Israel is evil, and their "criticism" is all couched in that assumption, sometimes stated ("Israel is a genocidal apartheid state!") and sometimes implicit (media righteously declaring "We could not independently verify Israel's claims" - but never say that for Gaza sources.)

Legitimate criticism starts from the knowledge that Israel has valid military reasons to destroy Hamas, that it has safeguards and policies to protect innocent civilians, that it is operating in a theatre where the civilians are themselves tactical defensive shields for Hamas, and that in war sometimes there is a breakdown in communication and the chain of command - which is not to excuse it.

Legitimate critics understand that Israelis are humans doing the best they can under nearly impossible and artificially imposed constraints that no army in history has ever had to work under. Antisemites start with the conviction that Jews are malicious to the core, have a secret agenda of Jewish supremacy and cannot be trusted.

Treating Israel as irredeemably evil while bending over backwards to justify Hamas actions (like HRW's changing the definition of "human shields" only for Israel's enemies) is not "legitimate criticism." It is thinly disguised antisemitism.

A newer dynamic is taking place, where the "anti-Zionists" are becoming to emboldened by the lack of pushback and by their adulation from Jew-haters that they are crossing the line into explicit antisemitism.

This attitude gets certified kosher by the Jewish antisemites. Today, Haaretz's Gideon Levy wrote:

Uberkommandant Avi Bluth, the head of the army's Central Command, decided that he'll show them. With his military kippah worn at an angle, blood-curdling eloquence, boundless arrogance and sick double standards of morality, he ordered "redesign operations" to be implemented so that "everyone will be deterred, any village that dares to raise a hand against any of the residents."

He is saying as clearly as possible that religious Jews are Nazis. This in turn gives license for others to do the same.

The new antisemitism is becoming so mainstream that it is difficult for casual readers to notice it when it occurs. But comparing coverage of Israel in much of the media with how these two actual experts criticize Israel show the huge difference between criticism and papered-over hate.

(h/t Scott, YMedad)