Hurlers of the slur.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Editor's Note - Editorial

We're still a little bit giddy from producing our big centennial issue last month. And your early, positive reactions have gratified us.

It was a different kind of issue than any I've ever worked on in my twenty-six years here. New equals fun. And we all felt the rush of it: from the editors, to the art staff, to the proofreaders. So I hope you enjoyed it. We'll be running letters about it next month.

B ut this month in the Letters to the Editor section, you'll find several that level the dismaying and scurrilous charge of anti-Semitism against this magazine--and against me. The letters were responding to my Comment, "Restraining Israel," in our February issue, and to columns the next month by Dave Zirin and Eduardo Galeano.

Not one of us wrote a syllable that could possibly be construed, by any objective person, as being anti-Semitic. What all three of us did was simply point out the immoral and disproportionate response by Israel when it invaded Gaza and killed more than 1,000 people and wounded many more.

That we cannot make such a point in America without being stabbed with the label of anti-Semite shows that the charge is designed to muzzle.

How easy it is for those who applaud every abusive policy of the Israeli government to scream bigot.

And how convenient for Israel's rulers: It's a guarantee of immunity.

If the policies of the state of Israel are not beyond reproach--and the policies of which government are?--then surely we have a right to criticize those policies without being draped with a Klan costume or tagged with a swastika.

The reflexive and over-the-top hostility to criticism of Israeli policies reveals almost a subconscious defensiveness, just as it displays an insensitivity to Palestinian suffering--and even suggests a dismissal of the humanity of Palestinians.

At bottom, such criticism...