On the day the Knesset passed its nation-state law last year, Benjamin Netanyahu proclaimed, “This is our state—the Jewish state. . . . This is our nation, language, and flag.” This declaration, argues Wiliam Voegeli, points precisely to what the American left finds so unpalatable about Israel:

Last month, David Miller, a sociology professor at Bristol University, attracted the attention of the Anglo-Jewish press with a rant about the supposed danger posed to civic and campus life by Zionists. Such rhetoric is nothing new for Miller, who has argued—in his academic work as well as in other contexts—that campus Jewish societies are in the employ of a nefarious “Israel lobby,” and that interfaith activities involving Jewish and Muslim communities are “a Trojan horse for normalizing Zionism.” He is likewise convinced that Bashar al-Assad’s mass slaughter of his own people is a hoax perpetrated by a similarly nefarious conspiracy. Unsurprisingly, David Hirsh observes, Miller also believes complaints of anti-Semitism are Isra made in bad faith.