A professor at Rutgers University, Jasbir Puar wrote a book titled The Right to Maim that levels accusations against Israel so outlandish that they strain credulity—and lack any evidence to sustain them. Yet the book was published by Duke University’s prestigious press, received an award from the National Women’s Studies Association, and is now on the syllabus of a course at Princeton University. Cary Nelson writes:

The course presents itself “as a decolonizing process” that “enables students to re-politicize personal trauma as it intersects with global legacies of violence, war, racism, slavery, patriarchy, colonialism, orientalism, homophobia, ableism, capitalism, and extractivism.” Whenever you see these terms jammed together you know you are in the presence of a political agenda, and more than that, a course of ideological indoctrination.

Puar’s book and [this] course apparently share more than anti-Zionism. They also share their dedication to a degraded version of humanistic study, one that replaces evidence with political buzz words. You recite the litany of sacred terms and thereby prove your commitment and your worth. There was a time when a serious study of decolonization alone merited a book or a course. Now you have to pack in patriarchy, homophobia, and so forth.

Is there a silver lining in all this? Perhaps. If anti-Semitism is packed together with all these other concepts, it will lose its meaning along with the others. The whole edifice should collapse with only the smallest encouragement from the rest of us. If not, it proves itself, however hateful, a fool’s errand to boot.

While the far left and the extreme right have responded with frenzied outrage to Israel’s attacks on Iran, middle-of-the-road, establishment types have expressed similar sentiments, only in more measured tones. These think-tankers and former officials generally believe that Israeli military action, rather than nuclear-armed murderous fanatics, is the worst possible outcome. Garry Kasparov examines this mode of thinking:

Now that the Islamic Republic is severely weakened, the alarmist foreign-policy commentariat is apprising us of the unacceptable risks, raising their well-worn red flags. (Or should I say white flags?) “Escalation!” “Global war!” And the ultimate enemy of the status quo: “regime change!”

Under President Obama, American officials frequently stared down the nastiest offenders in the international rogues’ gallery and insisted that there was “no military solution.” “No military solution” might sound nice to enlightened ears. Unfortunately, it’s a meaningless slogan. Tellingly, Russian officials repeat it all the time too. . . . But Russia does believe there are military solutions to its problems—ask any Ukrainian, Syrian, or Georgian. Yet too many in Washington remain determined to fight armed marauders with flowery words.

If you are worried about innocent people being killed, . . . spare a thought for the millions of Iranians who face imprisonment, torture, or death if they dare deviate from the strict precepts of the Islamic Revolution. Or the hundreds of thousands of Syrians whose murder Iran was an accomplice to. Or the Ukrainian civilians who have found themselves on the receiving end of over 8,000 Iranian-made suicide drones over the past three years. Or the scores of Argentine Jews blown up in a Buenos Aires Jewish community center in 1994 without even the thinnest of martial pretexts.

The Democratic Connecticut senator Chris Murphy was quick and confident in his pronouncement that Israel’s operation in Iran “risks a regional war that will likely be catastrophic for America.” Maybe. But a regional war was already underway before Israel struck last week. Iran was already supporting the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza, Hizballah in Lebanon, and Russia in Ukraine. Israel is simply moving things toward a more decisive conclusion.

Perhaps Murphy and his ilk dread most being proved wrong—which they will be if, in a few weeks’ time, their apocalyptic predictions haven’t come true, and the Middle East, though still troubled, is a safter place.