The Houthis’ official slogan contains the phrase “Death to Israel” alongside “Curse on the Jews,” lest anyone mistake them for mere critics of Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy decisions. The possibility of such confusion is very much on the minds of the “Jewish writers, artists, and activists” who signed an open letter, recently published in a New York-based literary magazine, complaining about the “widespread narrative that any criticism of Israel is inherently anti-Semitic”—which then went on to accuse the Jewish state of possessing “genocidal intent” and to defend Hamas apologetics. But, notes Phoebe Maltz Bovy, supporters of Israel are not advancing such a claim. Rather, the blurring of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism begins elsewhere:

Anti-Zionism isn’t anti-Semitism, goes the mantra. The problem is, anti-Semites themselves aren’t in on this distinction. Somewhere along the way—in France, maybe?—they realized that they could tack on an “it’s because [of] Palestine” to any anti-Jewish act, however unrelated to the Middle East. It gave plausible deniability, and made it seem as if being mad at local Jews for existing was a humanitarian geopolitical gesture.

And every Jewish target turns out to be an Israeli one, if you look real hard. . . . Not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism, but all anti-Semitism these days calls itself criticism of Israel.

Perhaps this is made clearest, notes Bovy in another post, by the use of the word “settler.”

We’re living in a moment when much of the left has embraced the idea that social justice is the global struggle against “settlers,” [and] classifies everyone across the globe as either home, displaced from home, or invading someone else’s house.

In Israel, according to anti-Zionist understandings, all Jews are settlers. Not just Jews living in the settlements [in the West Bank]. An Israeli Jew in Tel Aviv is, by the understandings of those who think Israel itself it illegitimate, no matter its borders or leadership, a settler.

To test her analysis, Bovy asked her social-media following if there is some place Jews would not be considered settlers; she discovered that “a lot of people are stumped.”

This week, there have been numerous unconfirmed reports about the fate of Esmail Qaani, who is the head of the Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Benny Avni writes:

On Thursday, Sky News Arabic reported that Mr. Qaani was rushed to a hospital after suffering a heart attack. He became [the Quds Force] commander in 2020, after an American drone strike killed his predecessor, Qassem Suleimani. The unit oversees the Islamic Republic’s various Mideast proxies, as well as the exporting of the Iranian revolution to the region and beyond.

The Sky News report attempts to put to rest earlier claims that Mr. Qaani was killed at Beirut. It follows several reports asserting he has been arrested and interrogated at Tehran over suspicion that he, or a top lieutenant, leaked information to Israel. Five days ago, the Arabic-language al-Arabiya network reported that Mr. Qaani “is under surveillance and isolation, following the Israeli assassinations of prominent Iranian leaders.”

Iranians are desperately scrambling to plug possible leaks that gave Israel precise intelligence to conduct pinpoint strikes against Hizballah commanders. . . . “I find it hard to believe that Qaani was compromised,” an Iran watcher at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, Beni Sabti, tells the Sun. Perhaps one or more of [Qaani’s] top aides have been recruited by Israel, he says, adding that “psychological warfare” could well be stoking the rumor mill.

If so, prominent Iranians seem to be exacerbating the internal turmoil by alleging that the country’s security apparatus has been infiltrated.