In The Jews Don’t Count, the British comedian, novelist, and television personality David Baddiel reacts to his uncomfortable discovery that there are many who will fight vigorously against the faintest expression of bigotry of just about any kind, but will ignore or defend anti-Semitism. Nick Cohen, reviewing the book, takes the case of the acclaimed American novelist Alice Walker—who has written vile anti-Semitic poems and endorsed the most paranoiac fantasies about Jewish world domination—as an example:

[T]he idea that an African American author could ever be “cancelled” for racism against Jews remains unthinkable to right-thinking people. . . . In 2019, a musical version of [her book] The Color Purple came to the UK. There was a hell of a fuss because Seyi Omooba, one of the cast, had once written an anti-gay post. The producers fired her, of course. Omooba’s prejudice was unforgivable, while Walker’s was, if not quite forgivable, then a matter of no consequence.

While praising Baddiel for acknowledging this, Cohen suggests that he does not fully appreciate the extent of the problem:

The Jew was the Christian world’s “other” for centuries. Islam may have taken its place at times but in in our inherited culture the face of Satan is the swarthy and hooked-nose face of the Jew. . . . These prejudices run deep, so deep that many on the left cannot acknowledge their existence or their power.

Others, however, possess all too conscious prejudices. The Stalinist tradition is as explicitly anti-Semitic as the far-right tradition, as is today’s radical Islam. To parts of the left, anti-Semitism is not just about Jews, it never is, but part of a wider far-left world view that encompasses support for Vladimir Putin and Iran, and also a contempt for democracy as fierce as anything you will find in the Trump movement. For if the “Zionist lobby” controls everything from Keir Starmer’s Labor party to the media, how can elections be free, how can democracy be anything other than a sham?

The former Israeli chief justice Aharon Barak recently warned that the country could be headed toward civil war due to Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to fire the head of the Shin Bet, and the opposition thereto. To Amichai Attali, such comments are both “out of touch with reality” and irresponsible—as are those of Barak’s political opponents:

Yes, there is tension and stress, but there is also the unique Israeli sense of solidarity. Who exactly would fight in this so-called civil war? Try finding a single battalion or military unit willing to go out and kill their own brothers and sisters—you won’t. They don’t exist. About 7 percent of the population represents the extremes of the political spectrum, making the most noise. But if we don’t come to our senses, that number might grow.

And what about you, leader of [the leftwing party] The Democrats and former deputy IDF chief, Yair Golan? You wrote that the soldiers fighting Hamas in Gaza are pawns in Netanyahu’s political survival game. Really? Is that what the tens of thousands of soldiers on the front lines need to hear? Or their mothers back home? Do you honestly believe Netanyahu would sacrifice hostages just to stay in power? Is that what the families of those hostages need right now?

Israeli democracy will not collapse if Netanyahu fires the head of the Shin Bet—so long as it’s done legally. Nor will it fall because demonstrators fill the streets to protest. They are not destroying democracy, nor are they terrorists working for Hamas.