According to a recent survey conducted by the Antidefamation League (ADL), disturbingly large numbers of Americans answered “yes” when asked if they believe Jews “go out of their way to hire other Jews” or “are more loyal to Israel than to America,” and to other similar questions. Kevin Williamson reflects on these results, and what they say about the persistence of this “strange prejudice.”

About 3 percent of Americans agreed that all of the anti-Semitic tropes in the ADL survey are “mostly or somewhat true,” suggesting that there are millions more anti-Semites in the United States than there are Jews. This is not entirely surprising, given the small size of the Jewish population.

Anti-black racism has of course been the most consequential prejudice in American history, but anti-Semitism remains strangely vital. Like its cousin, anti-Catholicism, anti-Semitism is more than a prejudice and more than a visceral hatred—it is, in its most extreme form, a kind of “theory of everything” in politics. Anti-black racism may exist with or without an attendant conspiracy theory, but anti-Semitism is almost without exception rooted in a conspiratorial view of the world. The fact that anti-Semitic incidents are on the rise on college campuses is entirely predictable in that campus culture is as much conspiracy-driven as talk-radio culture or Fox News culture, with different villains and a slightly more refined rhetoric: not “Jews” pulling the strings from the shadows, but “Zionists.”

Williamson also notes the confusion, and the bad faith arguments, that have emerged from the term “anti-Semitism.”

The Semitic languages famously include both Hebrew and Arabic, but also Amharic, Tigrinya, Tigre, Aramaic, and Maltese. But when T. S. Eliot wrote, “But this or such was Bleistein’s way:/ A saggy bending of the knees/ And elbows, with the palms turned out,/ Chicago Semite Viennese,” he wasn’t talking about the Catholics down in sunny Malta.

Earlier this month, an operative working for, or in conjunction with, Hizballah snuck across the Israel-Lebanese border and planted a sophisticated explosive near the town of Megiddo, which killed a civilian when detonated. On Thursday, another Iranian proxy group launched a drone at a U.S. military base in Syria, killing a contractor and wounding five American soldiers. The former attack appears to be an attempt to change what Israeli officials and analysts call the “rules of the game”: the mutually understood redlines that keep the Jewish state and Hizballah from going to war. Nadav Pollak explains how he believes Jerusalem should respond:

Israel cannot stop at pointing fingers and issuing harsh statements. The Megiddo attack might have caused much more damage given the additional explosives and other weapons the terrorist was carrying; even the lone device detonated at Megiddo could have easily been used to destroy a larger target such as a bus. Moreover, Hizballah’s apparent effort to test (or shift) Jerusalem’s redlines on a dangerous frontier needs to be answered. If [the terrorist group’s leader Hassan] Nasrallah has misjudged Israel, then it is incumbent on Jerusalem to make this clear.

Unfortunately, the days of keeping the north quiet at any cost have passed, especially if Hizballah no longer believes Israel is willing to respond forcefully. The last time the organization perceived Israel to be weak was in 2006, and its resultant cross-border operations (e.g., kidnapping Israeli soldiers) led to a war that proved to be devastating, mostly to Lebanon. If Hizballah tries to challenge Israel again, Israel should be ready to take strong action such as targeting the group’s commanders and headquarters in Lebanon—even if this runs the risk of intense fire exchanges or war.

Relevant preparations for this option should include increased monitoring of Hizballah officials—overtly and covertly—and perhaps even the transfer of some military units to the north. Hizballah needs to know that Israel is no longer shying away from conflict, since this may be the only way of forcing the group to return to the old, accepted rules of the game and step down from the precipice of a war that it does not appear to want.