"What the Ben & Jerry's Decision Reveals About Israel", Yasmeen Serhan

Yasmeen Serhan's piece in The Atlantic has a thesis I find grim:

While the international community, including the United States, continues to distinguish between Israel and the territories it occupies, the reaction to the Ben & Jerry’s decision has shown that, as far as many Israeli politicians are concerned, that distinction no longer exists.

Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israel-based pollster and political strategist, explained the dynamic to Serhan in greater detail.

Why does Israel care about what an American ice-cream brand thinks of its policies? When I put this question to Scheindlin, she told me that for many Israelis, criticism of Israeli policy is often conflated with an existential threat to Israel itself. To hear many Israeli politicians tell it, “criticism from abroad of our policies is anti-Israel, it’s anti-Zionist, and it’s anti-Jewish, or anti-Semitic,” Scheindlin said. “And that’s really the narrative that we’ve been hearing.”

Serhan notes that while some left-leaning Israeli politicians praised Ben & Jerry's decision, their voices largely have been lost in the tumult raised by centrist and right-wing objections.

I can understand a lot of Israelis not taking kindly to a corporate policy change that explicitly criticizes Israeli policy. However, they should be a lot more careful throwing around that very loaded accusation, "anti-Semitism".

Israel's very existence is a reminder to the world that the ethnic cleansing of Jews during World War II was an abomination that must never happen again. People of good will everywhere can and do support that principle.

However, Israel is also a nation-state, and no nation-state is above criticism. Criticism of the Israeli state is not automatically anti-Semitic. If Israelis can't or won't acknowledge the difference, then Israel risks alienating even its staunchest allies and making "anti-Semitism" meaningless.

Now, it's true that telling someone not to be offended can be presumptuous. I've been on the receiving end of that argument, too, and I'll admit I've called "foul" on more than one occasion when told not to take offense. However, in retrospect, I must admit that I overreacted once or twice.

Take a deep breath, Israelis, especially you politicians lobbing rhetorical artillery fire at Ben & Jerry's. You might not like the company's implied criticism of your national policy but that's all it is: it's not hatred of your identity, it's not anti-Semitism. You conflate policy criticism and anti-Semitism at your own peril.