Throughout history, others have had a lot of advice for the Jews, cheap at the price. America aside, there was not much else. Anti-Semitism is often personal, and always political. The anti-Semites get away with acting on their prejudice because there's a political environment where spin is appreciated. Anti-Zionism, the legitimate criticism of Israel politics and policy, is not always anti-Semitism. But it usually is. Once upon a time, the world's sympathy rested with the Jews. The United Nations approved the creation of Israel; the Jews had suffered so much in the early decades of the 20th century. Israel gave the Jews a new identity, an opportunity to create a country by working the land, bringing it to flower and training men (and women) to fight back when attacked. They succeeded beyond their dreams, beyond the nightmares of their critics. When Israelis survived in the wars of 1948, 1964 and 1967, no thanks to restraint, their global supporters began to fall away. Jews were easier to feel sorry for when they couldn't fight back.
"Nathan the Wise," an 18th-century German play by Gotthold Lessing, depicts a flattering portrait of Moses Mendelssohn, the playwright's famous Jewish friend. When the Sultan Saladin asks Nathan, the Moses figure, to explain his identity, Nathan replies simply: Ich bin ein Mensch -- "I am a man." This line infuriated Hannah Arendt, writing about it after the Holocaust. It characterized the Jew in a private, personal way, she said, ignoring his specific identity subject to political vulnerability. She knew what the Israelis have had to learn the hard way. For a Jew, being a man is not good enough unless it's backed up by the power to survive.