Can’t you criticize Israel without being antisemitic?

---

Of course you can. Israelis do it all the time. But obsessively singling out Israel for universal condemnation and punishment is completely wrong, and frankly weird. As the sole

democracy in the Middle East, and surrounded by hostile neighbors, Israel strives to be a model of tolerance and restraint. It is the only place in the region where Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Druze citizens live peacefully, side-by-side in a country the size of New Jersey. Everyone attends the same universities. Everyone is treated at the same hospitals. There is no “apartheid” in Israel, and to suggest so is to dismiss the real trauma of Black South Africans, patronize Palestinians and demonize Jews.

---

Why is Deadly Exchange antisemitic?

---

Deadly Exchange doesn’t contain a scintilla of truth, and its authors know it. They have zero witnesses and no evidence to bolster their psychedelic accusations that Israelis are instructing American police how to oppress, maim and torture people of color.

It’s just another ploy to turn public opinion against Jews by smearing Israel. In fact, the U.S. Congress in July 2019 bilaterally and overwhelmingly voted to condemn boycotts of Israel for “principles of collective guilt, mass punishment and group isolation.”

But that hasn’t muzzled the radical JVP contingent. Their Deadly Exchange boycott of the Israeli police training program is flat-out dangerous, and not only because it stops Israelis from teaching Americans how to keep us safe from bomb-wielding terrorists.

Boycotts are dangerous, period. Nazis famously used them to help the German public get comfortable with the idea that Jews should be targeted, isolated and economically crippled. But even before the Nazis, there were periodic boycotts of Jews throughout Europe and the Middle East. German stormtroopers in 1933 at the Israel department store in Berlin with signs reading, "Germans! Defend yourselves! Don't buy from Jews!" “Deadly Exchange” portrays Jews as evil puppeteers. It’s nasty, Old World, blood-libel stuff, the sort of thing that has led to horrific violence through the ages.

---

What's it doing in 21st century America?

---

Anti-Israel activists regularly urge a boycott of Manny’s diner in San Francisco, because Manny is Israeli. Jew-haters in the United States have been emboldened by developments like Durham’s Deadly Exchange boycott.

---

I’m not Jewish, so why should I care?

---

It’s been said many times: What starts with the Jews doesn’t end with the Jews. History shows us that festering intolerance of Jewish people invariably spreads to other groups, rotting the foundations of any healthy society.

We are better than that.

---

What does Black Lives Matter have to do with Deadly Exchange?

---

Black Lives Matter (BLM) is largely focused on police violence against Black Americans. The anti-Israel crew has slyly inserted their Middle East agenda into the American BLM movement. They’ve done this by manipulatively claiming that the fate of Blacks here and Palestinians there, are directly connected through collaboration between sinister Jews and crooked cops.

---