The appalling Melanie Phillips thinks that the BBC TV programme Spooks, is antisemitic. She hasn't seen it you understand, but a reader told her, so it must be true. However, since the reader concerned seems to have got the plot line wrong, (the Jewish traitor wasn't Jewish) I wonder if they saw it either.
The plot line in episode 3 that sets her off, involves a bunch of Christian fundamentalists who murder various Islamic fundamentalists in order to set off a Holy War against Islam. On the fringes are an Anglican bishop and a member of the PM's staff who seems to have some security services oversight. In attempting to deal with this threat the MI5 officer - posing as a representative a rich group willing to foment major terrorist attacks on mosques across the country - is compromised and sold to Mossad as being for real. They then decide to take action. Cue some unlikely heroics by two unarmed MI5 agents before the Mossad team are called off at the last minute.
The central issue that seems to give offence - now where have I heard that before as a reason for not doing or saying something? - is that Israel takes independent action against people they see as a threat to their security. As I said in a comment on the post that led me to hers, there is a fair degree of precedent for this - the tracking down of those who murdered Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics being a case in point.
So - lets get this straight - Christians kill Muslims who are avowed supporters of terrorism. Israel steps in to protect its own interests. This is anti-semitism?
The continued equation, by Melanie Phillips and her ilk, of those who say anything less than complementary about the modern political state of Israel with anti-semiticism is a dishonest rhetorical trick. It is the same dishonesty as practiced by those who try to equate action against Islamic fundamentalist terrorists with an attack on Islam as a whole. It is the rhetoric used by those who complain that giving offence is of itself an action that must be controlled - preferably by more laws.
