In case anyone's wondering, I haven't disappeared, just gone on holiday. Thanks all for continuing to post interesting points and links.
I'm having a running debate on whether or not the majority of criticism of Israel in this conflict is anti-Semitic in nature. I'm on the 'not' side. The summarise the 'it is' side, this is a link that has been shared: Huffington Post - The Anti-Semite Inside You. On reflection, I'm not going to C+P the whole debate as it's highly identifiable but this post is the gist of my response:
"[...]I'd like to find out why you think that all reasonable detractors of Israel suddenly become motivated by a 'sinister underlying agenda' when it comes to the past few weeks. The first thing I can see is that you think that there are bigger conflicts, with more people being affected, than this one. Fine, that's true enough but they're also getting serious coverage as far as I can see and throughout the conflict Gaza has frequently been 2nd or 3rd down the headline priorities behind those larger concerns. Is you position that this operation shouldn't have been covered at all, or as a footnote, or what? What's the appropriate level of response? How big does something have to be before it can be headline news? Given that there are fewer than 2 million Palestinians in Gaza would the whole lot have to be killed or displaced, as proposed by Moshe Feiglin, before comment is fair rather than anti-Semitic? Half that number of Kosovar Albanians, with 'just' 60-ish civilian deaths, were displaced before NATO defied the supremacy of the Security Council and led airstrikes against Serb and Yugoslav forces (for the sake of avoiding another argument, I do not consider the Israeli administration to be equivalent to Milosevic etc. but use that conflict purely as a numerical point of reference). Quite aside from the reaction of the NATO members, that conflict was headline news for a year. The relative size argument also precludes specialism by a whole raft of NGOs, UN officials, journalists, politicians, commentators and plain old members of the public. Unless specialists and interested parties are supposed to turn their collective back and go for a tea break while Israel and Hamas slug it out then it's difficult to see how there can fail to be a range of opinions ranging from the unreasonable and reasonable detractors of both sides through to the reasonable and unreasonable supporters of each.
"Moving on, is your problem actually not with the media at all but with social media users? In which case, the major difference as far as I can tell is that people in my country and yours know that their government is opposed to Hamas, IS, Ebola epidemics, armies of drug-addicted and brutalised children raping their way through African refugee camps, murderous dictatorships etc. in a way that they do not see from their governments on possible abuses of human rights and international law perpetrated by the IDF and other Israeli security agencies. It's all very well to say that our governments support less than saintlike behaviour in many areas of the world but that is rarely something that comes to the attention of the public. In general, people trust that our governments support the human rights and rule of law for all people and when they're seen to be supporting Israel in denying the Palestinians the enjoyment of those same rights people want to show that they disagree. Of course, people are going to be moved by photos of bloodstained UN compounds. When the photos shift to babies in freezers and shrapnel-encrusted toddlers they/we are being exposed to propaganda but there is also a raft of propaganda coming from the Israeli side, which, as we have strict impartiality laws in this country at least, viewers are also exposed to in equal measure. That one set of propaganda is more crude, and thus highly effective at first glance, it neither here nor there. The fact remains that it is the civilian population of Gaza, not Israel, that is paying the highest price for this conflict and people do not want to see more Israeli deaths to make it 'fair' but fewer deaths of innocent people full stop/period and it is not anti-Semitic or otherwise sinister to want that and to want your government to do something about it.
"I've seen a few arguments running along the lines of 'well, Israel has Iron Dome, they should just ignore the rockets' and disagree with them as much as I'm disagreeing with you. Going back to Kosovo, in the NATO response the US bombed the Chinese embassy. Carl Bildt effectively lost his position as a UN mediator in that conflict by publicly asking what would have been the consequences if the Chinese had bombed an American embassy, the consensus being that his question was neither relevant nor helpful. The same applies here: it's not Mexican drug cartels rocketing San Antonio and asking what would happen if it was is utterly irrelevant in determining at a basic level if Israel's response is proportionate or not. That Israel should be taking action against rocket attacks on its population centres does not mean that any action they choose to take is warranted.
"For the sake of sticking to the point, let's disregard the admittedly unreported single instance of violence against an Israeli Arab property. Refocusing on the entirely verifiable reports of Israelis celebrating the death of civilian children in Gaza, I don't compare that with the rocket attacks on Israel. What I do compare it with is the disgusting anti-Semitism being shown by some - and it's a very small minority - of critics of Israeli actions. Racism, anti-Semitism, the extremists on all sides are all one to me as people unfitting of the respect shown to their several nations. But we aren't all extremists and I mind very much being classed in the same bracket as them. Scrolling back to my original point about the criticism being a reflection of the world's generally high opinion of Israel, I stand by that. Israel isn't a tinpot dictatorship with a corrupt administration, illiterate populace and a ruined economy propped up by humanitarian aid, it's a thriving democracy with some of the best innovation centres on the planet and a commitment to uphold human rights. From that viewpoint, it certainly should be able to uphold the high standards it sets for itself and administer its own affairs, internal and external, fairly and in accordance with human rights and the rule of law. That it requires international intervention to even begin to sort out what should be a pretty low-hanging diplomatic fruit is condemnation in itself."