Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
IMO, where criticism of Israel does become anti-Semitic is where:

a.) Israel is held to a unique, differing and/or higher contemporary or historical standards of conduct than other nations - such as the US.

or b.) Israel's right to exist is considered illegitimate, by virtue of it being a/the Jewish state. - thus a state existing in the same time and place, but being Christian and/or Muslim (eg: Lebanon) would be considered legitimate.

... and not OT, IMO, since it is highly relevant to the nature of the Iran's foreign policy, the source of the problem.
Well, if it's not OT...

Israel's entire claim to statehood rests on the assumption of uniqueness: is there another modern case of a population of recent immigrants appropriating an area and imposing a statehood unacceptable to the pre-existing population? Granting, of course, that the Americans, Canadians, Australians, etc all did the same thing, but under the standards of the day that was acceptable behaviour. I'm not sure anyone else could have got away with it in the mid 20th century, a time when the general trend was running in the opposite direction. The notion of a "historical claim" would have been seen as preposterous if not for the connection between Jewish history and the Christian mythology of the Western powers: who else could have demanded and received international support for the restoration of a state that had not existed for many centuries?

The argument against Israel's legitimacy is not a consequence of the state's Jewishness, but of its imposition by force against the wishes the pre-existing population. It's hardly unique to Israel; essentially the same argument was used to challenge the legitimacy of Rhodesia, white-ruled South Africa, etc...