letter to KCND WHY on a show they were doing When i hear or read anti-Semitic comments, or more accurately, what are later often characterized as anti-Semitic comments, those comments are actually anti-Israeli in nature not anti-Jew.  And most often directed against policies of the Israeli government, not the people of Israel.  This semantic confusion is not by accident, but by design. In the US in particular, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) works diligently to ensure that Americans, particularly lawmakers and the news media, see no difference between the Jewish identity and the Israeli identity (I imagine there are similar organizations operating in Europe).  The identities of the two are so purposely intertwined that any criticism of the Israeli government can be instantly twisted into an implicit criticism of Jews and Judaism. Most recently, these complaints have been about Israel’s conduct in the open air concentration camps they’ve been running for the past 20 years in Gaza: 2 million inmates, no education, no jobs, no hope, no end in sight.  If I were an inmate in Gaza, I think I’d be playing with rockets, too.  The response and intransigence of the Israeli government concerning this concentration camp is by turns horrifying, infuriating and frustrating to levelheaded observers the world over.  But, intentionally or not, we are allowed only one limited set of terms.  And frankly, I think the government of Israel is quite fine with that because as soon as the word "Jew" is uttered, the angry or frustrated speaker is immediately put on the defensive and cast as an anti-Semite. When I travel to countries where I hear "we hate America," fairly often, the speaker usually follows-up with, but "you American’s are all right."  I know what they mean.  Sometimes I’m tempted to answer, "Yeah, me too,"  because I’m not crazy about a lot of the policies of our government either. (I am, of course, talking about comments from reasonable middle of the road, types from both the left and right.  Not the hate-everyone extremists.) A parallel report was recently broadcast on the BBC show More or Less.  This show does statistical analysis of news items and questions. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/moreorless> ### WS Deaths in Gaza 22 Aug 14 It’s only 10 minutes long and well worth your time.  I pointed out that they fell into the same semantic trap. Rick H. Kennerly Virginia Beach, VA [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) secure certificate generated with <https://www.gpgtools.org>