Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Guardian
"Ten days ago, I described how painful and confusing it was to hang on to precious relationships, in particular with Jewish friends whom I love and trust, who have done much to fight against Islamophobia. I see connections between Iraq and Israel, connections that they find unsettling. Like many liberal Jewish people, they worry that this may be just another excuse to resurrect anti-Semitism, which is a very light sleeper. I know that political criticism of the state of Israel today could indeed validate anti-Jewish hatred, and is doing so, and I am worried that I'm becoming too detached from these fears.
In response, Howard Jacobson produced a denunciation of me in particular and all those who drag Israel into the current conflict. The piece was, as ever, exquisitely written, but the tone was, well, both Moses and Oxbridge don, and we were notified that what we believed would not be tolerated by Jews like him who had suffered "slander" for long enough. One well-known Jewish writer wrote to me to say: "Howard in sarcastic mode can be extremely abrasive." Quite.
We are condemned by Jacobson as anti-Semites because we dare to question Israel. I am obviously a Jew-hater because I use the word "murdered" for six hundred Jewish victims of Palestinian bombers and the word "massacred" for over 2,000 (plus 14 more since I last wrote) Palestinian victims of the Israeli army. As I was writing this, 15 more Israeli victims were felled by another suicide bomb. More blood and sorrow."
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, "It's Not Anti-Semitic To Connect Iraq And Israel"
