On Israel

1) Israel should be re-settled along an isolated stretch of the northwest coast of Australia. Some sheep farmer can probably sell off a corner of his ranch. The whole country would fit in this space. Here, they can grow their oranges and build their supercomputers to their heart's content. Sunshine, no natives (anymore), no security problems. What's not to like? They are experienced gardeners of the desert.
2) I hate this shitty little country, cross between Coney Island and the Third Reich. It takes up too much of the world's bandwidth. I don't think people care whether they are Jews or not; they just don't like pushy, tacky, self assertive people. It's about denotation not connotationn. That they then happen to be Jewish, a sort of concentrated exposed Jewishness, all in one place, in control of its destiny, no excuses, no hiding behind more numerous majority nationals of other countries, in other words you could nail it down to Jewsihness and nothing else, is a disturbing problem which Jewish intellectuals have to deal with. Is it because the toughness required to be a survivor amid oppression, becomes, when congregated and unshackled, a bullying oppressiveness?. I think so. Nietszche had a phrase for it: you out a slave upon a throne and he becomes a tyrant.
Is it because they are Jews? Yes. Because it arises out of the Jewish historical experience. Do other countries dislike this behaviour? Yes. Israel is the second most disliked country in the world in a poll of 35,000 people from 40 countries. (Iran is worse.). When the whole world's got a problem, you've got a problem.
Is it anti semitic? No. Because it's not the Jewishness per se that people dislike. It could be people of religion X, or any denoted group whose backstory is unknown, behaving this way and people would still dislike it.

3) I am against boycotts in principle but could be persuaded of it in this case. But is there anything to boycott? I thought Israelis are pretty much shunned in Europe anyway. I never meet Israelis in Brussels, nor see Jews. Israel and Euriope are such polar opposite: Europe is nice, consensual settled, civilised, and a little aristocratic. Israel is a settler society: raw, egalitarian, uncouth, surviivalivist, full of rejects from the old continent - a bit like early settler America, I imagine, which had a problem with the indigenes. I imagine that comonality, as well as the religiosity, is what binds America and Israel togerher.
My hesitation against an Israeli boycott - and I voted against it in the NUJ ballot - is that there are, despite the general awfulness of this country, a lot of good people in Israel, human rights campaigners and historians, who are more sympathetic to the Palestine situation than the Hampstead Jews, whose liberalism goes on holiday when they start to think with the blood. Interestingly American Jews seem to more liberal, more progressive, than British Jews.

But extremism of those who are not at the coalface is common: like this: I remember in the 1990s east European exiles who came back to the Baltic States and Poland from running Ohio car dealerships or working in Washington think tanks in the US were absolute fascists towards the Russian minorities, towards Russia in general, a superpower that meekly did everythingt that was asked of it an unprecedented series of acts of appeasement. Unfortunately they won the ear of the president, through their US lobbying connections - and you see the result today, the outrageous demonisation of Russia, which is a country I do care about
If reasonable Israeli voices were hushedl because of any boycott that would be a setback.

The only way to arm oneself against the charges of anti-semitism is to be a Jew oneself. Unfortunately, since this is not possible, the secone best alternative is to read the Israeli revisionist (ie pro palestinian) historians or the American Jewish intellectuals like Finkelstein, who has written about the extortion racket by the World Jewish congress carried out against the German state and as a result can't win tenure at any US university.
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/