That experience caps several years of noticing a quiet perversion of peace movement politics taking place. On a personal note, I am anti-interventionist (borderline pacifist) and happily marched with the Stop the War Coalition against the Iraq War in 2003. But when working as a lecturer a few years later, I quit my labor union when it signed on to a boycott of Israeli academics. And I’ve witnessed a strange slide within the anti-war movement toward a variety of politics that leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

Obviously, I’m concerned about a rise of a socially acceptable anti-Semitism that threatens the well-being of those Jewish friends that I know and love. But I also despair that the European peace movement has allowed this situation to develop without stopping even to think about it.

The tolerance that some on the left are showing toward anti-Semitism threatens to delegitimize fair and reasonable criticism of Israeli policy. They have allowed a potentially noble cause to be infiltrated by people without a shred of nobility. They need to put their house in order before it collapses down on all of us.