Make no mistake about this: There is no other explanation for the fact that the organizers dangled the possibility of participation in front of the Jewish community if they would adopt their political position on the present war. My innate anger at seeing religious festivals chased from the public square takes on a far graver sense of blood-boiling outrage, even despair, when I see it tied up with such specific political demands on the Jewish community. It’s a “mask drop” moment that reveals the racist assumptions underlying the entire position — akin to shining a blacklight on the bedsheets in a hotel room.

We are not likely ever again to be presented with such a thumping real-world refutation of the “it’s anti-Zionism, not antisemitism” trope. No, when an American town’s Hanukkah celebration is suddenly up for grabs based on the policy of the Israeli government, it is demonstrably, irrefutably — by the terms it sets out for itself — antisemitism. What’s more, it all seems directed toward raising the temperature of fear for American Jews, making it a tick more socially unacceptable, or risky, or isolating, to be a Jew or supporter of Israel in public. That’s why such shocking rhetorical cruelty runs throughout the pro-Palestinian movement. It is not incidental to the cause. The cruelty is the point.