The masks are beginning to fall

So Helen Thomas, respected reporter and long time Israel hater, who just this week called the Israeli flotilla operation a "massacre", has been revealed (surprise! surprise!) as nothing more than a regular anti-Semite, who believes that the Jews are subhumans who do not deserve to have the same rights as other people.

When you scratch the surface of most of Israel's vehement critics, that is what you'll find.

It didn't use to be that way. In the past, it was rational to believe that Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is the root of the problem, the cause of the conflict. Those of us who are inside the conflict knew it is more complicated than that, but many of us, including myself, also believed that the occupation is the main issue. And the position that put the blame entirely on Israel was understandable.

In the past two decades, however, Israel has transferred control of the Gaza Strip and 40% of the West Bank to the Palestinians, offered to give them control over more than 90% of the West Bank, and publicly acknowledged the right of the Palestinian people to form a sovereign state in these regions. The majority of Israelis is in favor of the two-state solution, and wants the two nations to live side-by-side in peace and dignity. Only the extreme right still rejects this solution.

How did the Palestinians react to these changes? How do they regard the rights of the Jewish people? Currently they have three leaderships. The Gaza government openly declares it wants to annihilate Israel, and its ideology implies that all Jews should be exterminated. The West Bank government accepts the two states solution, but wants one state (Palestine) to be ethnically cleansed of Jews, and the other state (Israel) to have a Palestinian majority, and give away its Jewish identity. And the leadership of the Israeli-Palestinians warns its people not to play any positive role in Israeli society, and refuses to acknowledge Israel's legitimacy, defining it as a colonial entity. You don't hear any Palestinians acknowledging that Jews are also natives of this land, and have a natural right to live in it. The most they are willing to do is accept that since they can't get rid of the Jews, they are willing to let them stay.

And yet, the global anti-Israel rhetoric has only grown increasingly more hateful and violent, and now uses inflammatory words like "apartheid", "genocide", "massacre", and other words that have no relation to the reality of the situation, but are thrown around generously to describe Israel's actions. How come?

I believe what happened is that the reasonable critics of Israel have realized by now that the situation is more complicated than they thought, and adopted a more careful view. So that left the Israel-bashing to the anti-Semites who disguise themselves as human right believers, and since the media tries to be "balanced", the side that is against Israel is represented by these anti-Semites, who are poisoning the minds of the viewers.

Well, I'm drawing a personal line in the sand. The view that blames "Israeli occupation" for being the root of the problem is no longer reasonable or defensible. I will no longer regard it as understandable. There are enough facts to refute it, and anyone who still holds it in the face of these facts does so disingenuously. Anyone who in this day and age puts the majority of the blame on Israel does so because they are an anti-Semite.