If you spend any amount of time listening to some of the more self-important and dishonest critics of Israel dotting the intellectual landscape, you'll soon pick up on a common and dumb trick that a lot of them use. It goes something like this: they'll say something that's obviously untrue and sounds startlingly like an anti-Semitic slur - "Israelis are poisoning Palestinian ground water" is a decent example. Then they'll kind of step back and bravely assert "now, I just know that I'm going to be labeled an anti-Semite for saying that". And they love nothing better for you reasonably say "yeah, actually, that is kind of anti-Semitic - it's not true, so I wonder why you'd say that" - it will send them into fits of triumphant, self-declared martyrdom about how they're "being censored" and how you're "using accusations of anti-Semitism to stifle legitimate criticism of Israel".

Now the proper answer to this is: "of course you knew I was going to accuse you of anti-Semitism - you were being anti-Semitic!" Just because doing X predictably solicits response Y doesn't mean that response Y is somehow inappropriate. It may mean that X is so obvious that anyone can tell in advance what anyone else's reaction will be.

But. But...

If we can tell you in advance what you're going to say about us no matter what we do, then there's a problem. Because then it means that your reaction isn't coming as a result of our actions, but is based on something else - maybe predispositions, ideology, prejudices, etc.

So you can tell when accusations of anti-Semitism really are being used to stifle criticism of Israel (and this does happen, although pretty rarely), because the accusation will be the same no matter how reasonable the criticism. If the effect seems to happen no matter what the cause, then the real cause has to be something else entirely. In this way, being able to predict people's reactions to certain events - especially if these predictions happen before the events have even taken shape - is one way to suggest that something is amiss.

On October 6, we wrote about the Hezbollah-like army that Hamas was assembling in the Gaza Strip:

Then on October 31 we were even more convinced that something like this was inevitable, that few if any outlets would mention how Hamas made it inevitable, and that Israel would be blamed. We even added a little wrinkle about how Israel's legitimate campaign to root out rocket platforms in Gaza would be denied - we guessed that sophisticates would spin stories about how Olmert was attacking Palestinian civilians to shore up his political power in the wake of Lebanon II.

Sigh:

It's not necessarily bad to react the same way to the same situation. But when you're reacting the same way to every situation but passing it off as careful, contextual analysis - well, then you just might be biased.

And if this post isn't sufficient to demonstrate that the media is using weasel tactics to demonize Israel, tactics ranging from somewhat subtle to brutally obvious, then you would be well-considered to check out any of the 8 posts below. And if they're not enough to strongly suggest ingrained bias bordering on institutional discrimination, you might want to ask yourself if maybe you're working just a little too hard to deny the obvious. And if so, why.

Previously: Telegraph Publishes Demonstrably False, Vicious Anti-Israel Libel As Fact - USS Liberty Edition,
Anti-Semites: Israel Had Prior Knowledge of the Jordan Bombings, Arab Paranoia Watch II: Crazy Terrorist With AIDS Dies? Blame Jews!