For years, critics on the right have decried the "culture of victimhood" in this country.  However, as the views of social conservatives have been marginalized by the liberalizing trends of the last sixty years, the political right has now recognized victimhood as a very potent form of energizing the base.  Even Tom DeLay, usually the predator, not the prey, has now begun to rely on the shroud of martyrdom as a method of defense.

Of late, one of the most egregious examples of this trend has been the expansion of the term anti-semitic to refer to any person questioning the policies of the current Likud government of Israel.  Daniel Okrent, the New York Times Public Editor has provided the most eloquent skewering of this trend in his latest column on the Times' covearage of the Middle East.

the charge that The Times is anti-Semitic. Even if you stipulate that The Times's reporters and editors favor the Palestinian cause (something I am not remotely prepared to do), this is an astonishing debasement. If reporting that is sympathetic to Palestinians, or antipathetic to Israelis, is anti-Semitism, what is real anti-Semitism? What word do you have left for conscious discrimination, or open hatred, or acts of intentional, ethnically motivated violence?

The Times may be - is - imperfect. It is not anti-Semitic. Calling it that defames the accuser far more than it does the accused. (Note:  Registration is required to access this content).

Accusations of this sort are designed to do one thing: limit the discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.  They represent the worst of the worst, exploitation of the memories of actual anti-semitism for entirely different reasons.  They debase the suffering of millions in the past and water down the public's tolerance for actual anti-semitism.  There is only one thing to be done--calls like this should stop.