There is a venerable tradition in democratic life called protest. It is noisy, inconvenient, often theatrical, and at its best morally serious. It exists to put pressure on power, to embarrass the complacent, to remind the powerful that they are not, in fact, ordained by heaven. It is one of the finer inventions of civic life.

What it is not is a licence for intimidation dressed up as conscience.

That confusion appears every time a campaign against Israeli policy, Israeli businesses, or Israeli cultural activity drifts, predictably and with growing bad faith, towards Jewish communal life itself. One moment we are assured that the target is politics. The next, a synagogue is surrounded, a community event is hounded, and a foreign conflict is neatly transformed into local hostility against Jews.

That is not brave dissent. It is moral laziness with a placard.

Criticism of Israel is neither novel nor forbidden. Democracies do not require agreement to remain democratic. Disagreement, if expressed properly, is part of the bargain. One may oppose settlements, condemn ministers, challenge military conduct, denounce policy, and do so with all the force one can muster. That is legitimate political speech.

But when protest stops distinguishing between a state and a people, between a government and a synagogue, between policy and identity, it loses the moral clarity it claims to........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)