One of the often overlooked provisions in the IHRA’s working definition of antisemitism identifies as antisemitic the act of “applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” Natan Sharansky made a similar observation with his 3D test, where the last D, double standards, refers to applying different principles to similar situations.

It is understandable why this provision gets less attention. Raw, unfiltered antisemitism, blood libels and racist stereotypes, is far more sensational to confront. But what I call “Jewish exceptionalism,” treating ordinary Israeli or Jewish behavior as something extraordinary and uniquely sinister while ignoring simple alternative explanations, is by far the most common and evasive form of antisemitism today.

It has roots in the old European tradition of othering the Jew, who for centuries was the only “outsider from within” that Europeans ever knew. The impulse is traced to the same origin as cruder forms of antisemitism, but has shifted since the end of World War II and the tabooing of outright antisemitic expressions across Western Europe.

Examples are plentiful. An Israeli professor just recently published a book claiming Israel’s adoption of hummus underwent “a process of culinary appropriation amidst settler........

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