The Jewish people’s claim to the land of Israel is constantly in the news. Anti Zionists – shading into anti Semites – question our claim constantly, vociferously, and quite ignorantly.

God’s commandment to Avraham to sacrifice his son, Yitzchak, and Avraham’s ready compliance, is an extremely troubling chapter. The questions are obvious: how could God make this strange, immoral demand, and how and why did Avraham agree to go through with it so quickly, with no argument or discussion?

This morning, after shacharit, while walking to the makolet to pick up  challot for Shabbat, I saw a mother cat lying on the side of the path surrounded by  four or five really small, newborn kittens. As I approached, she stirred herself, and the tiny kittens quickly and nervously scattered. Instinct. Nature.

As someone trying his best to speak reasonably and sensibly about Israel, I am often accused of a whole litany of high crimes and misdemeanors. One recurring accusation is that I am guilty of what-about-ism – deflecting ostensibly legitimate criticism of Israel by, in effect, saying “look over there”, at the horrors perpetrated by other countries around the world, in order to change the topic, rather than deal with Israel’s “criminal” behavior.

I reject this charge. And I’d like to look at Parshat Devarim to explain.

Socialism has become an issue in the American political conversation; it has been one here in Israel for a while. The original socialism of Israel’s founders - the Labor party and its various factions - was an essential element in the Israeli economy and society for the first decades of the State.

The claim that Jews love money is a well-known – perhaps the best known – trope in the moronic blather of anti Semites, from right, left, or center. Today, between fantasies about the Rothchilds, Soros, and the Jews “owning” everything from the media to the banks to the Fed, it figures prominently in all of their childish ravings.

Last night I watched the BBC Panorama program on anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. It was shocking and worrying, for a few reasons. First of all, the extent of the hatred of Jews and of Israel is remarkable. The demonization of the Jewish State, the recycling of moronic anti-Semitic tropes about the Rothschilds, the insidious, ubiquitous, and almost supernatural nature of the power of the Jewish people and the Jewish State, and a whole range of idiotic conspiracy theories, are all as ridiculous as they are frightening.

A few weeks ago, towards the end of Passover, I read a column in Ha’aretz by Rogel Alpher, my least favorite Israeli columnist (and that’s a hard title to defend!). Alpher ostensibly writes about television, but what he really does is criticize Israeli society from a misanthropic, arrogant, and usually ignorant perspective. The column under discussion is no exception.