Shalom Lappin skewers Sir Max Hastings (see below) in a letter in today's Guardian:

'Max Hastings lectures Jews that Israel's policies are causing anti-semitism (A grotesque choice, March 11). He instructs them that their failure to reject these policies will aggravate the problem. This argument is perverse. Surely the reason for opposing Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem is that it is wrong, not that it provides a cover for anti-Jewish racism.
I do not recall Hastings or anyone else telling Africans that they are obliged to speak out against Mugabe's dictatorship in Zimbabwe on pain of contributing to anti-African prejudice. Nor is such "well-meaning" advice offered to Russians, Chinese or others with large diasporas, whose governments are involved in foreign occupations and significant human rights abuses.

'Hastings is strangely quiet on the role that suicide bombing has played in dampening dissent both within Israel and among Jews in the diaspora. The British public reacted with similar defensiveness when confronted with terrorist bombings in Northern Ireland, even when many of them strongly disapproved of British policy in the province.

'To inform a group of people that their acceptance depends upon their adopting correct political views is to grant legitimacy, even if inadvertently, to the very racism which one purports to deplore. Mr Hastings' fatuous mission to the Jews is an exercise in arrogance and double standards. It is part of the problem which it purports to address, rather than the solution.'

Exactly.