At the WSJ, today, Bret Stephens has an excellent article entitled

The Road to Tehran

Polite society helped pave the way for Iran’s Holocaust conference

The two key paragraphs are these:

Yet simply because opposition to Zionism ideologically or Israel politically isn’t necessarily anti-Semitic, it doesn’t therefore follow that being anti-Zionist or anti-Israel are morally acceptable positions. There are more than six million Israelis who presumably wish to live in a sovereign country called Israel. Are their wishes irrelevant? Are their national rights conditional on their behavior–or rather, perceptions of their behavior–and if so, should such conditionality apply to all countries? It also should be obvious that simply because opposition to Zionism does not automatically make one guilty of anti-Semitism, neither does it automatically acquit one of it.

and

In fact, anti-Zionism has become for many anti-Semites a cloak of political convenience. But anti-Zionism has also become an ideological vehicle for an anti-Semitism that increasingly feels no need for disguise. In January 2002, the New Statesman magazine had a cover story on “The Kosher Conspiracy.” For art, they had a gold Star of David pointed like a blade at the Union Jack. This wasn’t anti-Zionism. It was anti-Zionism matured into unflinching anti-Semitism. And it was featured on the cover of Britain’s premiere magazine of “progressive” thought.

The superb Robert Tumminello at Ex-Pat Yank has some related ruminations, here, that also augment my earlier post on Annan’s visit to Independence, Missouri.