Whoever you are, wherever you stand politically, we are all affected by living in an age when Israel is traumatized – and anyone who is Jewish or cares about the Jewish state is traumatized, to one extent or another. You can see this trauma in the defensiveness of Israel’s defenders and the viciousness of Israel’s detractors. And we are now seeing a dangerous escalation. Bad enough that, back in the 1970s, it became politically acceptable to call Zionism racism. Today, we have a Turkish premier calling Zionism a crime against humanity. Bad enough that, even in the 1990s, as the Israelis and Palestinians were negotiating through the Oslo framework, whatever its flaws, many progressives and intellectuals were questioning Israel’s right to exist. Today, mainstream publications like the New York Times casually runs blog posts, like the recent one from Joseph Levine, saying Israel as a Jewish State lacks legitimacy. Of course, not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, but much of it is. How else can we explain the singling out, the disproportionate reaction, the obsession, the demonization? Israel has become the collective Jew, the object of far too much Western attention, much of it negative (and more of the ideological and definitional overlap in my next post). But we, especially in America, should not despair. The American people have been the best, warmest, kindest friends to the Jews in history – and the angriest, loudest, opponents of anti-Semitism. We need to remember heroes like Daniel Patrick Moynihan who, on November 10, 1975, denounced General Assembly Resolution 3379 singling out one form of nationalism, Jewish nationalism, in a forum of nationalism, for special opprobrium as racist. We need to remember Moynihan’s Moment – the fact that millions of Americans, from left to right, black and white, Jew and non-Jew, rose as one to condemn what Moynihan called “this infamous act.” At the time, from the labor organizer Cesar Chavez and the Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver on the left to governors George Wallace and Ronald Reagan on the right, Americans understood this attack as an anti-Semitic one. Few were misled by the “We’re not anti-Semitic, we’re just anti-Zionist line” peddled then, too. In fact, never before in Jewish history had the people of the world’s leading power repudiated an act of anti-Semitism so thoroughly, so powerfully. Americans saw it as anti-Semitic because Israel, the Jewish state was being singled out – and piled on against because it was the Jewish state. They understood it as anti-Semitic because the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, then as now, was national not racial, and the Soviets were playing the racist card in order to link Israel artificially — but effectively — with South Africa. And they agreed with Andrei Sakharov, the Soviets’ most prominent dissident scientist, who just weeks after winning the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize, had said: “If this resolution is adopted, it can only contribute to anti-Semitic tendencies in many countries, by giving them the appearance of international legality.” In fact, Moynihan went even farther, in his famous speech accusing the General Assembly of granting “symbolic amnesty—and more—to the murderers of the 6 million European Jews.” But fortunately, this time, there was a State of Israel to protect the Jews, and there was a United States of America, prodded by its UN Ambassador Moynihan and led by President Gerald Ford ready to fight from the start. As Moynihan would say, “An issue of honor, of morality was put before us, and not all of us ran.” Yes, we need more Moynihans – who died ten years ago this month — but we also need more Moynihanesque courage. There are issues of honor, of morality, put constantly before us, and none of us should run. Gil Troy is Professor of History, McGill University and a Shalom Hartman Engaging Israel Research Fellow in Jerusalem. His latest book is Moynihan’s Moment: America’s Fight Against Zionism as Racism published by Oxford University Press. Watch the new Moynihan’s Moment video!