We're tempted to pander to bullying on the issue of Israel, because we've pandered in the past. In so doing, searching as we did for a happy medium, we let the discourse slide into the gutter. That has to stop somewhere, and it should stop here.

Incidentally, this stuff is being driven by a faction that is guilty as sin, up to its neck in a history of sabotaging the handling of antisemitism complaints, and using disciplinary procedures for its own convenience. No one should take any of these cynics seriously.

If your answer to this is to complain about Peake even *mentioning* Israel, then you’re contributing to a political taboo that will do nothing but strengthen both the right wing opportunists who don’t care about antisemitism but want to smash the Left, and the antisemites.

And if your point is, "why single out Israel", the answer is that Israel is a settler-colonial state with advanced methods of violent population control and a very close relationship to the United States, and the connections between global forms of race-making matter.