The vast majority of this is pro Palestine support rather than anti-semetic. They are not the same thing. If Palestinians were all well housed etc. there would be minimal protests.
Yup and this is where the political morass that is Israel-Palestine begins. My father was pointing this out when I was a kid in the 70s. Whenever anyone criticizes Israel for any reason, there are people from the pro-Israel lobby who pounce on that and call it anti-Semitic. It has had the effect of making almost all US politicians very pro-Israel, or at minimum willing to go along with any pro-Israel legislation. It has made anything but token support of the Palestinian cause a political death sentence in the US.
These statements and protests are more pro Palestinian than anti-Jewish. Thinking people can separate the policies of the government of Israel from the ethnic identity or religion of Jewishness. But the people crying anti-Semitism don't want that distinction to be made because if the Israelis are seen as a downtrodden minority then they aren't the bad guys.
Personally I don't have any issues with any religious or ethnic group. The Jewish people have managed to maintain their identity over 2000 years despite a lot of pressure to be absorbed into the ethnic groups that surrounded them. They were badly abused by mostly Christian populations during that time. Ironically it was Muslim countries that were much more tolerant of Jewish people. Up until the mid-20th century almost all predominantly Muslim realms had laws that allowed non-Muslims to live amongst them in peace. These peoples usually had to pay an extra tax, but that was it.
The anti-Semisitm in the Muslim world started when Jewish people started moving back to Palestine and started displacing the Muslims who had lived there for centuries. Even early on they were tolerated. The Jewish settlers bought their land and the Muslims who moved out made bank on the deal. But when the Jewish population got big enough they began to be seen as a "problem" and anti-Semitic rhetoric coming out of Germany at the time found a receptive ear among a population who saw themselves as being overrun with Jews.
After WW II the Christian world became much more sympathetic to the Jewish people due to collective guilt over the Holocaust and the Muslim world became increasingly less tolerant of Jewishness. Now the Christian and post-Christian world is pro-Israel and the Muslim world is anti. Lobbyists in the west are quick to conflate Israel with Jewishness to keep any criticism of Israel down.
Israel, the state and individuals within that state, has done a number of wrongs with regards to the Palestinians. The religious beliefs or ethnic identities of the people involved is immaterial in my mind, but among the participants it is driving them on.
To take another conflict which is defined in religious terms: Northern Ireland. The two sides have been identified as Catholic and Protestant since the beginning of the conflict, but at the core of the conflict is really the native Irish who were there first vs the settlers who moved in and built up the region. The natives are almost all traditionally Catholic and those moving in were almost all Protestants, so the conflict is described as a religious one, but in reality the religions are, at best, secondary to the true conflict.
Israel-Palestine has similar dynamics, but it favors a number of political groups to cast it as a religious battle.
www.telegraph.co.uk
