Rasmieyh Abdelnabi did it again in yesterday’s article “U.S. Must Condemn All Racism.” While her intentions appear good at first, she quickly reverts to her favorite pastime – bashing Israel, the only democracy in all of the Middle East.

Why not beat up on Israel? After all, it allows a freedom of expression, diversity in religion and political involvement by minority parties, has an effective and active judicial branch of the government and provides extensive welfare programs to its poor Muslims, Jews and Christians. I’ll pay Abdelnabi $10 if she can name one Middle Eastern country even close.

But she doesn’t want you to know that. She also doesn’t want you to know that while Hebrews, Arabic and Aramaic languages qualify as “Semitic,” the term “anti-Semitism” was created in 1873 by the German writer Wilhelm Marr specifically to refer to “Jew-hating.”

And she also doesn’t want you to know that while hate crimes in America are on the rise, they are still a water drop compared to the puddle of hate crimes against Jews (931 hate crimes against Jews in 2002 and 155 against Muslims, according to the most recent Justice Department report).

But maybe it still “doesn’t make sense” to Abdelnabi. She also said she doesn’t understand why someone who is anti-Israel could also be considered anti-Semitic.

There is nothing wrong with criticism of Israel as a sovereign nation. It becomes anti-Semitism when world criticism and expectation of Israel goes beyond that of any other country. But Abdelnabi probably doesn’t understand that either.

Bob Morgan

Third-year law student