So, Mel and Ned and Günter.

The Mel moment was practically a perfect one—exhilarating even. Not only did Mel Gibson actually say what on occasion every Jew suspects lies in the heart of every unreconstructed Gentile, but he got the language just right. That street-bully, Tourette's-like utterance, with a little loopy history to boot (Jews being responsible, according to Mel, for all the wars). Hence, revealing Mel to be not just an anti-Semite but a troglodyte (let us not forget he also called a policewoman that evening "sugar tits"). He reduced antiSemitism to ... a Mel thing. Still, Daniel Johnson in The New York Sun, a sassy newspaper which turns ponderous and cult-like when it comes to Israel—fancying itself a kind of house organ of the pro-Israeli vanguard—seized the opportunity: "It was predictable that the most serious attack on the civilian population of Israel since its foundation"—meaning Hezbollah's missile attacks as Israel invaded Lebanon—"would bring out the worst in the West." Meaning Mel's moment—meaning anti-Semitism, no matter how screwball, is always a determined attack on Israel.

Then Ned. After Ned Lamont's victory in the Connecticut Democratic primary over incumbent senator Joe Lieberman, the inevitable sotto voce question—one that can be asked in a hapless, paranoid, or witty manner—was: "What does it mean for the Jews?" A good-looking, amazingly wealthy, incredibly Waspy, totally patrician tool had defeated a ... not good-looking Jew. A Jew who supports a no-deviation line on Israel as well as—along with all those Jewish neocons—the president's no-deviation line on Iraq (with a big wet kiss). Was it happening? Were the Jews being punished for Iraq? Was this the message? The Anti-Defamation League, finding slurs on message boards at MoveOn.org—the liberal Internet activists who had backed Lamont—demanded contrition: "Those who allow hate to rear its ugly head under their auspices bear a special responsibility to distance themselves ..."

And Günter Grass, who at age 79, after a career of taking the moral high road, admitted that, in fact, he too, 62 years ago, had been a member (such a faded memory, but, yes, yes ... now that I think of it) of the Waffen SS. Take away the Nobel Prize, the books, the intellectual this and that, and what do you have? A storm trooper. As the predictable furor of European verbiage greeted Israel's invasion of Lebanon (many Euros were even calling Israel's bombardment "excessive"!), this was a timely reminder that whatever the Europeans may say is tainted by an inescapable history. They may talk about disagreeing with Israel—about equity for the Palestinians—but really they're talking about hating Jews. The New York Sun's Mr. Johnson pointed out that "Jews suffer insults every day in papers like the Guardian, which recently published a cartoon that could have come straight out of Der Stürmer, showing an Israeli thug smashing a child's face with Star of David-shaped brass knuckles."

THE CONVERSATIONS around the childhood dinner tables of people like the Bushes, Cheneys, Rumsfelds, Frists, and the unlamented Tom DeLay were perhaps not unlike the conversations in Mel Gibsons house.

Not incidentally, the "Holocaust International Cartoon Contest," an exhibition mocking the Israelis—big noses ... hah hah— has recently opened in Tehran, where its populist president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has dissed the Holocaust and called for the obliteration of Israel.

What this is, obviously, is just more evidence, if anybody needed it, of what every Jew believes (or, at least, is urged to believe, because paranoia is a healthy Jewish state of mind): there is always a rising tide of anti-Semitism, and, at any moment, that tide could overwhelm Israel.

At the same time, there was a sudden, disconcerting rise in the attention being paid to how fabulously successful the Jews have been—particularly during the Bush administration—in winning over such a goyisher town as Washington, D.C.

A mighty-recent contretemps in Israel-minded foreign-policy circles concerns an article written under the auspices of the Kennedy School at Harvard by the political scientists Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer—first commissioned and then rejected by The Atlantic Monthly (ahhh!), and subsequently published by the London Review of Books (aha!)—outlining various aspects of how Israel partisans have secured Washington. Then, in The New York Review of Books, the redoubtable Michael Massing followed up with an even more detailed overview of the political, public-relations, and financial game plan that had put the U.S. government in the bag for Israel. Such attention to Jewish political success—just as Israel, in the aftermath of its dubious attack on Lebanon, might most need that success—seemed suspiciously anti-Semitic, too. (The New York Sun, in a tactical bit of guilt by association, had former Klansman David Duke praising the Walt and Mearsheimer article.)

Still, nobody was really or credibly denying the success itself. It was not just the several-decade success of the pro-Israel P.R.-and-financial machine. It was not just that virtually any overt criticism of Israel has been banished from mainstream media and politics, nor that the Bush administration had been more deferential to Israel than any administration before it. (The president's own father never tried very hard to disguise his wariness and skepticism when it came to the Jews and Israel.) But, perhaps even more astounding, the most traditional of anti-Semites had been brought to heel.

It is, after all, not difficult to imagine the conversations around the childhood dinner tables of people like the Bushes, Cheneys, Rumsfelds, Frists, and the unlamented Tom DeLay—they were perhaps not unlike the conversations in Mel Gibson's house.

"You know what I'm gonna tell those Jews when I get to Israel, don't you, Herman?" the president, according to the new book The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power, by James Moore and Wayne Slater, when he was the governor of Texas, joked to Ken Herman, a reporter for the Austin AmericanStatesman, five years after Herman published Bush's comment that he believed heaven to be open only to Christians. "I'm telling 'em they're all going to hell."

But no matter. Indeed, it may be exactly that goyishness, that reasonable assumption of latent anti-Semitism—what The New York Times characterized in recent coverage of the mock-antiSemitic comic Sacha Baron Cohen as "that most risky of social toxins"—that helps create the leverage we're talking about. Walt, Mearsheimer, and Massing argue that because of the great effectiveness of an ad hoc group of determined Jews and their organizations, sometimes called the Israel lobby, or what my father— once president of the Jewish Federation of North Jersey—called "professional Jews" (that is, people who made their living off of being Jewish), the correlation of anti-Semitism with even the slightest qualms about Israel has become, year by year, ever more rigid. (Walt and Mearsheimer's own experience on the receiving end of great opprobrium for their article would certainly seem to demonstrate this point: nobody who ventures into this debate gets out in one piece.) The result is that every politician and media figure defaults to fixed sentiments about Israel. Everybody uses the same stamp-of-approval language. If you doubt Israel, you're suspect. You're practically Mel.

In this sense, anti-Semitism, while it may threaten Israel, may, in the balance, fortify it more.

And perhaps we can go further. Something remarkable in history may have happened—beyond brilliant RR. and interest-group message management. It may have something to do with the shock of 9/11. It also seems to have something to do with a helicopter ride George Bush (representing so many traditional strains of anti-Semitism—Wasp, Wall Street, Texas, Republican, born-again) took with Ariel Sharon over Israel before the 2000 election. (Bush, not a big world traveler, was greatly moved by the tour.) And with various odd aspects of fundamentalist-Christian rapture (the Kingdom of God on earth depends on the existence of the state of Israel). Anyway, it could mean, this love affair between the Jews and the political establishment, between the Jews and the right-wing political establishment, that, really, arguably, for the first time in history, we have entered a truly post-anti-Semitic age. It's even possible that the second Bush administration may go down in Jewish history as the point, the crossover, when, after 2000 years, Jewish and Christian orthodoxy re-united.

On the other hand, if there is really no anti-Semitism, if it is as dead as ... what? Communism ... then a different sort of debate inevitably begins. If there is no anti-Semitism, then you can't so easily use the anti-Semitic card as a line of polemical defense. You can't be soft on an issue if there is no issue. If it becomes less than credible to accuse people of anti-Semitism, then there are aspects of the Israel situation—for instance, the disproportionate amount of U.S. aid to Israel, cited in Walt and Mearsheimer's article ($3 billion a year, one-fifth of the foreign-aid budget), or, more recently, the whole Lebanon-invasion thing—that reasonably intelligent people might want to consider at some greater length. So, in that respect, the very absence of anti-Semitism—if that's what we've achieved—becomes, practically speaking, anti-Semitic.

Hence, there is a certain usefulness to having crazy Mel ranting in the night—it's a reminder.

Fighting anti-Semitism and using it at the same time, accumulating great political power but insisting on your own weakness, being Jewish but depending on that bloodless Protestant duck-hunter Dick Cheney (exactly the position Joe Lieberman is uncomfortably in right now), are not the only paradoxes here.

This unlikely triumph over traditional Republican and rightwing anti-Semitism goes to the heart of the most confounding contemporary issue of Jewish identity—and of the lack of debate about the U.S. relationship with Israel: Jews, overwhelmingly liberal and deeply relativist in their political and personal lives, have somehow come to be represented in political circles by Jews and Jewish organizations that are deeply doctrinaire and conservative.

IF YOU DOUBT ISRAEL, you're suspect. In this sense, anti-Semitism, while it may threaten Israel, may, in the balance, fortify it more.

It's a psychic split which is otherwise held in place by a secondary idea of anti-Semitism: that is, the concept of the self-hating Jew. This is a revisionist characterization which sees doubts about Israel when expressed by Jews—actually, it sees a wide range of traditional Jewish expression, skepticism, humor, general angst and self-doubt—as a product of a psychological defect, which aids the enemy.

The Jews, the professional Jews, or the Beltway Jews, have triumphed over the right-wing and traditional anti-Semitism by, in effect, you might argue, becoming right-wing-like themselves—rigid, pious, sanctimonious, and reliably up for a Middle East invasion. (This might then, reasonably, make them the self-haters by their eschewing of traditional Jewish bias against moral absolutism and proselytizing.)

My father got involved in Jewish organizations when I was a teenager, in the late 60s and 70s, not because he had any interest in Israel or, for that matter, in Jewish ritual or religion, but because he liked being a success, he liked being a macher. He liked taking the top post in our area Jewish Federation, being King of the Jews. (I once rode in an elevator to a high floor in the New York Hilton with Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan while my father and he discussed ... well, I don't think they were talking military strategy.)

But by the mid-70s, after the Yom Kippur War—the first big setback in Israeli P.R.—my father began to find organized Jewish life not so much fun anymore. Its primary purpose, he believed, was being transformed from the celebration and shepherding of Jews in America to a consuming focus on the support of Israel (before this, Israel had been a kind of offshoot of American Jewish interest—a charity; now, American Jews were becoming an offshoot of Israel). What's more, organization Jews were becoming professionalized. "Executive director" became among my father's bad words. Board meetings of the Jewish Federation became about who was and who was not an anti-Semite. Professional Jews, in his view, had become vigilantes. By the 80s, my father had resigned from organized Jewish life.

In college, my best friend's brother-in-law was an executive director of a national Jewish organization. We shared this joke about the nature of the Jewish executive director—the stiffness, the squareness, the priestliness, the propensity to find anti-Semites behind every door. After college, my best friend worked in media, then moved on to positions in government. And then—we debated the opportunities and expediency of this career move—he took an offer to join a prominent Jewish organization in Washington.

There was no instantaneous change here. My friend was just someone with a good Washington job. An operative. And yet... Like every other professional on the payroll of Jewish organizations, my liberal friend had to remain unwavering as Israel became ever more right-wing. It became, for me with my friend, a "Hello, are you in there?" experience.

And then I needed a favor. Not long after 9/11, New York magazine, where I worked at the time, ran a cover photo of a six-year-old boy holding a drawing he'd made of a plane about to hit the World Trade Center. In one of those hapless publishing errors, the plane in the drawing—scrutinized by editors, art directors, photo editors—was discovered, upon more intense scrutiny, to have, arguably, Stars of David on it. A torrent of angry e-mails and phone calls began: New York magazine was jeopardizing Israel. I called my friend and said we had this problem: a regrettable mistake, but obviously not malicious, and, in fact, the child who drew the picture was Jewish. Might we get some acknowledgment from his organization that this was unfortunate but clearly not intentional (why else have a friend who's a lobbyist?)?

His organization responded gravely: The editor of the magazine isn't Jewish, is she? What do we really know about her? Do you expect us to actually believe that no one saw this? Who else works for the magazine who might have facilitated this? It was inquisitor stuff. A conspiracy must exist because any explanation that seems perfectly credible must not be. What's more, there are no mistakes, there are only advantages, when you are at war. If you want our help—if you want not to be labeled an anti-Semite, or someone aiding the anti-Semites—then this is the cost. This is the nature of the apology, the level of contrition, we require. This is the party line.

Now, this is creepy and does suggest a kind of vigilante justice. But in some sense the more meaningful point is about how successful this approach is. This construct, wherein you define people in a way that disqualifies them from the discussion, is an extraordinarily powerful polemical weapon. It's a kind of blackmail, or triangulation: if you aren't this, then you're surely that—or we'll reveal you as that.

The very method of this attack has in many ways become part of the world order. Whether consciously or not—and what isn't strategic these days?—the doctrinaire and organized Muslims, as well as the doctrinaire and organized Christians, have adopted the political and message principles of the doctrinaire and organized Jews.

An apogee of this semiotic strategy was reached in the dispute in Denmark about the anti-Islam cartoons. In that instance, two key points were made. If you express critical sentiments about Muslims, then, ipso facto, you are anti-Muslim, which is necessarily as bad as being anti-Semitic, as such cartoons about the Jews would surely be (that's the point about the current cartoon show in Tehran—it can veil its anti-Semitism in being anti-hypocrisy). The other point is that hate, or, rather, being hated, is good for business. One is defined by one's enemies. Your enemies—as all fund-raisers know—are money in the bank.

THE DOCTRINAIRE and organized Muslims and the doctrinaire and organized Christians have adopted the message principles of the doctrinaire and organized Jews.

Similarly, the fundamentalist Christians in America have so often turned arguments over specific policies into arguments about who is anti-family and anti-Christ and anti-religion itself. (The rise of religious sentiment in America is, at least in part, a condition of not wanting to be seen as anti-religious. It's false piety.) Internationally, we have seen the rise of what is described as the anti-Christian movement. By the miracle of modern messaging, Christians have become a despised minority.

Indeed, some Arab groups, with no little effectiveness, more and more, in a bit of malevolent and perhaps impish topsy-turviness, equate the Jews with the Nazis. (The Pope too has recently been equated with Hitler by Arab groups because of his errant remarks about Islam.)

If you are in the ethnic-politics game—and what ethnicity isn't?— you can have no better game model than that of the Jews. Hence, who is more "anti-" than who is where the discussion has frozen—is Hezbollah more murderously anti-the-Jews or are the Jews more murderously anti-Hezbollah?

While it would seem that the discussion about the U.S. relationship with Israel—just as we arrive at a consensus about the futility and incompetence of the war in Iraq, the Israelis, aping our behavior there, futilely and incompetently invade Lebanon—is inevitable, it is as likely to become even more restricted, the protectors of the discussion more vigilant. Wade in and you'll invariably stray too close to proscribed language and to areas of imputed meaning that make your own character and motivation the issue. Nobody wants to go here—nobody wants to be flagged with the "anti-" card or as an anti-helper.

Hillary Clinton has lent her chief political operative, Howard Wolfson, a master of message moderation and control, to Ned Lamont, at least in part, I'll bet, to help him avoid having his campaign get an "anti-" label. Indeed, hearing that I might be writing something about this, the Lamont campaign quickly called to offer up someone who would tell me how deeply Ned was committed to Israel.

So I proceed here foolishly (my mother has begged me to reconsider writing this column).

And yet I too have an "anti-" card to play—as unfair, and perhaps as powerful, as the "anti-" card that otherwise awaits me.

My old Washington friend—the one who occupies high status in a prominent Jewish organization—recently sent me, along with other members of his e-mail list, a joke. It's a cover of a mock magazine, Jihad Bride, with a model in an extreme burka (looking rather like a camel). Here are some cover lines:

"Guide to Surviving a Hellacious Beating"

"Wedding Night Jitters: 'What if He Loves His Goat More than Me?' "

"Haj-eymoon in Mecca: Killing Two Infidels with One Stone" 

"Party Favors: Selecting the Caliber and Ammunition"

All right, I am quoting this cruelly. It's the merest piffle (and yet, under the circumstances, Israel having just massively bombed Lebanon, it does suggest a certain tone-deafness). I am, however, using this as an opportunity to demonstrate—by, as one must say, the evidence I hold in my hand—that, in the who-is-more-anti-than-who game, my friend high in the Jewish organization and hence perhaps all Jews in high places in Jewish organizations live in glass houses. They are possibly more anti-Arab than I am anti-Israel (important notice: I am committed to the survival of Israel!). Indeed, in the invariably escalating parlance of these sorts of "anti-" things, my friend, given his high place, is retailing hate-based material that could inflame already inflamed populations with grievous consequences, etc. So don't put out a press release about me.

This is the state of play.

One final note.

My father is Jewish. My mother isn't. Which makes me— since it may well be that most Jews now marry non-Jews— part of what is a new kind of Jewish majority: partial Jews (even in Europe it's a chic thing to be).

Demographically this might reasonably mean that liberal Jews, heedlessly marrying non-Jews, are leaving the conversation about Jewishness and Jewish identity and the problems of Israel to more rigid and illiberal Jews. On the other hand, it also might suggest an inevitable alteration in the binary nature of pro- and anti- when you have an ever expanding population of Jews who are also nonJews. They have a dual perspective. Insider outsiders.

In professional-Jewish circles this miscegenation is regarded as a profound crisis. It's seen, in some sense, as the worst kind of anti-Semitism: diluting Jewishness. Indeed, in the ever escalating language of anti-Semitism, this demographic development is called, among professional Jews, the "silent Holocaust."

Yes, ewww.

Jews, in other words, are being assaulted not only by people who hate them but by people who love them, too. There's no winning.