While conservatives are usually not overly concerned with racism and have been willing to tolerate the racism of their fellows, they delight in accusing Democrats of racism. If this Democrat is a woman and Muslim, so much the better.
This sort of allegation is probably satisfying. First, there is the value in scoring political points against Democrats. Second, it is no doubt pleasant to turn the tables on Democrats. Third, such attacks provide cover for the racism of certain conservatives: how dare the Democrats attack, for example, Trump for being a racist when they have racists among them? While it is ironic to attack Democrats for alleged racism to protect racists, it seems a popular strategy on the right. This is not to say that racist Democrats should get a pass, but this tactic is based on a fallacy.
A favorite target of conservatives is Democrat Ilhan Omar. Omar has been critical of Israel and its influence over American politics. Unfortunately for the Democrats, but fortunately for the Republicans, she has used terms like “hypnotize” and “allegiance” that can be interpreted as linking to anti-Semitic tropes. Her words were not overtly anti-Semitic as one must interpret them through the lens of these tropes. If she had said the same words about another country, they would seem innocuous. For example, her use of “allegiance” was taken as referring to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. However, if she had accused Trump of having an allegiance to Russia, this would obviously not appear anti-Semitic to anyone.
An obvious concern, which has been raised by others, is that criticism of Israel can easily be cast as anti-Semitism by analyzing every word of the criticism to find some connection to anti-Semitism. Even if a critic is scrupulous in their word choices, it would be easy to make an accusation of anti-Semitism. For example, any criticism of the influence of Israel lobbying congress using money can easily be cast as an anti-Semitic attack based on antisemitic stereotypes of Jews, money and conspiracies.
Interestingly, critics of Israel find themselves in a situation that conservatives often claim to face, that their non-racist words and actions are wrongly interpreted as racist. More generally, this is the complaint about political correctness and not being able to “say things” anymore. Oddly enough, conservatives did not rush to defend Omar from political correctness. As an example, when a conservative makes a monkey reference involving a black person, their defenders will profess ignorance of the racist monkey trope and assert that the person was using the reference in a perfectly non-racist manner.
While the lamentations of conservatives about political correctness are often veiled defenses of racism and sexism, their concerns do contain some merit. A person’s words can be wrongly taken as racist, especially when people are hypersensitive and are actively trying to interpret the words as racist. And almost any criticism can be seen as racist. For example, criticism of Obama was sometimes cast as racist, even when it seemed to be limited to his policies and actions. As such, there is a real problem here: if criticizing a black person must be racist and criticizing Israel must be anti-Semitic, then there would be no way to offer legitimate criticism of a black President or Israel. It is obviously absurd to think that Obama or Israel should be exempt from criticism because such criticism must be racist or anti-Semitic. There are many legitimate criticisms of both that have nothing to do with racism. As such, it would be absurd to dismiss such criticism as automatically racist. So, criticizing Israel is no more automatically anti-Semitic than criticizing Obama is automatically racist or criticizing Elizabeth Warren is sexist.
There is, however, the problem of the opposite extreme: that having grounds for legitimate criticism entails that the criticism is not racist. For example, while there are legitimate grounds to criticize Israeli influence over congress, couching this criticism in terms of an international Jewish conspiracy and remarking that Jews are the secret bankers controlling America would be antisemitic. As such, while criticizing Israel can be antisemitic it need not be.
I thought upon the core question more;reconsidered the premise; remembered my admin law and civil rights background and realized I had made an error of omission. Oh well, we do get a little rusty, with disuse. The substance of my error is this: antisemitism is not, far as I recall, RACIAL discrimination. It might be brought as unlawful discrimination based on color or national origin, because people who embrace Judaism are of different races, colors and/or national origins A case being brought is one thing. A case being granted standing is another, because a judge must find nexus, in order to proceed. Otherwise, there is no cause, no case. Some federal statutes, and/or regulations, used to confer protections, based on religion. I don’t know how those were handled under administrative law proceedings, because I never had to hear such a case. It depends. Law is like that. Rule of thumb: religion does not=race.
Le contretemps: Is criticising Putin anti-soviet? Such questions seem pointless to me. Israel probably would look little different without her current leadership because Israel is a survivalist state and her particular modus operandi is neither intent upon change nor intent upon pleasing the rest of the world. Contextual reality, for Israelis has not materially changed since 1948. And, additionally, I think Israeli leaders have been anti-heroic for this long, so, to paraphrase an old adage, every NEW dog is expected to learn and exercise the old tricks. It is not a matter of Judaism versus the rest of the peoples of the Middle East. It is a matter of survival of God’s chosen people, as has been written somewhere. As far as Israelis are concerned, it is them against any and all who would destroy or change Israel. As I have noted, elsewhen, reality for Israel is * …whatever the hell…* She says it is, not whatever way someone else thinks it ought to be. Ergo, no, criticizing Putin is not the same as criticizing the Soviet people. We don’t hear much dissent from Soviet people these days. It is not healthy for them.