Whatever quarrels one might have with Senator Bernie Sanders, his thinking would seem to be immune from medieval anti-Semitic influence. Yet last month, after Sanders denounced “the Netanyahu government’s extermination of Gaza,” the pro-Israel group AIPAC attacked Sanders’s statement as a “hate-filled rant” and “despicable blood libel.”

Extraordinary claims—such as the charge that the Jewish senator from Vermont is anti-Semitic to the point of spreading ancient slanders against his own people—require extraordinary evidence. Yet large segments of the conservative and even centrist wings of the American pro-Israel movement have whipped themselves into such a frenzy of paranoia that they are making accusations like this without much effort at justification.

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