Nobody — or hardly anybody — ever talks about how Palestinian Christians are treated in Israel. The reason is very probably what I found out for myself when I published an article on my blog about how Israel is not such a haven for Christians and received abusive comments from a couple of (anonymous) usual suspects.

As these positions deserve to be exposed, I decided to reply to them here.

The first comment is in answer to the point I made that what happens to Christians in Israel is usually favourably compared with what happens to them in Islamic countries. But is that the right comparison? Isn’t Israel supposed to be democratic and Western?

Therefore, Israel should be judged by that standard and the way Christians and Christianity are treated in Israel compared with the way minorities and their religions (including Jews and Judaism) are treated in Western countries.

The first anonymous commenter says:

It’s the opposite the aggression in Israel is done by arrogant antisemites, the cameras only roll when a Jew gets angry enough to respond, Christians set Jews up in Israel just like they do everywhere else. Where do you think Muslims learned these tricks?

The second anonymous (and even more illiterate) commenter maintains:

No western standards , you are soi wrong about this it’s scary. 300,000 antisemites marched through France last year, what about the treatment of Jews in your beloved Italy, proof Jews have been there for 2300 years such as caves, where are the Jews of Ita;y, how many vilent antisemitic incidents in Italy/ I think it is nearly 2 billion at this point in histopry. They have accused orthodox Jews of spitting everyone and they never actually do it. If you are so evil and blind that you can’t see the media and many individuals lie about Israel, you shouldn’t be alive. Then you falsely claim that Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post are standard papers, something you would not do for any other subject except to selectively prove your antisemitic thievery and lying point. haaratz has a daily article about how evil any religious Jews are and the the Jerusalem Post does too. You are wrong on this, the Western countries has and does treat Jews especially in Europe, worse than all other peoples combined. You are just bullying thye Jews with oibvious antisemitic bias and the same types of tricks Muslims use, in the media. Christians are treated better in Israel by infinity than Jews were in any Western country. Definitely Italy.

My dear anonymous friends (both of you), I wanted to answer you but I realise that you’ve done it very well by yourself.

By skipping arguments and launching into vituperative attacks without substantiating the wildest claims (“almost 2 billion anti-Semitic incidents” in Italy alone!) I suppose it could be right if you consider anti-Semitic anyone who disagrees with you), you have demonstrated that my point was correct.

There is indeed a real question that dares not speak its name.

And it doesn’t dare because you try to silence all criticisms of Israel or Jewish culture or behaviour with tired, old accusations of anti-Semitism (when not out-and-out neo-Nazism).

This reminds me of something. Oh, yes, your favourite people. Muslims try to silence all criticisms of Islam in the same way. Just replace “anti-Semitic” with “Islamophobic” and “neo-Nazi” with “racist”.

I’ve read a very apt epigrammatic definition of anti-Semitism: “Once anti-Semitism was hate of the Jews; now it has become saying anything that Jews hate.”

This is the ultimate taboo, an extremely fierce one. Anyone can be criticised except Jews. I know that I can write unfavourably about Muslims (that is actually easy these days), Black people, homosexuals, Third World immigrants, non-Whites in general. But on the rare – albeit very recently increasing – occasions I have criticised anything to do with Jewry, I have been insulted.

It’s highly disingenuous of you to talk about anti-Semitism on the rise in Europe when you know very well that this is not due to the native Western people but to the immigrant Muslims. And immigrant Jews in the West have always been at the forefront of support for unlimited immigration and multiculturalism. Now they don’t want to lie in the bed they’ve made for themselves. They move to Israel. Too bad indigenous Europeans haven’t stolen Arab lands to go to and establish an ultra-nationalist state where the “other” is treated as a second-class citizen.

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve lived in a country (even 2,300 years as you say), if all this time you’ve cultivated your separateness and considered yourself part of a group of superior humanity, the chosen people.

I’ve heard before all these stories of all sorts of people who set up the Jews, and I must say that sometimes I’ve fallen for them. But you can’t fool all people all the time.

Interesting how neither of you could answer the documented fact that Israeli legislators have ripped up the New Testament and called for its burning, or the attacks on churches and writings of “Death to Christians”. Are they all set-ups?

For letting people know about these truths you think I deserve to die: “You shouldn’t be alive”, as you nicely put it. So much for considering yourself victims. Now I know even better what must be like to be a Christian in Israel.

Enza Ferreri is an Italian-born, London-based Philosophy graduate, writer and journalist. She has been a London correspondent for several Italian magazines and newspapers, including Panorama, L’Espresso, La Repubblica.

She blogs at www.enzaferreri.blogspot.co.uk.