Last week's allegations in a Swedish newspaper sparked an inferno in diplomatic circles, the flames of which are being fanned higher with every passing day. Despite dealing specifically with the behaviour of Israeli troops in the West Bank, rather than being a broad-stroked attack against Judaism, the indictment against the Israeli army has been held up as a shining example of modern-day "blood libel", as though the forces of antisemitic darkness are amassing once more against the Jewish people in their entirety.

Aftonbladet presented allegations that Israeli soldiers routinely harvested organs from dead Palestinians in their custody, establishing a link between the organ-theft allegations and the recent money-laundering scandal involving prominent members of the American Jewish community. The article was immediately condemned throughout the Israeli political and press arenas, with the deputy foreign minister decrying it as a "blood libel against Jews", and demanding that Swedish officials take action to rebuke the newspaper involved.

Sweden's response was to fall back on principles of freedom of speech. While the Swedish ambassador to Israel expressed her dismay at the publication of the accusations, prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt told a Swedish news agency: "No one can demand that the Swedish government violate its own constitution. Freedom of speech is an indispensable part of Swedish society." Meanwhile, calls for heads to roll in Sweden still emanate from innumerable voices in the Israeli camp, from politicians to press to public. Feelings are running high now that the spat has turned into a full-blown diplomatic battle.

On reading the original story, it is clear that the article's content is journalism of the worst kind: based on the flimsiest of evidence, making tenuous connections on little more than pure conjecture and relying on dubious testimony in the absence of hard fact and proof. However, bad journalism does not automatically an antisemite make, especially when the allegations were directed at the Israeli army, rather than at Judaism and its practices. Had the article claimed that Jewish teaching encouraged the killing of gentile children and the use of their blood for ritual purposes – the classic definition of blood libel, and the origin of the phrase – it would be another matter, but in this case the accusations are clearly made against a subsection of Israeli society, not against Israelis per se, let alone the worldwide Jewish community.

While pro-Israel commentators routinely allege that criticism of Israel is in fact thinly disguised antisemitism, successive Israeli governments are themselves guilty of harnessing the state of Israel to the wagon of world Jewry, thanks to their public declarations and actions. By setting Israel up as the Jewish state and claiming to be acting in the name of every Jew on earth, it is little wonder that some critics believe the hype and conflate Israeli policy with Jewish mandates and teachings. There is no excuse for antisemitism, but there is likewise no excuse for stifling any criticism of Israel under a suffocating cloak of accusations of Jew-hatred.

Allegations against the armies of sovereign states are commonplace among media outlets across the globe: some are exposed as lies, in other cases the claims have been found to based on solid ground. Either way, Israel's demand to be treated as any other country means that the machinations of its military, political and other public institutions are fair game for scrutiny, and any charges levelled against them should be responded to in a level-headed and proper fashion.

When the Daily Mirror published faked torture photos purportedly showing abuse of Iraqi detainees, the Ministry of Defence didn't brand the pictures as proof of a conspiracy against Christians, but rather went through the motions of disproving the claims, and achieving their goal of a retraction of the original story. On the other hand, when Israel was erroneously accused of carrying out a massacre in Jenin, officials span the accusations as a racist attack on Israel, as though any slight against the Israeli army should be treated as nothing more than a bubbling to the fore of medieval antisemitism in its basest form.

Given the paucity of hard facts provided in the Aftonbladet report and its author's shortcomings when it comes to adhering to journalistic standards, the story is in all likelihood a complete fabrication, and the Israeli authorities ought to be able to easily prove the army's innocence. At the same time, that the incident has been blown out of all proportion and engulfed politicians both in Israel and Sweden does not bode well for future similar occurrences. Israel has to start dealing with criticism in a measured and mature fashion, otherwise it simply plays into the hands of its detractors, who use occasions like this as evidence that Israel's favourite line of defence is simply crying wolf and running for the hills.