Yet Butler’s unspoken assumption is that consonance, or collusion, with those who would wish away the Jewish state will earn one a standing in the European, if not the global, anti-Zionist world club. To a degree she may be right: the congenial welcome she received in a prestigious British journal confirms it, and she is safe enough, for the nonce, in those rarefied places where, as George Eliot has it (with a word altered), it would be "difficult to find a form of bad reasoning about [Zionism] which had not been heard in conversation or been admitted to the dignity of print." In that company she is at home. There she is among friends.

But George Eliot’s Zionist views are notorious; she is partial to Jewish national liberation. A moment, then, for the inventor of the pound of flesh. Here is Cinna, the poet, on his way to Caesar’s funeral:

Citizen: As a friend or an enemy?

Cinna: As a friend.

Citizen: Your name, sir, truly.

Cinna: Truly, my name is Cinna.

Citizen: Tear him to pieces; he’s a conspirator.

Cinna: I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet! I am not Cinna the conspirator!

Citizen: It is no matter, his name’s Cinna …. Tear him, tear him! Come, brands, ho! firebrands! Burn all!

And here is Butler, the theorist, on her way to widen the rift between the state of Israel and the Jewish people:

—As a friend, or as a Zionist?

Butler: As an anti-Zionist Jew.

—Tear her to pieces, she’s a Jew.

Butler: I am Butler the anti-Zionist, I am Butler the anti-Zionist! I am not Butler the Zionist!

What’s in a name? Ah, the curse of mistaken identity. How many politically conforming Jews will suffer from it, even as they toil to distance themselves from the others, those benighted Jews who admit to being "in favor of Israel"? As for that nobly desired rift, one can rely on Hep! to close it. To comprehend this is to comprehend anti-Semitism at its root. And to assert, as Butler does, that in the heart of this understanding lurks "the very tactic favored by anti-Semites" is not merely sophistry; not merely illusion; but simple stupidity, of a kind only the most subtle intellectuals are capable of.