Field Dossier: Furious, and Half Right

Some of your fury at Israel's governing coalition is earned. Some was handed to you by people who want Israel gone. Here's how to tell which is which.

Some of your fury at Israel's governing coalition you earned the hard way, by paying attention to a country that has genuinely failed its own people. And some of it was machined for you in advance, by people who want Israel gone and needed you to carry their words into rooms they could never reach. "Coup," "apartheid," "fascism" — each a real term stretched past its referent until it snaps over a target it was never cut to fit, and this is the work of telling the earned grievance apart from the borrowed verdict. Keep every ounce of the anger. Put the enemy's vocabulary down.

The earned grievance and the borrowed verdict arrived together, and the borrowed verdict now wears the earned grievance like a uniform.

The Israel Brief is the Mitzpe Institute's read on Israel and the region — most mornings, Sunday through Thursday. More at mitzpe.org.