There’s a peculiar sort of courage in the world today: the courage to denounce those who are unlikely to murder you for doing so. The participants are fearless. They scream at Jewish students, deface Jewish businesses, drive Jewish speakers from public events and demand that Israelis be removed from respectable life (restaurants, resorts, hotels). Then they congratulate themselves on having confronted power. Power, in this instance, being a nineteen-year-old student wearing a Star of David, or a couple dining out, a family on vacation, young people out having a good time. The same heroism is rather harder to locate when writers are threatened, teachers forced into hiding, women intimidated, gay people persecuted, apostates marked for death or Muslim reformers denounced as traitors. The thing is, confronting an ideology capable of answering criticism with violence carries inconveniences. Police protection may become necessary, your life may be in danger.
Far safer to confront the Jews. Jews will argue. They will write letters, contact lawyers, complain to university authorities and ask the police to enforce laws already on the books. They may produce a report, organise a panel discussion or request a meeting. Such terrifying reprisals. And so the moral exhibitionist can enjoy all the excitement of persecution without any of its actual danger. He can spit venom at Jews while imagining himself to be standing before the tanks in Tiananmen Square.