After my recent unhappy experience over at Engage—where the flagrant character assassination of yours truly continues to this day—perhaps I should have learned by now to be wary of using the word “silencing” in reference to the knee-jerk defamation that far too often takes the place of discussions when the Middle East is the topic.

Apparently it’s anti-Semitic to react to accusations (or not-so-veiled suggestions) of anti-Semitism by complaining about “silencing.” It seems that we should just shut up. :)

So we’ll have to come up with a new word to describe this sort of thing. Readers are invited to make suggestions.