I understand perfectly well why someone would develop an anti-(country of your choice) attitude and would even go so far to say that it is a normal reaction.
It is really not much more than othering of an enemy and developing a focus for the group effort - but we are talking here about politics and when one cannot transcend that stage and develop an understanding beyond the us vs them sentiment, then one is unfortunately mired in emotional politics, and things like disgust and hate become driving forces.
The politics of emotion will put you on the path of right wing extremism (and let me insert this here: if you find yourself in a protest and the person next to you holds a sign that essentially the first line of the Hamas "constitution", or a Nazi flag, you need to ask yourself how you got there) and will make you into a target of extremist propaganda.
It's astonishing that such an otherwise reasonable paragraph contains a sentiment as incredibly misguided as the bolded part. That is sheer nonsense. Let's take the fight against slavery in the US. Or the world-wide fight against apartheid in South Africa. Do you really believe that these battles were fought and won without emotion? The victor in both cases ended up not being "right wing extremism", but its opposite.
I'll grant you that cooling one's emotions can be effective (c.f. the winding down of the Irish troubles), and in fact my general attitude is that it's better to negotiate than to fight. But that does not mean there is no place for emotional rhetoric, or politics guided by emotion more than reason. Appeals to reason by abolitionists went absolutely nowhere in the 100+ years prior to the civil war because the southern states were powerful enough to block any reform. That was also the case with apartheid. But in both cases, appeals to emotion made a huge difference. The Civil War was not some cool calculation by Lincoln that it was the best course of action. It was justified on emotional grounds (slavery is a sin, the union is worth fighting and dying for). With South Africa, anti-apartheid activists made the emotional case that what was happening there was wrong and the world had a responsibility to take concrete actions to end it. It would not have been surprising, during either of those conflicts, to find people on the morally superior side expressing their "disgust" and "hate".
The obvious conclusion here is that it is often impossible to win against an enormously powerful yet unethical opponent without engaging in your so-called "politics of emotion" - and those politics can be waged without risk of right-wing extremism.
Finally, maybe you should think about what it means to tell someone who's lost their land and family and right to self-determination, "you better not express any disgust or hate, because that makes you a fascist." Fascism arises, in part, from authoritarian strongmen
making stuff up about
groups who are too weak to defend themselves. Those who sympathize with Palestinians don't have to make anything up about Israel's misdeeds; Israel is incredibly powerful; and there is no strongman guiding anti-Israel sentiment. So what are you telling people when you tell them they risk becoming fascists by saying they are anti-Israel? You are attempting to silence their voices on spurious grounds.
"Anti-Israel/anti-Zionist sentiment fed by and cloaked in anti-imperialist rhetoric is the shape in which left antisemitism has traveled for more than sixty years."
This only applies to the last sixty years ago because prior to that extreme left antisemitism was much more out in the open.
And the anti-imperialist rhetoric just happens to provide a narrative that promotes an us (the good people) vs them (the bad people) without going into any details.
Really? If all you are hearing is "us vs them" and blind hatred among those who have spoken against Israel, then you are not listening.
Maybe it is time for the left to come to terms with their history and stop aligning themselves with eliminationist antisemites of the islamist flavor.
That would allow supporting the Israeli left which finds itself battling a increasingly authoritarian government intent on dismantling institutions of Israeli society.
I still haven't seen any examples from you of mainstream leftist groups or politicians who "align themselives with eliminationist antisemites of the islamist flavor." You mentioned one whacko who wrote something that might qualify. Who else?
Until that happens, the totalitarian islamofascists of Hamas and their ilk will be able to continue to block effective political action against the promoters of violence in Israel.
Being serious about doing something, instead of satisfying the personal desire to feel good for believing to be on the good side of history, most likely will require solidarity with the Israeli left and cutting off all support for islamist authoritarianism.
Here is a video from an Israeli Jew opposed to the current Israeli government:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDYFroPMEqg
I suggest to investigate all these issues a bit. It's not going to be easy but starting out with analyzing the different perspectives would probably work best.
And there is really no way around that work - unless one is happy to be led around by the nose by political operatives from a whole different league.
Thank you for your condescension, but I am very well aware that there is a left-leaning minority in Israel that criticizes the government. Your assertion that the western left refuses to align itself with the Israeli left due to the influence of "islamofascists" is laughable. I know plenty of left-leaning people, some but not all of them American Jews, and most (probably all) of them are sympathetic with the Israeli left. Not one of them has the slightest patience for fundamentalism of any sort, whether it's Islamic, Jewish, Christian or whatever.
There are many obstacles to progress towards peace, but one of them is not the western left and its supposed failure to find common cause with the Israeli left. A far greater problem is that those on the left who call Israel out are routinely silenced by one means or the other, which leads to overrepresentation of the pro-Israel perspective in the media and in politics. And that is why I am so opposed to your insistence that anti-Israel sentiment among western leftists is somehow attributable to islamofascism. To me, that is just another way of silencing Israel's critics.
