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From a sociological perspective the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be viewed as the paradigm of a mutually compelling “constellation”, the chief effect of which is the apparently inexorable escalation of violence. A detached, dispassionate analysis of the situation, which would seem the only means of arresting this “blind process”, is hampered in our day by the widespread reflex of all-too-hastily branding any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic. This article seeks to show that such criticism often expresses a very different sentiment, an “anti-Israeli enthusiasm”. A vent for righteous indignation that brings some relief from the still-burning shame of the memory of the Shoah, it employs facile equations reducing the Jewish State to the last bastion of colonialism and thereby conceals the true issues underlying this conflict.