I had the privilege of joining the gang on the set of Fox News Channel’s America’s Newsroom on Thursday to discuss the growing backlash against Israel in Europe and among Senate Democrats.

Why is there a backlash, anyway? What promoted the sudden mainstreaming of the argument that Israel’s security policies in Gaza are so inhumane that it has led Western European governments to back a Palestinian state (not for the Palestinians’ sake, but to punish Israel) and led 27 Senate Democrats to support cutting off U.S. funding for Jerusalem? We should be honest, even if they won’t: It is all an outgrowth of the popular allegation that the hardship Gazans are experiencing is a deliberate Israeli project — that Israel has intentionally engineered a famine to force the Gazan people into submission.

That’s an extraordinary claim, one that has the potential to alter the geopolitical landscape in profound and, perhaps, irreversible ways. It should, therefore, be based on rock-solid evidence. But it’s not. Indeed, there prevails among those who accept this allegation at face value a conspicuous incuriosity about why the supposed evidence of Israeli perfidy keeps being exposed as fabrications.

If the lack of evidence doesn’t make you curious about the motives of the institutions and individuals who promote the allegation that Israel is executing a cartoonishly evil and strategically ponderous campaign of brutality for brutality’s sake, you have subordinated your critical thinking faculties to your animus toward Israel.

Check it out: