The Quincy Institute continues to make all the right enemies. Hard-line Republican Sen. Tom Cotton is launching an absurd attack on the new think and accusing them of promoting anti-Semitism:

Calling antisemitism an “ancient hatred,” Cotton says, “It festers on Internet message boards and social media. It festers in Washington think tanks like the Quincy Institute, an isolationist blame America first money pit for so-called ‘scholars’ who’ve written that American foreign policy could be fixed if only it were rid of the malign influence of Jewish money.”

Cotton’s attack is a disgusting lie, but it is typical of the sort of baseless smears that Republican hawks have employed in an attempt to intimidate and shut down foreign policy debate. There is an ongoing effort to weaponize anti-Semitism and use it as a cudgel against advocates of restraint and other critics of U.S. foreign policy. These accusations have no merit, and they demonstrate the intellectual and ethical bankruptcy of the people that make them. Cotton is attributing claims to QI scholars that they have never made and would never make, and he is resorting to this cheap smear tactic because he and other hard-liners like him have no legitimate answers to the arguments that advocates of restraint are making.

We have seen this cynical, bad faith use of anti-Semitism several times in foreign policy debates in just the last year. A year ago, everyone remembers the manufactured and unjustified outrage directed against Rep. Ilhan Omar. Then during the Yemen debate, the House Republicans tacked on an amendment about anti-Semitism to the Yemen antiwar resolution in an effort to torpedo its consideration by the Senate. None of this had anything to do with a genuine interest in fighting anti-Semitism and everything to do with defending unjust and militaristic policies. Cotton’s smear of the Quincy Institute is more of the same.

Anti-Semitism is a serious and growing problem in this country, and it has fueled many despicable lethal attacks against the American Jewish community in recent years. It is abhorrent, and it should be condemned and vigorously combated as the menace that it is. Throwing false charges of anti-Semitism around over the last few decades has contributed to the cheapening of the accusation and has distracted from confronting the real thing.