With the list of marriage equality states doubling in the last six months and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s introduction this week of the Every Child Deserves a Family Act which would remove barriers to same-sex couples who wish to foster or adopt children, it is fitting that The New Yorker honors mothers this year with a Happy Mothers’ Day cover.

Three recent events have brought an onslaught of hurling the term “anti-Semite” toward a number of people who certainly do not warrant such an epithet.

The last of these three instances has evoked an almost shocking level of vitriol directed toward a public figure who has been what most regard as a voice of sanity in the midst of crazed rhetoric toward Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas or the Palestinian people themselves, by uber Zionists.

The US and its allies have been attacking one evil empire after another for decades, including the evil empire of Mohammed Mosaddegh, the scary Red Menace in Iran, in 1953. We have nothing to show for any of them. Why do US, European and Israeli leaders think this time things will be different?