Customer Reviews

The Crime of My Very Existence: Nazism and the Myth of Jewish Criminality (S. Mark Taper Foundation Imprint in Jewish Studies)

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The previous reviewer, touting his own book, Sharing the Land of Canaan, is obviously a very biased reader. Please disregard his by now familiar rant against Zionists as criminals vs Jews. Berkowitz is a distinguished historian.

While the general thesis of this book is correct though not a novel concept (that Jews are accused of criminality), the book does not pass a crucial test: distinguishing between Judaism and Zionism. In many paragraphs I read, the author seems to view accusations of criminal intent on the parts of Zionists (these are far better documented in other books) as if it is accusations of criminal intent in the part of what he considers "the Jewish people". This is deeply problematic. For example, the book by the child of Holocaust survivors, Norman Finkelstein titled "The Holocaust Industry" makes significant and factual (well documented) evidence of how Zionists abused the holocaust to enrich themselves and fund Zionism rather than help the victims of Nazi atrocities. This criminal behavior has nothing to do with Judaism (unless one buys the Zionist argument that conflates Zionism with Judaism). A similar thing can be said about Zionist attacks against Jewish targets in Palestine in the 1930s and in Iraq in the 1950s (see Iraqi Jewish author Naiem Giladi's excellent book on "Ben Gurion Scandals"). That criminality is not Judaism. I detail others in my book "Sharing the Land of Canaan".