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A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad

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Dr. Mehler's Short Review of this Important New Book
See the posting on ISAR: [...]

Wistrich Speaking About his Book at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington:
[...]

Robert S. Wistrich has come out with his twentieth volume, a thousand page tome, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, (New York: Random House, 2010). The title is a little misleading, this is not a majestic survey of the history of anti-Semitism from antiquity to the present. The focus is on post-Nazi exterminatory anti-Semitism and the bulk of the book is focused on anti-Semitism in the Islamic world.

Wistrich's 30,000 word introduction is entitled, "The Return of Anti-Semitism," but it is clear from his history that Anti-Semitism never went away. Certainly, the shocking revelations of the Holocaust reverberated through many parts of the world, creating a good deal of sympathy for Jews which was translated into sympathetic movies and books about the Jews in the West. It also sustained political support for Zionism for a brief period. And, of course, after the Holocaust Jews were no longer being actively exterminated, but the ideology of exterminatory anti-Semitism that justified Auschwitz was still evolving and spreading to new cultural environments especially the post-war communist block and the Muslem world. Anti-Semitism never went away. It didn't even go into retreat. Wistrich argues that after World War II the baton was passed from the Right to the Left and from Christians to Muslems. This is a humanitarian anti-Semitism aimed at saving the Palestinian people from the hands of the last white-supremacist colonial state practicing apartheid.

The argument that Israeli aggression and occupation is to blame for this situation is itself an anti-Semitic argument. This does not mean that anyone who criticizes Israel is an anti-Semite, but the core claim of modern anti-Semites from David Duke to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is that the Holocaust is a hoax perpetrated by the Jews to justify their aggression in the Middle East. At the same time that they deny the Holocaust reality, they claim that Zionism is the moral equivalent of Nazism and that the Zionist state is engaged in genocide against the Palestinian people. When these people call for an end to the Zionist entity they are really calling for the extermination of the Jews. And for the first time since World War II, anti-Semitism is part of a major state's [Iran] core ideology. This is the modern face of exterminatory anti-Semitism and Wistrich believes it is pervasive throughout the Muslem world. His goal is to expose the intensity of the "culture of hatred" that permeates "books, magazines, newspapers, sermons, videocassettes, the Internet, television, and radio in the Middle East on a scale unprecedented since the heyday of Nazi Germany." The demonic images of Jews circulating in much of the Islamic world today "constitute a new warrant for genocide." They combine the blood libel of medieval Christian Europe with Nazi conspiracy theories about the Jewish drive for world domination and dehumanizing Islamic quotations about Jews as the "sons of apes and donkeys."

Wistrich presents us with a history of the evolution of a murderous ideology. This is not the history of progress towards a more tolerant world. The three major culprits in the spread of this ideology are Hitlerism, Stalinism and Islamism. In all three cases anti-Jewish demonology has been manipulated in the cause of conspiracy theories which have at their heart the oldest and darkest of ideological obsessions: hatred of the Jews. Anti-Semitism is the hatred that keeps on giving. Wistrich believes the past seven decades have been a golden age for exterminatory anti-Semitism and at no time in the past have the core beliefs of this ideology been as widely disseminated and as widely accepted. He calls the world-wide campaign against Zionism, "a warrant for Genocide." And he believes we are entering a very dangerous period. Specifically, he believes the next two years are going to be among the most dangerous since World War II.

Wistrich four minute clip from the Wilson Center Q&A on YouTube: [...]
The Daily Show clip on Hamas children's cartoons: [...]

Barry Mehler, Ph.D.
Professor of History/Director, ISAR Project
Ferris State University
1009 Campus Drive
Big Rapids, MI 49307
(231)591-3612

Robert Wistrich's massive 1200 page tome is probably the most authoritative collection of facts about anti-Semitism that you can find. It contains thousands of meticulously documented quotes from newspapers, magazines, television and the popular press, from antiquity right up to 2009. All these sources make it crystal clear that anti-Semitism is still very much alive and riddles many of the world's civilized nations. It is a shameful part of our collective consciousness that we must strive to expunge. And this is irrespective of what your political views about Israel may be, since the instances of anti-Semitism that Wistrich documents go far beyond specific grievances against Israel.

But all this can be said in about 500 pages. I kind of lost interest after that point because Wistrich essentially keeps on repeating facts to convince us about how bad the situation is. This is unnecessary. For instance he spends a gratuitous amount of time documenting Iranian President Ahmadinejad's disgusting rhetoric and rants supporting Holocaust denial. We get it; Ahmadinejad is a deplorable individual who should be denounced in the strongest possible terms. But giving us a hundred instances of his despicable behavior where only twenty instances would have sufficed adds very little to our knowledge. Similarly, Wistrich seems to want to dig up every single source from the last twenty years to support his contention that anti-Semitism is well and alive in Europe and the Middle East and is casually practiced and propagated. But again, stating this fact with a hundred or so pages of examples would have been sufficient. Finally, Wistrich gives exhaustive accounts of anti-Semitism in pre-WW2 Nazi Germany, a subject on which hundreds if not thousands of authoritative volumes have already been penned. Do we really need one more? (On the other hand, Wistrich has a very interesting account of Hitler's anti-Semitic collaboration with The Mufti)

To sum up then, as it stands the book is more a collection of facts than an insightful analysis. It's more like an "Encyclopedia of anti-Semitism". Wistrich makes relatively few efforts to add his own interpretation of the psychology and root causes behind this pernicious ideology. The volume does a great job of demonstrating that anti-Semitism is still a clear and present danger. But in my humble opinion it could have easily been shortened by at least 300 pages. For those who want to dig up every instance of anti-Semitism under the sun from the last thousand years, it is an invaluable reference. But those who want a non-repetitive, fresh source of insight and analysis might want to supplement this book with other readings.

The rule that requires each review here to specify a given number of stars, from one to five, may sometimes seems restrictive and arbitrary. But in this case I am grateful for it: it allows me to state, over and above anything else that I may to say, my great and unambiguous admiration for this work: five stars without question, more if it were possible to give more.

The author is of course known to all for about two dozen previous works of meticulous and detailed scholarship on modern history. I have read most of these books, and much of what I know about modern Jews I have learned from them. In the present book, the author steps back somewhat from detail and gives an overall evaluation, in the course of which he reviews just about everything that has been written about anti-Semitism in modern times. (The subtitle states that the book goes back to antiquity, but, well, that is not done in any detail.)

The author of course has a point of view, which others have discussed, and I don't have much to say about that, mainly because I find myself in agreement with just about any of the points that may be considered contentious. But no matter what your point of view may be on this or that, this book will be indispensable as a work of reference for anyone with an interest in the subject.

Obviously, no matter how important a work of scholarship may be, it cannot be perfect. If it is as good a books as this, its defects, if discussed publicly, will be part of its great merit by increasing knowledge and understanding.

The author's treatment of at least two subjects illustrates that there are certain -- I would not call them flaws -- but certain gaps:

1) The various Trotskyist movements in Europe and America were for many years significant constituents of the near-anti-Semitism of the Left; in France, this is still the case. Wistrich understands that and gives telling descriptions. But his accounts are ahistorical; they do not take into account the development of the anti-Jewish stance over time. During the whole period in which Trotsky himself was alive, there were no (explicit) anti-Jewish sentiments in the Trotskyist movement. The movement made a sharp turn in that direction only after ca. 1968. The problem is not one of Trotskyism alone but also concerns the whole of the traditional Left.

2) Wistrich's Chapter Twenty, "Hitler and the Mufti," give a good accounting of the pro-Nazi sentiments and pro-Nazi activities of certain Arab leaders during WWII. This chapter will serve as an antidote to the many current attempts to sweep this matter under the rug. But since we know that, in addition to the pro-Nazi factions among the Arab elites, there were also pro-Allies sentiments and activities, it would have been good to have an accounting of the interplay between these two tendencies. It would have made for a more nuanced appraisal.

3) perhaps the most important flaw: in at least two respects, the physical aspects of the book make it inconvenient to scholarly users. Anyone who has done scholarly work will confirm that convenience in scholarly aids is of great scholarly importance. The more difficult something is to find, the less likely it will be actually used even by meticulous scholars. After all, nobody's time is limitless.

Here are the two complaints I have on this matter:

A) The end-notes, an important part of this book, are difficult to locate at the end of the book. Deviating from customary usage, this book does not tell the reader on the top of the notes' pages where he can find a reference for any given text.

B) There is no bibliography. That is a major nuisance to a scholarly reader, for a great many reasons. It would be good to know at a glance whether the author has made use of a certain monograph, for example. Moreover, the bibliographic references -- when and where a book or article was published, by whom, etc. -- are given in the notes (if you can find the notes), but only for the first instance in which the item is mentioned in a chapter. For subsequent mentions, you're on your own.

To summarize: Thanks to Amazon for providing the star system, which in this case allows me to show so clearly that my admiration for the book vastly outweighs my complaints.

When you see several very aggressive reviews on a book that presents mostly undeniable facts showing the continuity and growth of antisemitism in present times, it becomes evident that this book is really important and necessary.

A vast tome revealing and analyzing the shocking reality of Jew-hatred today. Dissects and explores the roots of this frightening and revolting phenomenon.
The author abundantly shows how it is a dangerous myth that anti-Semitism can only come form the far-right and points out that people who believe this falsehood are caught in a seventy year time warp.
In this large volume, Wistrich captures the venom and records for our use and vital understanding about how all the ills of the world today are blamed by Islamists and the radical left on the tiny state of Israel, which is demonized and blood libeled , Israel's people are repulsively labelled as Nazis and accused of all manner of blood libels and their murder justified, ultimately resulting in what the author refers to accurately as a ' a warrant for genocide'.
This book exposes the intensity of the culture of genocidal hatred extant in the media, mosques and universities today, to name a few of the sources.
The three totalitarian ideologies that have caused so much death and destruction in the last century, Communism , Nazism and Islamism have all taken Jew-hatred and the new anti-Semitism, Israel hatred to the heart of their ideology.
The Soviet Union from the 1960s demonized the Zionist movement and the Jewish State as bent on world domination and controlling the economies of the major Western capitalist states, and working for the enslavement of the Arab world and other Third World peoples. This propaganda has outlived communist rule in the USSR and is the staple diet of the Western Left and various parts of the Third World (such as Venezuela, Cuba and South Africa).
Witrich pulls no punches in showing the horrific scope of today;s manifestation of the world's oldest hatred. If you substitute the word 'Jew' for 'Zionist' you will see little difference between Leftist/Islamist propaganda and Nazi propagnda of the Hitler era.
After all the Nazis aimed for the eradication of the Jews of Europe, the anti-Zionists aim for the eradication of the Jewish State and the ethnic cleansing of the levant of all Jews. Israel accounts for 40% of world Jewry and is the largest Jewish community in the world. The destruction of Israel would certainly lead to the death or displacement of five million Jews, so in point of fact anti-Zionism amounts to very little difference to Nazi anti-Semitism.
Witrich explores Israel-hatred in Europe, the Third World and the Islamic world and none of it makes for a pretty picture.
Witrich condemns the sheer hypocrisy of left-wing Israel-haters " The same radical left that foams at the mouth at the very mention of Israel/Palestine has little difficulty in closing it's eyes to the religious and gender apartheid in Islam, the murderous crimes of such Communist leaders as Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, not to mention the mass murders in Africa from Idi Amin in the 1970s to Rwanda over a decade ago and Sudan today. While real massacres are ignored, a huge propaganda effort continues to be invested globally in pillorying Israel as a perpetrator of genocide. This far transcends the Left since it also involves the United Nations, the Arab states, the Muslim world, non government organizations and parts of the Western media who black out Israeli victims of suicide bombers"

Most leftwing and liberal anti-Zionists in the West often mask their hostility by a highly selective humanitarianism that sees only Palestinians as worthy of compassion.
Witrich disproves many lies and myths about the conflict including that Israel resembles Apartheid South Africa, and that the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis prior and during the Second World War.
He dissects anti-Israel prejudice in Britain and explores the venomous rantings of the likes of anti-Jewish/anti-Israel intellectual and political bigots such as George Galloway, Jenny Tonge, Robert Fisk, John Pilger and Tam Dalyell. He also quotes those brave and lone voices such as Melanie Philips and Julie Burchill who have stood up to this hatred.
Julie Burchill explaining why she left the highly noxious Guardian for the more balanced The Times explained that as a non-Jew she observed a 'quite striking bias against Israel...which for all it's faults is the only country in that barren region that you or I, or any feminist, atheist, homosexual or trade unionist could bear to live under".
Burchill points out that anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism are the only forms of prejudice that still unite left and right. She expressed her revulsion at the "slime of hypocritical hatred"

Their are frightening and revealing chapters on the Red-Green Axis in Europe and the repulsive phenomenon of Jewish elites who have dedicated their lives to hatred of and determination to harm the Jewish State, such as Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Lenni Brener, Michael Neumann and Jacqueline Rose. In recent years Finkelstein who has openly praised Hamas and Hezbollah and condoned their terrorism against Israeli civilians has become 'the go to Jewish-icon for Islamists, neo-Nazis Holocaust deniers, and deluded leftists determined to believe that demonic Israel is the source of all their woes".
Denial of the Holocaust is another mainstay of Islamic Jew-hatred and Israelophobia.
In exploring Arab and Islamo-Fascist Jew-hatred Wistrich traces the history of Hitler's close ally and collaborator Mufti Haj Amin Al Husseini , Arafat, the PLO, Nasser, Hamas , Hezbollah and the IslamoNazi Khamenei/Ahmadinejad regime in Iran.
Shocking examples of this bottomless venom include the statements of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah that one of the central reasons for the creation of Hezbollah has been the violent eradication of Israel "That is the principal objective of Hezbollah...As we see it this is a cancerous state and the root of all the crises and wars and cannot be factor in brining about a true and just peace in the region".
The spiritual guide to Hezbollah sheik Muhammad Husayn Fadallah has said that even if all Jews in Israel converted to Islam they would still have to leave or die, as their 'blood is tainted with the crimes of Zionism'
Hamas and Hezbollah leaders have both expressed praise for the 'noble acts' of killing 'Zionists' ESPECIALLY they have noted WOMEN and children.
In 2002, Muhammad Tantawi, chief Mufti of Egypt and sheik of Al Azhar has declared that Muslims must return to the teachings of Islam "in order to fight against Allah's enemy and to cleanse the sacred ground of the Jews."
Tantawi issued a fatwa in 2002 stating that assassins should be considered as martyrs especially of Jewish women and children were killed in the attacks.
The authior disproves the myth that Jews were well treated and prospered under Islamic rule through the centuries and actually points out that the tradition of the yellow badge that Jews were forced to wear by the Nazis during the Holocaust, originated in Baghdad, and has been revived in Iran today.
The last two chapters detail the Iranian Islamo-Nazi regime and the goals and ideology of the late Ayatolllah Khomeini and the Iranian supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today,and Ahmadinejads's repeated vows to wipe Israel off the map and his nuclear weapons programme being built with the express purpose of doing so.
It is worth concluding with the words of scholar Mathias Kuntzel that "Just as Hitler sought to 'liberate' humanity by murdering Jews, so Ahmadinejad believes he can ;liberate' humanity by eradicating Israel"

This is a remarkable and highly informative book on modern anti-semitism. Most books on the topic tend to focus
on the pre-WWII period (a masterpiece on 19th century being Paul Lawrence Rose's "Revolutionary Anti-semitism") but Wistrich's book is mainly concerned with post-holocaust anti-semitism and its sources. It is worth reading, despite its massive size, as it shows, with abundant documentation, the sad and
disturbing reality that anti-semitism didn't vanish after the holocaust, it just went underground for a while,
until, under the façade of anti-zionism (another legacy of the soviets) it turned politically correct once again.

On the negative side, sometimes the prose is repetitive, which can be tiring in a book of such size, and it lacks a deeper discussion concerning the popularity in the West of the phenomena of "racist anti-racism" and how it is explored wholesale by the current demopaths.

If you want to really learn more about anti-Semitism and its twin sister anti-Zionism, you will find that "A Lethal Obsession" is not just a book but "the book."

If you want to inquire about Nazism and its twin brothers Islamism and Pan-Arabism, I challenge you to read Chapter XX and you will discover how the Palestinian leadership and other Arab thinkers embraced Hitler and his doctrine during the 1930s and 1940s.

If you want to discover the reasons for revisionist historians trying to re-write history, I urge you to read Chapter XIX and you will be fascinated about how the minds of pseudo historians function by shamelessly tergiversating historical facts while veiling their own odium.

If you want to understand how it is possible that some Jews hate themselves, I dare you read Chapter XV and you will find out about the pathological nature of this special form of anti-Semitism.

If you want to learn about why Palestinians and the majority of Arab states have been unable to make peace with Israel, go ahead and read Chapters XXI, XXII and XXIII and you will see how a culture of hatred and veneration of death has imbued Palestinian and, in general, Arab societies making it impossible for them to co-exist with a Jewish State.

A Lethal Obsession is actually a treatise about how anti-Semitism has developed and mutated from the first documented pogrom in Alexandria in 38 C.E. to the anti-Zionism hate speech and actions of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Ahmadinejad. The book consists of an introduction, 25 chapters and an epilogue that are supported by 3,292 endnotes. The author's meticulous deconstruction of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is an example of professionalism, objectivity and seriousness in analyzing the causes of these morbid phenomena. Throughout the book, the author's research is very well documented by an extensive number of endnotes, which allows the reader to independently verify the facts exposed.

In summary, this book is a magnum opus that unveils the true nature of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism and sheds light over the dark side of humanity.

"A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism From Antiquity To The Global Jihad" is the most detailed and committed work I've ever known on this particular subject, and is the first time I've ever seen an entire history of Anti-Semitism in one volume. This book has been an invaluable resource for my ASU course of FMS: 313: Anti-Semitism In Media.

-Historian Robert Wistrich's 1,100-page book is a treasury of details spanning the millenia and the continents, with a focus on what's going on right now. Each of its chapters is like an individual volume of an encyclopedia. And, despite its heft and scholarship, it's fascinating and as readable as the best popular thriller. If you're going to buy one book on current events this year, make it this one. I read a lot: there are few books I can recommend as strongly as this one.
-A wealth of information -- most of which is too politically incorrect to detail in the mainstream media -- brings you up to date on the evolution of Jew-hatred in:
Various countries around the world;
International political movements;
Competing forms of Islamic malevolence, with the ineffectual responses to them from the West.
-Particularly unnerving are details of:
The Saudi-backed dissemination of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Saudi-supported imams preaching hatred and violence in the heart of western capitals;
The growth and spread of Nazi anti-semitism;
The brisk revival of classical anti-semitism;
The hurried Armaggedon-seeking machinations of Iran's President Ahmadinejad.
-The book takes you up to events of 2009 with chilling and ample details you've never seen before in a single source. Guaranteed.
-Buy it before it's banned.

This is an excellent and comprehensive study of Anti-Semitism and I am enjoying the read. The author's depth and breadth of knowledge on this topic is really amazing. I highly recommend this book, not just for its fascinating, detailed history, but also for the linking of ideas and themes which are recurring and need to be understood in order to grasp current political movements and dynamics presented to us through the media, in order to think critically and develop our own understanding. The author spent two decades researching this topic and has included an extensive list of reference materials. His book could and should be a university course in itself.