Customer Reviews

Terror: The New Anti-Semitism and the War Against the West

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This is an excellent book about the Arab war against Israel and the media's involvement with it.

Nirenstein tells us right away about the problems causing distorted reporting of this war. First, there is a failure to admit that the Arab side refuses to accept Israel as a Jewish state. Second, there is an unwillingness to assign responsibility for deaths caused by armed Arabs who strike from within an otherwise unarmed crowd. Third, there is a failure to recognize the effect on Arabs of systematic education in schools and in the media to idealize terrorist acts of murder and mayhem. Fourth, there's a tendency to describe terrorism and the war against it as if they were the same thing. Fifth is the pretense that sypathizers with Arab terrorism are the most reliable sources for news. Sixth is misleading reporting of events, as if responses to terror are the problem. Seventh is refusal to condemn terrorism or even call terrorist acts "terrorism." Eighth is refusal to recognize that Jews living on the West Bank are human beings. Ninth is abiding by Arab wishes in reporting, in order to avoid being threatened and to be rewarded with scoops.

We see people call Israeli attacks on major terrorists "illegal executions," but a nation has a duty to protect its citizens from murderers. The author explains that some Europeans react this way due to fear of Islam, shame at what Europe has done to Jews, and a "need to justify past crimes by criminalizing the Jews."

Some people complain that if they criticize Israel, they are taken to task for it. But Nirenstein explains that much of this criticism is not lucid. If someone says that Israel kills children and journalists on purpose, and calls Jenin a slaughter, Nirenstein labels that person an antisemite, just like the antisemites of old that many of them now pretend to hate.

We are shown the constant lies and taunts, the demonization of Jews, the denial of rights to Jews, claims that no Jewish Temples ever existed, claims that there never was a Holocaust, and so on. The author says these are an integral part of the action, not merely background to it. And there is a substantial discussion of the demonization of Jews at the well-named Durban racism conference in 2001. Nirenstein also provides an interesting interview with would-be suicide bomber.

The author concludes that to defeat antisemitism in Europe, education is needed in four major areas. First, that the purpose of demonization of Israel is to incite violence and terrorism. Second, that ignorance of the history of Israel and Zionism are essential for this demonization to work. Third, that grief for the deaths of Jews in no way implies any willingness to save Jews who are still alive. Fourth, that the Arab terrorists are not in fact victims.

I highly recommend this book.

The outstanding review of this book by Jill Malter on the Amazon Site provides a good guide to its basic themes.
Fiamma Nirenstein has been a courageous voice, especially in Italy in defense of Israel against the Anti- Semitic onslaught of Terror International.
She is one of those originally from the Left, in fact a Communist who became increasingly disenchanted with the Left's toadying up to Totalitarians. As a correspondent for Italy's leading daily 'La Stampa' she has closely followed political developments within Italy and throughout Europe and the Middle East for the past thirty years or so.
As she understands it the propaganda campaign of the Palestinian Arabs against Israel has brought into being a strange alliance of the Fascist Right and the extreme Communist Left. This she says has been the only point about which two such divergent ideologies have been able to come together. In the process she understands them to have been totally one- sided and misleading in their reading of Middle Eastern realities.
Her understanding of the situation, in which the new Anti- Semitism is Anti- Israel activity is one she shares with major students of the problem.
She also connects this theme with the basic anti- American bias of the Left in Europe.