Never Again?: The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism (Hardcover)

The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control by Abraham H. Foxman  (33)  $16.47

The New Anti-Semitism: The Current Crisis and What We Must Do About It by Phyllis Chesler  (29)  $12.76

The Return of Anti-Semitism by Gabriel Schoenfeld  (16)  $13.22

Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism by Dennis Prager  (33)  $11.20

The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John J. Mearsheimer  (183)  $17.16

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From Publishers Weekly
"Everybody's afraid to touch anything that's religious because most of the people out there [in Hollywood] are Jewish, and it's a frightening thing for them to promote Christianity," claimed Dolly Parton, unable to develop a TV miniseries about a born-again Christian folk singer. Such a casual reiteration of the myth that Jews control Hollywood is one example Foxman, the longtime national director of the Anti-Defamation League, cites in showing what he claims is a new acceptance of global anti-Semitism. Arguing that this new anti-Semitism is not "a handful of incidents... but rather a little-noticed, under-the-radar pattern of repeated attacks, often violent, occurring in country after country," Foxman presents a frightening tally of hate crimes and hate speech in both Europe and the U.S. With examples at once shocking and predictable, such as the Arab press's caricatures of Israelis based on "imagery drawn from Nazi propaganda" and the president of the Southern Baptist Convention stating, "God doesn't hear the prayers of the Jews," Foxman's enumeration of such cases is frightening and important, but his presentation is problematic, in part because of his lack of political nuance. In the opening chapter, he repeatedly speaks of an anti-Semitic coalition of "extreme left-wing and right-wing groups," when what he is describing is similar anti-Semitic rhetoric coming from each separately. Another difficulty is that Foxman details his own experience (and that of the famous people he meets) so often that the book feels self-aggrandizing, like the struggles of one man against an anti-Semitic world rather than a political analysis. These problems don't seriously injure the book's credibility, but make it far less potent than it might be.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The recent splurge of desecrations of Jewish temples and cemeteries in Europe as well as the constant drumbeat of criticism of Israel in European publications and on American college campuses has fueled fears of a massive outbreak of anti-Semitic violence. Foxman, a Holocaust survivor, describes, with chilling effect, some of the outrageous, violent attacks against individual Jews as well as some of the blatantly anti-Semitic comments by public figures. He analyzes causes for this upsurge, including Holocaust denials by "respectable" scholars and, of course, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Foxman declares that criticism of the policies of the Israeli government is not necessarily anti-Semitic, although "unfairly" criticizing and singling out Israel is. Here, he is on shaky ground; such criticism is often unfair and motivated by strong ideological bias, but it is not clearly anti-Semitic. When he sticks to analysis of undeniably anti-Semitic acts and policies, Foxman presents a frightening picture. He illustrates that what has been called the "longest hatred" may morph into new forms, but it remains as a malignant and potentially deadly virus. Jay Freeman
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