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The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives Hardcover – April 27, 2010

by Gilbert Achcar (Author), G. M. Goshgarian (Translator)
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 18 ratings
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An unprecedented and judicious examination of what the Holocaust means—and doesn't mean—in the Arab world, one of the most explosive subjects of our time

There is no more inflammatory topic than the Arabs and the Holocaust—the phrase alone can occasion outrage. The terrain is dense with ugly claims and counterclaims: one side is charged with Holocaust denial, the other with exploiting a tragedy while denying the tragedies of others.

In this pathbreaking book, political scientist Gilbert Achcar explores these conflicting narratives and considers their role in today's Middle East dispute. He analyzes the various Arab responses to Nazism, from the earliest intimations of the genocide, through the creation of Israel and the destruction of Palestine and up to our own time, critically assessing the political and historical context for these responses. Finally, he challenges distortions of the historical record, while making no concessions to anti-Semitism or Holocaust denial. Valid criticism of the other, Achcar insists, must go hand in hand with criticism of oneself.

Drawing on previously unseen sources in multiple languages, Achcar offers a unique mapping of the Arab world, in the process defusing an international propaganda war that has become a major stumbling block in the path of Arab-Western understanding.

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  1. Print length
    400 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Metropolitan Books
  4. Publication date
    April 27, 2010
  5. Dimensions
    6.44 x 1.4 x 9.53 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0805089543
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0805089547
  8. See all details
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Top reviews from the United States

  • P. Drucker
    5.0 out of 5 stars Indispensable
    Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2015
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    Especially in the aftermath of Netanyahu's ill-informed comment about the Grand Mufti's role, Achcar's book is indispensable as a scholarly, painstaking guide to the history.
    4 people found this helpful
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  • Mr. A. J. Scholefield
    4.0 out of 5 stars Intruiging Viewpoints
    Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2011
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    While Gilbert tries hard to set himself up as "balanced", one does find oneself questioning at times how fully one can accept his view-points as such--as is true of any books on such a controversial topic.Overall,however, I did find many very interesting different aspects of the Arab-Israeli situation presented by him,especially as I came off reading a biog. of Golda Meir.For an Australian who has seen the Mabo decision knock "Terra Nullius" on the head, I found it especially intruiging to read many references to "a land without people for a people without land" being one of the Zionist slogans.At times main themes were repeated a little too often but this was still a worthwhile read for anyone looking for a reasonably balanced Arab viewpoint on this issue.
    10 people found this helpful
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  • S Wood
    5.0 out of 5 stars Zionism, the Arabs, Facism and Nazi Germany
    Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2012
    In "Arabs and the Holocaust" Gilbert Achcar (co-debator with Noam Chomsky in Perilous Power) has cut through many of the myths, exaggerations, and down right nonsense that surrounds the debate about Arab attitudes towards Nazi Germany and the persecution and eventual genocide of European Jews between 1933 and 1945.

    Much of the writing on this subject by supporters of Israel focuses on those Arabs who dallied at one or another rhetorical level with Facism, or on those such as the pernicious buffoon Amin al-Husseini, the British declared Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who spent the War in Rome and Berlin, and whose importance as a historical figure is entirely disproportionate to the enormous literature on him, including one encyclopaedia of the Holocaust where his entry is second to, and only marginally shorter than, that of Hitler. Achcar doesn't avoid these issues and writes critically on them, but keeps his sense of proportion and puts them into their historical context.

    He also covers the bigger picture on Arab attitudes to the Nazis in general, and the persecution of Jews by the Nazi regime in particular. Within a number of broad categories (Marxist, Liberal, Nationalist and Religious) he identifies a substantial amount of writing that is highly critical of the Nazi Regime. For Marxists this was complete, with the exception of the political gymnastics required for the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact of August 1939 to June 1941, and even then there were a number of Arab Marxists who were deeply critical of that development. Again, for Liberals who were sympathetic to Western secular values, though critical of their imperialist practices, the hostility and critical attitude to the Nazi Regime was almost total. The attitudes of the religious and nationalistic Arabs covered a broader spectrum, from hostility to sympathy. For the Palestinians who were on the sharp end of the Zionists quest for land to build the Jewish State, the reaction was not surprisingly - but again far from uniform - more sympathetic to the Nazis anti-Semitism.

    The thorny issue of Zionist-Nazi contacts is dealt with, Achcar deeming them to be tactical arrangements by the Zionists to further their cause. The issue of how Zionists dealt with the threat to Jews in Europe during the 1930's is also given some coverage, and it becomes clear that the attitudes and actions of Zionism, and it's international supporters in Europe and the US, were tilted towards their own goals rather than the saving of as many Jews as possible from the increasing horrors of the Nazi regime.

    "The Arabs and the Holocaust" is a mine of information that covers much more than the issues mentioned above including the growth of Arab anti-Semitism, the actual role of Arabs in the fighting during WW2 (a tiny proportion of Arabs who fought in WW2 fought on the Axis side; 1500 Arabs ended up in concentration camps), the Zionist discourse on the Nakba, as well as pro-Zionist writings on the Arabs and Nazism. As a work of scholarship it is exceptionally clearly written despite being dense with detail. Achcars principled and impartial examination of a wide range of issues is a breath of fresh air in a field where much pernicious and partisan nonsense has all too often prevailed. A book I'd whole-heartedly recommend.
    15 people found this helpful
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  • Scott Dudak, MD
    3.0 out of 5 stars Arab apologist
    Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2013
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    While the author makes an effort toward explaining both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict and it's history,mthe book mainly reads as excuses for and miniminization of Arab violence and antisemitism. Many pages are spent detailing Israeli excess, while not acknowledging that Arab violence against Jews was the inciting event.
    15 people found this helpful
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  • KMG
    1.0 out of 5 stars Beware the bias!
    Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    Beware! Despite the listed reviews indicating that the book presents a well-balanced view of the issue, it does not. It is biased in favor of the Palestinians, down to the sometimes pejorative language that Achcar uses, and his occasionally slipping into "begging the question." However, the book still had value for me, since I find it useful to know the arguments and logic used to present positions with which I don't necessarily agree.
    14 people found this helpful
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  • F. Brauer
    5.0 out of 5 stars The Apogee of Absurdity
    Reviewed in the United States on March 21, 2012
    The book The Arabs and the Holocaust: Arab-Israeli War Narratives provides, according to its author Professor Gilbert Achcar, "...indispensable contextualization of Arab attitudes toward Jews and the Holocaust." Unfortunately the context Professor Achcar relies upon is made up of Marxist anti-colonialist ideology and the dispossession narrative developed by Palestinian activists-historians and sympathetic Israeli academics. The Zionist narrative is derided or dismissed resulting in a lopsided context which virtually guarantees a merciless anti-Israeli slant. That is not surprising since Professor Achcar belongs to the same Anarchist/Marxist blogosphere as his colleagues Professors Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe and late Edward Said, the inventor of pseudo-theory of Orientalism.

    Professor Achcar opens the book with a discussion of the Zionist "cooperation" with the Nazis. He reaches the apogee of absurdity when he alleges several Nazi "contributions" to creation of the State of Israel. One such "contribution" was creating the Jewish refugees, another- imbuing them with determination to fight. According to Achcar, the governments of the USA, USSR and the Europeans collaborated in the conspiracy by closing their borders to Jewish refugees, who were than lured by Zionists into Palestine in order to expel Arabs and create "arabenrein" Israel. Wow! With such arguments Professor Achcar might as well propose a new thesis of `National Socialism as a Zionist Conspiracy'.

    Part I of the book, The Time of the Shoa, discusses the views of the Arab Nationalists, Marxists and Liberal Westernizers before WWII. The position of George Antonius, one of the Liberal Westernizers and an author of the influential-in-his-time book The Arab Awakening, is worthy of attention. He wrote in October 1938 that "...no room can be made in Palestine for a second nation except by dislodging or exterminating the nation in possession..." Actually Professor Achcar provides a different, and more benign, quote of Antonius to conceal the fact that even the most liberal and westernized Arab intellectuals did not call for acceptance and peaceful coexistence with the Jews. Indeed, the "dislodging" or even "extermination" was the grim spectre the Jewish population of Palestine was facing if defeated in 1948.
    The rest of the Part I analyzes at length the ideology of Rashid Rida, Shakib Arslan, Hassan al-Banna - the precursors of modern Islamism. Of particular interest is the political biography of Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, whose leadership led the Palestinians into Nakba. Professor Achcar actually calls him "the architect of Nakba" - compromising his own thesis of Zionist conspiracy to dispossess Palestinian Arabs.

    The second Part of the book, The Time of the Nakba, describes the development and transformations of the Palestinian Arab narrative after 1948. Here Professor Achcar prepares a new context - the myth of unarmed Palestinian victims facing the Zionist 'juggernaut'. Rejecting the conclusion of Israeli historian Benny Morris that Jews faced annihilation in 1948, Professor Achcar writes: "How could the Palestinians have mustered the strength to perpetrate genocide when they lacked even the strength to prevent their expulsion and were not prepared for war?" Apparently Professor has forgotten that the Egyptian army came close to Tel-Aviv, or that the disciplined and well armed Arab Legion expelled the Jewish population from the Jerisalem Old City.

    The obvious merit of the book (and the reason I have graded it 5 stars) is in the eye-opening and exceptionally wide coverage of the mostly negative Arab attitudes toward the Jews, the Holocaust and the State of Israel. The discussion of the Hamas Charter and the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood is of particular importance in view of the electoral success the Arab Spring granted to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties in all Arab countries where free elections were held. However, as important as that coverage might be, it is not easily digested since many parts of the book are quite dense. The text includes many long quotes, which if contested by Professor Achcar, are argued using more quotes and quotes of quotes. One needs an "elephant skin, ass of stone and nerves of steel" to get through the deconstructionist casuistry of arguments devoid of minimal compassion toward the Jewish predicament, but rich in vulgar anti-Zionism.

    During book promoting interview Professor Achcar have said "I don't claim to be neutral or even `objective,' whatever this means... I mean, my approach to this is intellectual honesty."
    The writer of this review has decided to include selected quotes, which will permit the reader to appreciate Professor Achcar's "approach," as well as the context he made up to present the Arab point of view:

    -" When all said and done, it is obvious that National Socialism, by substantially boosting Jewish immigration to Palestine, allowed the movement to attain the critical mass that enabled it to triumph politically and militarily in 1948."

    - "Finally, the National Socialist enterprise steeled the Yishuv for war in both the physical sense, since Palestinian Jews took part in the British war effort, and also the psychological sense, since it imbued Zionist militants with great determination, born of feeling (the illusion, in the view of critics and skeptics) that they were fighting to establish the definitive response to the Holocaust."

    - "The rising tide of refugees to Palestine was not Nazism's only contribution to creation of the State of Israel. In1947 there also existed a mass of concentration camp and other Jewish survivors of Hitler's genocidal enterprise who had been reduced to a state of extreme poverty and profound distress. Supporting the creation of the State of Israel was the way that North America, Europe and the Soviet Union solved, on the cheap, the embarrassing problem represented by this multitude of unfortunates whom neither Americans nor the Europeans nor the USSR wished to take in."

    - "Once the war ended and the horror of the camps had been fully revealed, the desire [by Western powers] to get rid of the devastated Jews by sending them elsewhere persisted. The foundation of the State of Israel directly served the end: two hundred thousand Holocaust survivors settled there in the year following its creation."
    14 people found this helpful
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  • Helene P
    5.0 out of 5 stars Un chef d'oeuvre, un 'must read', absolument!
    Reviewed in France on May 11, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    Gilbert Achcar est un philosophe d'origine libanaise et facilement l'un des meilleurs philosophes du moment. Et, selon Le Monde, il est le meilleur analyste du Moyen Orient et je veux bien le croire. Dans ce livre, qui est déjà un classique et à mon avis la meilleure approche du conflit Palestino-Israélien, l'auteur creuse les narratifs qui forment les images mentales de part et d'autre du conflit, en outre à travers l'histoire, qui se basent sur le Nakba du côté palestinien et la Shoah du côté israélien. Ainsi il va au coeur même des contradictions, oppositions et résistances mentales du conflit. Si l'on sait que aussi bien Nakba que Shoah veulent dire 'catastrophe', on voit là deux peuples qui se basent chacun sur leur propre catastrophe historique pour se faire une guerre existentielle. On comprend alors que les narratifs autour de ces catastrophes enferme chaque peuple dans leur propre lutte non seulement pour la même terre, mais pour exister
    Contrairement à la grande quantité d'analyses et traités politiques, le lecteur n'a pas besoin de bien connaître la situation sur place mais se fait entraîner dans l'humain, dans cela qui fait que les hommes ont la capacité de se comprendre ou aussi l'incapacité de s'entendre . Séduit par un style élégant, on se laisse facilement glisser dans ce plus complexe des matières sans s'affoler de cette complexité et ses points de vue souvent si opposés et confus. C'est aussi un texte honnête, d'une grand intégrité dans toutes les nuances des deux côtés. Peut-être le meilleur compliment pour ce livre et son auteur c'est qu'après quelques pages déjà, on se dit: voilà que je commence à comprendre! Qu'on soit Palestinien ou Israélien, Arabe ou Européen, ou citoyen de n'importe où dans le monde, je crois que c'est le meilleur livre pour atteindre le coeur de ce plus grand conflit de notre temps qui ne se joue pas seulement au Moyen Orient, mais qui s'introduit de multiples manières et antagonismes dans toutes nos sociétés. Car ce conflit jette ses racines dans les grands crimes collectifs de notre époque : le génocide par le fascisme européen et le colonialisme.
    Comme l'auteur l'explique dans l'introduction, suivre de près la 'Guerre' entre les narratifs qui, consciemment ou surtout inconsciemment, inspirent les protagonistes comme leurs amis et ennemis extérieurs, était le sujet le plus difficile à aborder et personne ne l'avait encore osé. Même pour un connaisseur doué et équipé comme Gilbert Achcar cela a été une tâche herculéenne, un travail à fond, y compris dans son propre être, qui a pris des années et dont ce livre est le fruit.
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  • Kindle Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, Musr-read, for any wanting to better understand why the Middle East is whwre it is.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 1, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    I bought this after first reading extracts at British Library whilst doing research into pro-zionist blaming of the Mufti and the Palestinians for involvement with Hitler's anti-Jewish policies. Achar's book is well-researched, sensitive to historical context and to the differences of expectation and understanding of the various parties. Too often we are presented with single narratives - this is the Arab view, this is the Jewish view - when, as in any society, there were varying stories and different strengths with which those stories were held and told. If I had to recommend just one book this would be it, (add Peter Novick's 'The Holocaust and Collective Memory' and you'll have as balanced an understanding as is possible)
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  • Belisarius
    4.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating insight into Arab politics in the lead up ...
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 17, 2016
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    A fascinating insight into Arab politics in the lead up to WW2. The book sheds light on and explodes the myth of, a monolithic aggressive Islamo-fascist world, revealing several trends in Islamic political thought that mirrors those in the west. From western style reformers through to fervent nationalists and finally an exploration of fascism and communism's relationship with Islam. Achcar also debunks much of the "scholarship" found in popular biographies of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Well worth a read.
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  • Dran Ward
    4.0 out of 5 stars The Arabs and the Holocaust, an examination of the Narratives War
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 15, 2014
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    A good book, I found it very informative it contains a very wide view of the Arab Israeli relationship its history, not a book to be taken lightly as it requires some concentration to get the best from it, as it is a very full description of the subject matter.
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