Lethal obsession: Anti-semitism from Antiquity to the Global jihad

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Lethal obsession: Anti-semitism from Antiquity to the Global jihad

Here are two reviews of the new book, Lethal Obsession: Anti-semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad by Robert S. Wistrich (Random House; 1184 pages; $40). The first is an excerpt from a review by an Episcopal priest and San Jose State University Professor, Bruce R. Bramlett, published in the San Fancisco Chronicle, February 12, 2010. The second review is by Michael Hoffman.

Rev. Bruce R. Bramlett:

Robert S. Wistrich's monumental new book, "A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism From Antiquity to the Global Jihad," may receive a mixed reception in the academic world not because of shoddy scholarship or inaccurate analysis. It is a work of great erudition and analytic insight. It may have difficulties because Wistrich has the courage to speak insightfully about the continued virulence of anti-Semitism, which he calls the world's "longest hatred."

Wistrich, professor of modern European history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and director of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, is a well-known and respected scholar. He intends to expose the intensity of "a culture of hatred" that has come to permeate books, magazines, newspapers, electronic media and, yes, churches on a scale unprecedented since the days of World War II. He references the long history of anti-Semitism, focusing on those consistent historical themes that morph and re-emerge onto the contemporary scene. Wistrich is anything if not thorough, exhaustively footnoting his work, providing convincing proof that the culture that produced the Holocaust did not die with Hitler. Indeed, this may be a disturbing book to read and digest, and it is sure to anger many who deeply wish to accept a more selective view of reality.

Wistrich carefully documents the continued presence of many modern forms of hatred of Jews in the former Soviet Union, Europe, Canada and the United States. These continue in classic forms as part of populist, racialist, anti-liberal, anti-intellectual and anti-democratic revolts, Holocaust denial and conspiracy mongering employing images of the demonic character of the alien, subversive Jew. The conspiratorial constructions of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" remain strongly embedded in Western thought, even after a century.

Wistrich then probes the political elephant in the living room of the liberal West. He makes crucial connections between the continued undercurrents of Western anti-Semitism with their occasional eruptions of violence and the more salient politics of genocidal jihadi rage in the Middle East.

This elephant is the obscene assumption by some in the sophisticated establishment that the state of Israel has become the collective "dirty conspiratorial Jew," carrying out policies against Palestinians. This is occurring in a political context where vicious demonic images of the Jews circulating throughout much of the Islamic world are sufficiently radical in tone and content to constitute a new warrant for genocide. For many, Israel (the Jews) are the sole cause of the intractable dilemmas of the Islamic world. There are no rational distinctions made between appropriately debatable policies toward Palestinians and the constant dark cloud of genocidal threat that looms over the very existence of Israel from the Islamic world.

Wistrich rightly notes that such ostracism shifts beyond issues of policy and geopolitical dispute that theoretically should be amenable to negotiation and compromise to questions concerning the very legitimacy and continued viability of the state itself: It is the Zionist entity that is seen as the source of all evil in the Middle East. The Zionist entity is viewed as the bridgehead from the larger world of satanic Western decadence, social chaos, sexual permissiveness, idolatry and apostasy that characterizes radical Islamist thought and policymaking about the West.

Wistrich's analysis is bound to spark a firestorm of denial from the political, social and theological left. His analysis provides important criteria and context for determining the line that separates legitimate political criticism of a sovereign nation, however mistaken their policies, and hatred of Jews. He provides uncomfortable evidence that a genteel anti-Semitic discourse is once again becoming acceptable parlor conversation, cocktail party banter, church deliberations, academically sanctioned courses and even diplomatic negotiation... (End quote)

Rev. Bruce R. Bramlett is a lecturer in the Jewish studies program at San Jose State University. E-mail him at books@sfchronicle.com