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Title: Never Again? : The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism by Abraham Foxman ISBN: 0-06-054246-2 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 21 October, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (7 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Eye-opening and explosive
Comment: Abraham Foxman presents a brilliant catalog of worldwide perniciousness. Even though I read this book a while ago, when it first came out, and just seeing it listed here makes me want to take it off the shelf. Excellent resource!
Rating: 4
Summary: Lest history repeat itself.
Comment: This very important, well written, work by Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League addresses the emergence of a new, present day, hatred of the Jews (anti-Semitism) and discusses it's causes as well as it's implications for the future in relation to the State of Israel, the Jewish people and the International community as a whole.
Described here as the "oldest collective hate obsession in recorded history" the book comments upon many of the alleged causes quoting numerous examples in relation to each issue in order to illustrate how extensive the problem actually is.
Amongst the subjects investigated are Jewish-Catholic relations, what is described as the 'religious right', Jihad and also the Muslim world. Many readers will find a case to answer in all the issues addressed, but on a personal basis I find myself disagreeing with the comments supportive of ecumenism as well as some of those pertaining to the support of Israel by Evangelical Christians. Readers must make up their own minds on the presentation confronting them on all these issues. I personally feel that the book has not gone far enough on some issues and too far on others. Having said that, the seriousness of the issue here cannot be ignored and the importance of this study cannot be over-emphasised.
The book describes in some detail how the hatred of the Jews is openly endorsed by Arab governments throughout the Middle East, where it is cited as being disseminated by the media, taught in schools & universities and preached from the Mosques. Anti-Semitism is depicted as being well and truly "out of the Arab closet" with no differentiation between Jews and Israelis when radical imams call upon their Islamic followers to kill the Jews.
The reader is shown how this helps to fuel the flames of hatred towards the Jews amongst a billion Muslims across the globe. Muslim communities being described as constituting a rapidly growing force in dozens of countries, eager to influence anti-Jewish policies upon the nations in which they reside. Whilst discussing this issue the book is careful to distinguish between anti-Semitism and fair, contextual opposition of some Israeli leaders or policies.
Pursuing this virulent hatred of the Jews is further illustrated as serving the purpose of distracting attention from the alleged failures, corruption & incompetence of some Arab leaders such as Yasser Arafat, with the Arab populace being convinced that the source of it's troubles is solely the "tyranny of Israel & the Jews". The book further elaborating with the example that when Palestinian suicide bombers embark on their missions, they wrap themselves, not in the banner of the Palestinian Authority, but in the green & white flag of Islam. It being further described that any pre-recorded videos by the bombers talk of "religious martyrdom" and their wish to "kill the Jews".
The book is described as a "wake-up call" to a looming International emergency, declaring that people are not born bigots and must be taught to hate, whilst simultaneously listing a number of honest measures which need to be taken in order to confront an evil where men, women and children are persecuted because of their race, religion or political views. History must not repeat itself. Recommended.
Rating: 1
Summary: Bile Again
Comment: I have to agree with Foxman's statement in his "Source Notes" that this is not a work of scholarship. Rather, it is a tedious description of the organizations and individuals that he has decreed to be anti-semitic for some reason or another. The book is long on name-calling, and distressingly short of any sort of analysis of causes. His line, as far as I can make it out, is that anti-semitism is a causeless pathology, inexplicable and evil, which makes for a rather shallow and uninteresting treatment of the phenomenon, and the book is weakened considerably by it.
It is essentially data-free when it comes to making the case for the "new anti-semitism" of the title. What he describes as "new" sounds pretty old to me; he uses "new" in the sense of "recent " rather than "different." How a few complaints by actors about the ethnic predilections of Hollywood can be sandwiched between a semi-hysterical accounting of scrawled swastikas and cemetery desecrations and then blown up into something new and dangerous comes across as really pretty silly.
The name-calling favored by Foxman in labeling organizations and people is also pretty offensive to me. His free and frequent use of hate epithets other than "anti-semitic, such as "bigot" and "neo-nazi," is surely another symptom of the deliberate deficiency of scholarship in this work. His unrestrained attack on the Catholic Church will also be offensive to many, and is hardly in the interests of those seeking toleration and reconciliation. Foxman's description of the repulsiveness he feels toward the cross which serves as a monument at Auschwitz and his tortured reasoning against the "universalization" of the holocaust is nothing short of astonishing and filled with an ill-concealed hate.
Worse, is the self-aggrandizement that comes across as the real message of the book--each of his meetings with the famous and the politically connected satraps is lovingly portrayed as testaments to his power. Abe's public humbling of the deviants by his accustomed demands for apologies and mea culpas is, no doubt, repulsive and tactless, at least to the civilized. The shear repetitiveness of his complaints and "worries" is mind-numbing and boring.
I was also astounded to read of the credit Abe takes in the Oklahoma bombing that "helped lead to McVeigh's capture by law enforcement authorities." McVeigh was arrested within hours of the bombing because his car had no license plate. The ADL had nothing to do with it, and this egregious Wiesenthal-like claim serves further to discredit his work.
The language used in the book is, it seems to this reader, strikingly impoverished in vocabulary, and is quite reminiscent of the fourth-grade language used in the newspapers of our time, and which serve as the bulk of his sources. In the same vein, the piece is completely devoid of any trace of humor, new ideas, or revelations of the foibles of an imperfect race. Only bile awaits you here.
Foxman is apparently unacquainted with the work of Kevin MacDonald, whose three volume series has a penetrating and honest analysis of anti-semitism and its historical manifestations that are as far beyond Foxman's name-calling, as astronomy is from astrology.
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Title: The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz ISBN: 047146502X Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The New Anti-Semitism : The Current Crisis and What We Must Do About It by Phyllis Chesler ISBN: 078796851X Publisher: Jossey-Bass Pub. Date: 11 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Right to Exist : A Moral Defense of Israel's Wars by YAACOV LOZOWICK ISBN: 0385509057 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 30 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: The Return of Anti-Semitism by Gabriel Schoenfeld ISBN: 1893554899 Publisher: Encounter Books Pub. Date: December, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Real Jews: Secular Versus Ultra-Orthodox: The Struggle for Jewish Identity in Israel by Noah J. Efron, Noah Efron ISBN: 0465018548 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 27 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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