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Title: Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice by Bernard Lewis ISBN: 0-393-31839-7 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: May, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.85 (13 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A dreadful threat to the future
Comment: The bout of Jew-hate that convulsed Europe until the fall of Hitler was in effect an episode, a long-lived but ultimately futile piece of social pathology dependent not on any positive religion - though Bernard Lewis' opening remarks tend to argue otherwise - but rather on a socio-cultural convulsion due to various kinds of cultural maladjustment (among which I would place very high an unconscious desire to neutralize or destroy the Christian religion by striking at its ancestor). In its essentials, I believe it was an episode and no more. Except for the lunatic fringe, it and all its products have been consigned to the dustbin of culture history, and, but for the horror of what arose from them, the PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION and such things would be a subject for jokes.
In the Arab world, however, what was a craze - and never without opponents; at no point was the wave of so-called anti-Semitism ever without opponents in the West - has become the consensus; and shows signs of embedding itself into the culture too deep to be removed. What is worse, it has been accepted with no discussion, debate or serious opposition. Debate in Arab culture is difficult - due mainly to the tyrannical natures of most states, that makes it difficult to engage in unperturbed opposition of views which may well have official backing - but not impossible; and many things do in fact get debated with earnest intelligence. The legend of the evil Jew, however, is not one of these things: practically no Muslim voice of any importance has challenged it; and even if anyone did, they would be wasting their time, since Arab and Muslim public opinion simply would not listen. The Arab and Muslim world has eaten, swallowed and digested the sin of the West; metabolised the worst of our social pathologies, as though there was anything to gain by doing so.
The excuse for this, of course, is the rise of the State of Israel; but, quite apart from the fact that the new Arab Anti-Semitism (and yes, I know it is a contradiction in terms) has actually made the Arabs less capable of understanding and dealing with their enemy (witness the widespread conspiracy theory that the Israeli troops and aircraft during the Six Days' War were in fact led and manned by Americans), I think this is to some extent a pretext. Arabs had been flirting with German philosophies, with totalitarianism and racism, well before the foundation of the Jewish State - the root of the Baath party, founded in the thirties, is in a typically Fascist mixture of nationalism and socialism leavened with a mystique of group love. These phenomena arose from the failure of the Arab nation to deal with the modern world, and their embedding in the Arab psyche, with their corollary of conspiracy theory, simply diminishes further their ability to do so. Conspiracy theory is not a way, however pathological, to deal with the complexities of the real world; it is a way to deny them.
This horrendous process is documented in quite intolerable detail in this excellent book, and God knows there is enough to be said about it. Bernard Lewis shows himself, if anything, too fair to the Arabs. Perhaps the most frightening feature is the calm, even polite way in which the most vicious drivel is spouted with no understanding either of its odiousness or of its sheer ignorance; what one might call the innocence of evil. This is a deeply troubling book, not only for what it says about any future possibility of peace with Israel, but for the more basic issue of the Arab attitude to a world they perceive as hostile, ranged against them, existing in a monstrous conspiracy to crush and destroy them. It cannot be healthy for one of the great nations of the world to live in a state of permanent fear and hatred.
Rating: 5
Summary: Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict&Prejudice
Comment: This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to comprehend the deep passions underlying the Mid-East conflict. In this very readable volume, subtitled "An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice", Bernard Lewis explains how and why hatred of Jews as Jews now inflames the Arab World. First published in 1987 and reissued with a new Afterword in 1999, the book is as timely as tomorrow. In light of subsequent events, the last chapter, "The New Anti-Semitism", and the Afterword are especially chilling.
Rating: 5
Summary: Anti-Semitism Unveiled
Comment: This is a book about Arab anti-semitism (of course Arabs can be anti-semites, because, duh, anti-semitism is a particular form of hatred directed at JEWS, not speakers of all Semitic languages... Akkadians that published the blood libel and translations of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion would be -- you guessed it -- anti-semites).
The discussion of Arab anti-semitism is preceded by a thorough laying of foundations, consisting of chapters discussing the history of the term "semitic", the history of semitic-speaking peoples, the history of the Jews, and the rise of Zionism. Anti-semitism proper is then chronicled, beginning with the 1648 uprising of the Ukrainian Cossacks and following through to contemporary Arab expressions.
Anti-semitism is not, of course, just disliking or being rude to Jews. It's a form of hatred that characterizes Jews as being uniquely and cosmically evil, and that relies on the repetition of certain core tropes: the Jews drink blood, the Jews conspire to take over the world, blah blah.
What Lewis argues is that, while this sort of treatment of the Jews is commonplace in contemporary Arab media, Arab anti-Semitism is a recent innovation, coming into existence over the last half-century. Medieval Arabs stereotyped Jews as well, but merely as cowardly, and some medieval Arab accounts of Mohammed's victories over his Jewish contemporaries paint the Jews as "tragic" figures and accord them "dignity" in their defeat. Medieval Arab treatment of Jews was, Lewis argues, in the middle of the Bell curve -- both the best and the worst treatment of Jews was to be found in the Christian West.
Until now. The rise of the state of Israel has seen a simultaneous explosion of anti-Semitic writing, ranting and posturing in the Arab states. This book, written well before September 11, 2001, is now more relevant than ever as a guide to understanding the crazed rhetoric flowing around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as the more general muddled meeting of the Arab world and the West.
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Title: The Jews of Islam by Bernard Lewis ISBN: 0691008078 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 June, 1987 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: Islam and the West by Bernard Lewis ISBN: 0195090616 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: October, 1994 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: What Went Wrong? : The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East by Bernard Lewis ISBN: 0060516054 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 07 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Cultures in Conflict: Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the Age of Discovery by Bernard Lewis ISBN: 0195102835 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: January, 1996 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror by Bernard Lewis ISBN: 0679642811 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 25 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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