Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry Into Conflict and Prejudice

by Bernard Lewis

Book Overview

The Arab-Israeli conflict has unsettled the Middle East for over half a century. This conflict is primarily political, a clash between states and peoples over territory and history. But it is also a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393023141
• ISBN13: 9780393023145
• Release Date: January 1986
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 283 Pages
• Weight: 13.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Anti-Semitism Unveiled

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.

eye opening

The most important thing I learned about this book is that Arab anti-Semitism, although not eternal, precedes the current war. Before the Holocuast, the mufti of Jerusalem urged the Nazis to engage in a "Holy War" against world Jewry, to accomplish the "final solution" to the Jewish problem everywhere. (p. 147, 1986 edition). In 1945, 130 Jews were massacred in Libya and 82 more in Aden (p. 205). In 1964, the state-controlled Egyptian press claimed that John Wilkes Booth was Jewish and "armed by the Zionist organization" (p. 214). In the 1970s, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia claimed that Jews practice the ritual murder of Christian and Muslim children (p. 194)These facts disprove the claim of another reviewer that "Far from being intent on annihilating the Jews, the Arab world is hostile towards Israel's brutal occupation of the Palestinians." Before I read Lewis's book, I too thought Arab anti-Semitism must have arisen from the recent Israel-Palestinian wars. But as the above-quoted examples (and many others cited by Lewis) show, Arabs were massacring Jews, supporting Nazis and fomenting Jew hatred before Israel even was formed in 1948, let alone before Israel took over the "occupied terrorities" in 1967.Another reviewer complained about the "racist" Israeli Law of Return. The Law of Return has nothing to do with race: it allows Jews from around the world to live in Israel -- not just white European Jews, but Jews from the Arab countries (who, according to Lewis at least, comprised a majority of Israelis as of 1986) and black Jews from Ethiopia.

A brilliant explanation

I have studied European anti-semitism for years and recently began following the Arab media, with its plentiful dose of Muslim anti-semitism. The parallels between the two were so striking that I knew there had to be some sort of connection. A lot of Muslim anti-semitism is literally a carbon copy of medieval Christian polemics, even when it produces absurd results. (For example, a Palestinian sermon recently declared that "The Talmud blasphemes about Muhammed." Medieval Christian anti-semites often claimed that the Talmud blasphemed against Jesus, but that was at least plausible; Muhammed, on the other hand, was born several hundred years after the Talmud was written.) I knew there had to be an explanation, but I didn't know what it was until I read this book. The historical connection that Lewis provides (backed up with lots of evidence) seems obvious to me now that I have read it.As for the reviewer who claims that Lewis is a bigot... he heaps praise on all Lewis's criticism of Western anti-semitism and on his accurate depiction of the relatively better life Jews used to have in the East, but everything Lewis says about current Arab anti-semitism and Israel is rejected. I hardly know where to start in addressing his points. Lewis does not downplay the Sabra and Shatilla massacres; he merely points out that it wasn't the Israelis who commited the massacres, that similar massacres were happening every couple of months during that era in Lebanese history, and that the news coverage basically ignored those facts. (Even today, Palestinians attempted to sue Sharon for not foreseeing and preventing the massacres, but haven't bothered to sue the Lebanese Christians who actually planned and committed them.)Even the fact that Lewis says the Palestinians were "compelled" to leave is not exactly biased toward Israel, since there is a strong historical debate about whether they were compelled to leave or whether they fled the warfare as thousands of refugees do during every war. (And I have no idea where he gets the number of "thousands" of people being murdered, unless he considers every Arab soldier who died during the 1948 war to have been the victim of a murder.) The idea that the Holocaust was unique, while certainly debatable, is hardly "scandalous." And the calm depiction of the fact that Israel didn't personally try to prevent the Armenian genocide -- during a time when Israel didn't even exist, and the Jews in Palestine were struggling to survive under the Ottoman Empire -- as "racist" takes one's breath away. Can I assume that this reviewer considers the entire book moot, since the Arab world is _already_ racist merely for not trying to help the Jews during the Holocaust? And can I assume that since he appears to feel that Jewish nationalism is racist, he feels the same way about all other forms of nationalism -- including Palestinian nationalism?Incidentally, Lewis's statement about the Armenian genocide in France, while certainly insensitive,

An excellent and exceedingly relevant book

In the wake of September 11, a lot of Americans are only starting to wake up to something known to anyone who has read this book: the Arab world has succeeded Nazi Germany as the global epicenter of annihilationist anti-Semitism.Bernard Lewis' book was written well in advance of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and it makes essential background reading into the bizarre theorizing that is so replete in the Arab world. Lewis writes carefully and with sympathy for his subjects, and he is careful to draw a line between criticism of Israel and outright bigotry. Still, his inquiry finds that far too many newspapers and intellectuals in this region are willing to embrace medieval libels and Nazi tracts in their efforts to explain away the perseverance of Israel.Anyone who holds universal tolerance as a cardinal value - regardless of their stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict - should read this book carefully. Unless the world shines the light of truth on the recesses of paranoia and hatred lurking in the Arab world, we will be certain of seeing many more Osama bin Ladens

A must-read.

I call this book "A must-read" because if you are even considering the subject of anti-Semitism, or the Arab-Israeli conflict, or just plain prejudice regardless of what kind of prejudice is analyzed, its 285 pages are the perfect place to start. Bernard Lewis writes about anti-Semitism in his areas of expertise (the Arab world, the Moslem world, the Middle East) as one would write about an illness, a particularly ugly kind of illness. He is like a compassionate physician called to observe and diagnose a patient who has been infected with a horrible disease that is consuming his (or her) body and soul. As a non-Jew and an immigrant in the United States, I have often encountered Arabs who mistake me for someone who will share their hatred of Jews, simply because we share the immigrant experience in the US. This has happened in far too many occasions to be considered unimportant. The vast majority of Arabs that I've met in eleven years in this country, have assumed (correctly) that I have a Christian education, and (incorrectly) that I have been infected by the anti-Jewish syndrome that has, tragically, been most evident in Christian societies for two thousand years. Bernard Lewis' book has helped me understand this bothersome fact of life in my dealings with Arabs for the last eleven years. It was in part this book what provoked Edward Said's reaction against, and verbal abuse of, Bernard Lewis, and this, in turn, made me interested in the work of Edward Said. I have read now several of Professor Lewis' works and several collected articles by Edward Said, and I cannot find validity in the passionate, but flimsy arguments that Said puts forward to attack Lewis, like claiming that the latter has no knowledge of -or intentionally ignores- the problems of the Middle East in which many of Lewis' examples of anti-Semitism take place. If anyone reads two books by Bernard Lewis, it must become clear that the man understands his subject. So, "Semites and Anti-Semites" is a must-read for those who want to see patterns of hatred in order to fight against them. It also showed me two totally different authors, with a completely different set of ethics: on the one hand, Lewis is serious, methodical, and compassionate of both the victims and the hatemongers. On the other, Said has been unmasked recently in "Commentary", in an article by Justus Weiner, as someone who lied about his past to "make up" a biography as a Palestinian refugee. "Semites and Anti-Semites" deals exactly with this kind of people.