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"The Sons of Pigs and Apes": Muslim Antisemitism and the Conspiracy of Silence
From the 1950s through the 1990s, antisemitism everywhere seemed to be on the wane. But as Neil Kressel documents in this startling book, the Muslim world has resurrected in recent decades almost every diatribe that more than two millennia of European hostility produced against the Jews, and it has introduced many homegrown and novel modes of attack. Though it is impossible to determine precisely how many of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims hold anti-Jewish beliefs, Kressel finds that much bigotry comes from the highest levels of religious and political leadership.
Compounding the problem, as Kressel demonstrates, many in the West refuse to recognize this issue. The growing epidemic of hate has been largely ignored, misunderstood, or downplayed, Kressel reveals, because of apathy, ignorance, confusion, bigotry, ideology, purported pragmatism, and misguided multiculturalism. Those who value human rights ignore antisemitism at their own risk, he cautions, noting that no antisemitic regime or movement has ever been otherwise reasonable or progressive. Kressel argues convincingly that Muslim antisemitism provides an acid test of the seriousness of Western liberalism. If the West fails to stem this growing tide, as now seems likely, future affairs will not go well for the true proponents of democracy. Kressel moves beyond sounding the alarm to explore the diverse religious, political, social, and psychological forces that have created and nurtured the new hostility to Jews in the Muslim world; he concludes with a bold and clear plan for what must be done to confront this hostility.
Compounding the problem, as Kressel demonstrates, many in the West refuse to recognize this issue. The growing epidemic of hate has been largely ignored, misunderstood, or downplayed, Kressel reveals, because of apathy, ignorance, confusion, bigotry, ideology, purported pragmatism, and misguided multiculturalism. Those who value human rights ignore antisemitism at their own risk, he cautions, noting that no antisemitic regime or movement has ever been otherwise reasonable or progressive. Kressel argues convincingly that Muslim antisemitism provides an acid test of the seriousness of Western liberalism. If the West fails to stem this growing tide, as now seems likely, future affairs will not go well for the true proponents of democracy. Kressel moves beyond sounding the alarm to explore the diverse religious, political, social, and psychological forces that have created and nurtured the new hostility to Jews in the Muslim world; he concludes with a bold and clear plan for what must be done to confront this hostility.
- GenresNonfictionMiddle East
282 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 2012
1 person is currently reading
36 people want to read
About the author
Neil J. Kressel
11 books2 followersNeil J. Kressel is a professor of psychology at the William Paterson University in New Jersey, USA.
Areas of specialization:
Psychology of Religion, Political Psychology, Psychology of International Conflict, Prejudice and Race Relations, Antisemitism, Genocide, Forensic Psychology, Social Psychology, Arab-Israeli Conflict, Psychology of Social issues, Psychology of Personality, Psychology and History, Modern History.
Strong interest in journalism. Strong interest in political and methodological biases in social research.
Professional Background:
Visiting Associate Professor at Yale University (2008-2009). Taught at Harvard, New York University, Stevens Institute, and elsewhere. Trained in Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy by Albert Ellis. Member, Editorial Board, Political Psychology and Member, Editorial Board, Journal for the Study of Anti-Semitism. Media Appearances: National Public Radio, Voice of America, MSNBC, Fox News, ABC-TV, History Channel, News12-NJ, and others.
Education/Licensing:
Ph.D. (Social Psychology) Harvard University
M.A. (Psychology and Social Relations) Harvard University
M.A. (Comparative History) Brandeis University
B.A. (History) Brandeis University (Magna cum Laude with Highest Honors in History)
New York State Psychology License
Research Projects: religious extremism, radicalization, antisemitism, psychology of religion
Areas of specialization:
Psychology of Religion, Political Psychology, Psychology of International Conflict, Prejudice and Race Relations, Antisemitism, Genocide, Forensic Psychology, Social Psychology, Arab-Israeli Conflict, Psychology of Social issues, Psychology of Personality, Psychology and History, Modern History.
Strong interest in journalism. Strong interest in political and methodological biases in social research.
Professional Background:
Visiting Associate Professor at Yale University (2008-2009). Taught at Harvard, New York University, Stevens Institute, and elsewhere. Trained in Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy by Albert Ellis. Member, Editorial Board, Political Psychology and Member, Editorial Board, Journal for the Study of Anti-Semitism. Media Appearances: National Public Radio, Voice of America, MSNBC, Fox News, ABC-TV, History Channel, News12-NJ, and others.
Education/Licensing:
Ph.D. (Social Psychology) Harvard University
M.A. (Psychology and Social Relations) Harvard University
M.A. (Comparative History) Brandeis University
B.A. (History) Brandeis University (Magna cum Laude with Highest Honors in History)
New York State Psychology License
Research Projects: religious extremism, radicalization, antisemitism, psychology of religion
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May 9, 2014
Harvard-trained social psychologist Neil J. Kressel's 2012 book, "The Sons of Pigs and Apes: Muslim Antisemitism and the Conspiracy of Silence," takes on taboo topics.
Kressel argues that antisemitism is popularly supported, openly expressed, and highly influential among Muslims throughout the world, including Muslims living in England and South Asia, not just the Middle East. He cites news accounts, research organizations, opinion polls, television, memoirs and discussion boards. "The word 'Jew' is a slur in the entire Muslim world" (93). Jews are depicted as categorically different. Jews cause wars, torture, cannibalize, and plot world domination. Newspapers, television, school curricula and leaders' public statements exploit the most extreme motifs from the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and "Mein Kampf." Muslim liberals like Irshad Manji and Tarek Fatah have negligible followings and are condemned by other Muslims (196).
Muslim antisemitism is twinned with hostility to the West. Historian Robert Wistrich wrote that Muslim antisemitism "is the Trojan Horse designed to undermine the West's beliefs in its own values" (13).
Kressel explores potential roots for Muslim antisemitism. In the Koran, Allah turns Jews into pigs and apes. Mohammed made war on Jews (32). Muslim antisemitism might be projective inversion – Muslims might be attributing to Jews the hostility that they themselves feel (155). Kressel explores other potential sources for Muslim antisemitism, including Israel, colonialism, Christian missionaries, and Nazism.
There are political uses: antisemitism fulfills the need for a scapegoat. Jews serve as a target for displaced aggression citizenry cannot express against their non-democratic leaders (121, 167). Jews might also be convenient scapegoats for leftist agitprop (149). Muslims may be enraged because in the past Jews were subservient "dhimmis." When Jews defeated Muslims in the Six Day War, that changed. "There is no prominent model in Muslim history for treating Jews as equals" (127, 168-9).
Many Western leftists are either silent about or supportive of antisemitism in the Muslim world. Irish poet Tom Paulin, who taught at Oxford and Columbia and lectured at Harvard, said, "I understand how suicide bombers feel." Paulin described Israelis as "racists" and "Nazis" who "should be shot dead" (74). The scholar John L. Esposito, who is lavishly funded by a Saudi prince, massages statistics to erase "700 million" Muslims who acknowledged to polltakers that they found the 9-11 attacks justifiable (89). While leftists are eager to condemn antisemitism in Catholic Poland, if they mention Muslim antisemitism they are "delegitimized" (15). They are accused of "Jewish paranoia" (114). They are themselves condemned as racists and Islamophobes and leftists reject their friendship (56).
Prof. Pieter Van Der Horst was encouraged to condemn Christian antisemitism; he was forbidden from mentioning Muslim antisemitism. His university cited fear of violence from Muslims as one reason for the censorship (58). Overt Muslim antisemites are championed as role models (eg 40). Leftists advise coexistence, "even with groups not prepared to coexist" and pursue "'a Munich-style quest for peace at any price'" (146-7).
Kressel describes rhetorical strategies exercised by leftwing Western supporters of Muslim antisemitism. They say things like "Arabs can't be antisemites because Arabs are Semites." Kressel points out that the word "antisemite" was coined by racist Jew haters and it has no meaning as a word describing Arabs. Leftist antisemites argue that Muslim antisemitism is merely a criticism of Israel. Arab Radio and Television's 2002 miniseries "Horseman without a Horse," that dramatized the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" does not constitute legitimate criticism of Israel. Too, as Kressel shows, leftist criticisms of Israel dwarf leftist protests of nefarious human rights abusers like Burma and Sudan.
Israel is not, contrary to leftist accusations, an "apartheid" state; most Israeli Arabs express a wish to live in Israel, rather than in any Muslim Arab majority nation (118). The question is, would any leftist, Muslim, or antisemite respond positively to Kressel's book? Probably not. There is, alas, a sense of "preaching to the choir" about it.
Kressel is shocked, shocked, that the "anti-racist community" has not rejected Muslim antisemitism. Kressel never seems to reach the abundantly obvious conclusion: the "anti-racist community" he imagines is not at all anti-racist. Rather, the left has a history of temporarily exploiting the cause it thinks will bring it closer to its goal of remaking or simply destroying Western Civilization, with its detested Judeo-Christian roots, and bringing on the utopian worker's paradise.
If a particular group's grudges can serve as lever, and its hatreds can serve as kindling, yes, the left will make temporary common cause with that group. For a while the left was supportive of Jews because Jews were deemed "revolutionary." Not that long ago, the Soviet bloc voted for the creation of the state of Israel. Leftists currently assess Muslims as useful for revolutionary purposes, and leftists now align themselves with Muslims. Leftists' calculations have little to do with sincere opposition to racism or sexism. Ask Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Condoleezza Rice, two black women blacklisted by leftists at Brandeis and Rutgers respectively in spring of 2014.
In one passage, Kressel criticizes the cultural relativism approach taken by many leftists. After all, Esposito insists, Muslims and Christians are not that different; both cherish "family values." Kressel says that Esposito never asks if "family values" means the same thing "across cultural and national borders" (90).
But Kressel himself takes a cultural relativism approach. Kressel repeatedly compares Islam to Christianity. He says that all religions can be interpreted to inspire good or bad behavior. Things were bad in the past but things got better; Islam can also improve with time (eg 19, 61). Christianity has a "much stronger" "religious foundation for Jew-hatred" than Islam (33). Christians are "deeper enemies of Jews"; "pernicious anti-Jewish imagery" is "central" to Christianity (127). Kressel accuses "Christian missionaries" of disseminating blood libel to Muslims, but he offers no support for this charge (162).
Kressel's relativism obscures rather than clarifies. There is no command in Christianity not to take non-Christians as friends, or to kill, convert, dominate, humiliate, or tax them. There are such commands in Islam. Rather, Christians are commanded to love even strangers, as in the Good Samaritan parable. There is no comparable parable in the Koran. Christians have certainly mistreated Jews, but the middleman minority status of Jews was the most frequent spark, not theology.
Contrary to Kressel's statement that popes and priests were all "bigots" (139), the Vatican repeatedly condemned antisemitism and violence against Jews. Finally, Kressel conflates Nazis and Christians (eg 162), saying for example that "Christian churches" feel "'lingering guilt about the Holocaust'" and that Christianity took a "genocidal" approach to Jews (124, 151). Nazism was a neo-Pagan movement inspired by atheist ideas. Nazis cited Darwinian evolution as ethical support.
On the page after accusing all Christians throughout time of being bigots, Kressel adduces data that exculpates Jews and atheists of bigotry (140).
Nazis didn't massacre only Jews; they also massacred Catholic Poles, Orthodox Russians, and handicapped Germans. These other victims inform us about the nature of Nazism. Muslim haters don't just target Jews. They also target Christians, Bahais, Hindus, and Buddhists. Kressel mentions that many Muslims blame Jews for the 9-11 attacks. But Muslims don't just refuse to take responsibility for 9-11; they also refuse to take responsibility for other atrocities, like the Armenian genocide. Had Kressel widened his focus to non-Jewish victims, even if only for a few brief paragraphs, he would have revealed much more about the nature of Islam.
Finally, Kessler does not cite Alvin H. Rosenfeld's 2006 essay "Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism." He should have at least mentioned it. Some of the leftist antisemites Kessler quotes, including Richard Falk, Eli Valley, Zack Furness and Judith Butler, were born Jewish.
In this review I am not referring to all Muslims, and neither is Neil J. Kressel. It goes without saying that most Muslims are peace-loving people who do not act out irrational prejudices. Rather, this review and Kressel's book are about significant trends.
Kressel argues that antisemitism is popularly supported, openly expressed, and highly influential among Muslims throughout the world, including Muslims living in England and South Asia, not just the Middle East. He cites news accounts, research organizations, opinion polls, television, memoirs and discussion boards. "The word 'Jew' is a slur in the entire Muslim world" (93). Jews are depicted as categorically different. Jews cause wars, torture, cannibalize, and plot world domination. Newspapers, television, school curricula and leaders' public statements exploit the most extreme motifs from the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and "Mein Kampf." Muslim liberals like Irshad Manji and Tarek Fatah have negligible followings and are condemned by other Muslims (196).
Muslim antisemitism is twinned with hostility to the West. Historian Robert Wistrich wrote that Muslim antisemitism "is the Trojan Horse designed to undermine the West's beliefs in its own values" (13).
Kressel explores potential roots for Muslim antisemitism. In the Koran, Allah turns Jews into pigs and apes. Mohammed made war on Jews (32). Muslim antisemitism might be projective inversion – Muslims might be attributing to Jews the hostility that they themselves feel (155). Kressel explores other potential sources for Muslim antisemitism, including Israel, colonialism, Christian missionaries, and Nazism.
There are political uses: antisemitism fulfills the need for a scapegoat. Jews serve as a target for displaced aggression citizenry cannot express against their non-democratic leaders (121, 167). Jews might also be convenient scapegoats for leftist agitprop (149). Muslims may be enraged because in the past Jews were subservient "dhimmis." When Jews defeated Muslims in the Six Day War, that changed. "There is no prominent model in Muslim history for treating Jews as equals" (127, 168-9).
Many Western leftists are either silent about or supportive of antisemitism in the Muslim world. Irish poet Tom Paulin, who taught at Oxford and Columbia and lectured at Harvard, said, "I understand how suicide bombers feel." Paulin described Israelis as "racists" and "Nazis" who "should be shot dead" (74). The scholar John L. Esposito, who is lavishly funded by a Saudi prince, massages statistics to erase "700 million" Muslims who acknowledged to polltakers that they found the 9-11 attacks justifiable (89). While leftists are eager to condemn antisemitism in Catholic Poland, if they mention Muslim antisemitism they are "delegitimized" (15). They are accused of "Jewish paranoia" (114). They are themselves condemned as racists and Islamophobes and leftists reject their friendship (56).
Prof. Pieter Van Der Horst was encouraged to condemn Christian antisemitism; he was forbidden from mentioning Muslim antisemitism. His university cited fear of violence from Muslims as one reason for the censorship (58). Overt Muslim antisemites are championed as role models (eg 40). Leftists advise coexistence, "even with groups not prepared to coexist" and pursue "'a Munich-style quest for peace at any price'" (146-7).
Kressel describes rhetorical strategies exercised by leftwing Western supporters of Muslim antisemitism. They say things like "Arabs can't be antisemites because Arabs are Semites." Kressel points out that the word "antisemite" was coined by racist Jew haters and it has no meaning as a word describing Arabs. Leftist antisemites argue that Muslim antisemitism is merely a criticism of Israel. Arab Radio and Television's 2002 miniseries "Horseman without a Horse," that dramatized the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" does not constitute legitimate criticism of Israel. Too, as Kressel shows, leftist criticisms of Israel dwarf leftist protests of nefarious human rights abusers like Burma and Sudan.
Israel is not, contrary to leftist accusations, an "apartheid" state; most Israeli Arabs express a wish to live in Israel, rather than in any Muslim Arab majority nation (118). The question is, would any leftist, Muslim, or antisemite respond positively to Kressel's book? Probably not. There is, alas, a sense of "preaching to the choir" about it.
Kressel is shocked, shocked, that the "anti-racist community" has not rejected Muslim antisemitism. Kressel never seems to reach the abundantly obvious conclusion: the "anti-racist community" he imagines is not at all anti-racist. Rather, the left has a history of temporarily exploiting the cause it thinks will bring it closer to its goal of remaking or simply destroying Western Civilization, with its detested Judeo-Christian roots, and bringing on the utopian worker's paradise.
If a particular group's grudges can serve as lever, and its hatreds can serve as kindling, yes, the left will make temporary common cause with that group. For a while the left was supportive of Jews because Jews were deemed "revolutionary." Not that long ago, the Soviet bloc voted for the creation of the state of Israel. Leftists currently assess Muslims as useful for revolutionary purposes, and leftists now align themselves with Muslims. Leftists' calculations have little to do with sincere opposition to racism or sexism. Ask Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Condoleezza Rice, two black women blacklisted by leftists at Brandeis and Rutgers respectively in spring of 2014.
In one passage, Kressel criticizes the cultural relativism approach taken by many leftists. After all, Esposito insists, Muslims and Christians are not that different; both cherish "family values." Kressel says that Esposito never asks if "family values" means the same thing "across cultural and national borders" (90).
But Kressel himself takes a cultural relativism approach. Kressel repeatedly compares Islam to Christianity. He says that all religions can be interpreted to inspire good or bad behavior. Things were bad in the past but things got better; Islam can also improve with time (eg 19, 61). Christianity has a "much stronger" "religious foundation for Jew-hatred" than Islam (33). Christians are "deeper enemies of Jews"; "pernicious anti-Jewish imagery" is "central" to Christianity (127). Kressel accuses "Christian missionaries" of disseminating blood libel to Muslims, but he offers no support for this charge (162).
Kressel's relativism obscures rather than clarifies. There is no command in Christianity not to take non-Christians as friends, or to kill, convert, dominate, humiliate, or tax them. There are such commands in Islam. Rather, Christians are commanded to love even strangers, as in the Good Samaritan parable. There is no comparable parable in the Koran. Christians have certainly mistreated Jews, but the middleman minority status of Jews was the most frequent spark, not theology.
Contrary to Kressel's statement that popes and priests were all "bigots" (139), the Vatican repeatedly condemned antisemitism and violence against Jews. Finally, Kressel conflates Nazis and Christians (eg 162), saying for example that "Christian churches" feel "'lingering guilt about the Holocaust'" and that Christianity took a "genocidal" approach to Jews (124, 151). Nazism was a neo-Pagan movement inspired by atheist ideas. Nazis cited Darwinian evolution as ethical support.
On the page after accusing all Christians throughout time of being bigots, Kressel adduces data that exculpates Jews and atheists of bigotry (140).
Nazis didn't massacre only Jews; they also massacred Catholic Poles, Orthodox Russians, and handicapped Germans. These other victims inform us about the nature of Nazism. Muslim haters don't just target Jews. They also target Christians, Bahais, Hindus, and Buddhists. Kressel mentions that many Muslims blame Jews for the 9-11 attacks. But Muslims don't just refuse to take responsibility for 9-11; they also refuse to take responsibility for other atrocities, like the Armenian genocide. Had Kressel widened his focus to non-Jewish victims, even if only for a few brief paragraphs, he would have revealed much more about the nature of Islam.
Finally, Kessler does not cite Alvin H. Rosenfeld's 2006 essay "Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism." He should have at least mentioned it. Some of the leftist antisemites Kessler quotes, including Richard Falk, Eli Valley, Zack Furness and Judith Butler, were born Jewish.
In this review I am not referring to all Muslims, and neither is Neil J. Kressel. It goes without saying that most Muslims are peace-loving people who do not act out irrational prejudices. Rather, this review and Kressel's book are about significant trends.
August 22, 2015
This has been a very difficult read, and it'll be even more difficult to write about it. The book makes its theme some of the largest controversial issues of our time: Israel/Palestine, racism, anti-semitism and islamophobia/anti-muslim bigotry, islam vs. islamism, history and theology, critisism of religion, problems with modern-day liberalism and the multiculturalism naïveté... and so on and on.
What you tend to think about these subjects will affect how you read this book. Being more in the Hitchens/Cohen/Berman line of thinking, I found this book good, and very scary. I probably know people who'll despise me for even looking at this book, imagining to take it seriously. "It's about Israel, stupid". The author argues that although Israel plays an important role in the drama, it's not only about Israel - it goes deeper than that.
And even so, even if you are very much against Israel's very existence, does it make it more alright to claim in full seriousness that every last Jew should die, that Jews control the world, that Jews are the "sons of pigs and apes" - like the title says, a quote by Mohammad Morsi, now the president of Egypt?
Racism is racism.
I believe this book is important.
That was the short review.
What you tend to think about these subjects will affect how you read this book. Being more in the Hitchens/Cohen/Berman line of thinking, I found this book good, and very scary. I probably know people who'll despise me for even looking at this book, imagining to take it seriously. "It's about Israel, stupid". The author argues that although Israel plays an important role in the drama, it's not only about Israel - it goes deeper than that.
And even so, even if you are very much against Israel's very existence, does it make it more alright to claim in full seriousness that every last Jew should die, that Jews control the world, that Jews are the "sons of pigs and apes" - like the title says, a quote by Mohammad Morsi, now the president of Egypt?
Racism is racism.
I believe this book is important.
That was the short review.
August 22, 2018
Details of Denial
Mecca, we have a serious problem and it needs to be discussed. The origins are a mix of ancient enmities built into Islamic scripture but also consists of many antisemitic ideas used in Christian and secular Europe, including the discredited notion that Jews killed Jesus (in Islam Jesus did not die but ascended directly to heaven) and most of the Prophets. Those who argue that Israel is the sole cause miss the point that the reaction and depth of obsession is appears in too wide a geographic distribution for what is often a slow and low level conflict. What is likely preventing a resolution is not Israeli settlements or occupation or Palestinian terrorism but the underlying prejudice which, having been weaponized as a political tool has made its users blind.
Chapters 1 and 2 lay out the evidence of Kressel's case while Chapter 3 "The Shame of the Antiracist Community" is a much needed examination of the failure/hypocrisy of so called progressive elements of the left to reject anti-Jewish discourse when it is used in support of progressive causes. Additionally, says Human Rights Watch Founder Robert Bernstein who is now critical of the organization that he founded, citing a tendency for such groups to go after the "low hanging fruit" in open societies rather than the more difficult tasks in repressive states where free expression is curtailed. Sociologist Kressel also notes that in such unfree societies, animosity towards Israel becomes amplified because this is one of the few outlets for complaint that are given legitimacy by the state. Kressel calls these "licenced grievances".
Where the book excels is in Chapter 4 "The Flawed Logic of Antisemitism Minimalization". Here Kressel presents and ably responds to a number of excuses that are regularly employed to give antisemitism a pass. The first is the myth that Zionists will always use the charge of antisemitism to ward off legitimate criticism. As Alan Dershowitz and others have noted, beyond letters to the editor and online postings by individuals, nearly all mainstream responses to legitimate criticism avoids using this response. Far more frequently it is the person who raises these issues, legitimate and otherwise, who uses this claim to shield themselves from counter argumentation. Other approaches include attempting to redefine antisemitism out of existence, arguing that is it "only" political spillover, claiming that Muslims and Islam have always treated dhimmis well or at least better than Christian Europe in the past, dismissing the intensity or effect of antisemitic feelings in the Arab and Muslim world, banishing the topic for reasons of political incorrectness, fear of Islamophobia or worries about making it worse. Kressel's analysis and answers to these are IMV very effective and one of the better reasons for reading his book.
That the problem exists is a given, though Kressel admits that studying in situ in the Muslim/Arab world is a problem due to the lack of freedoms in much of that part of the world, however a 2011 Pew Global Attitudes Study that is cited supports much of what is claimed, as does a more recent Pew survey on Muslim attitudes world wide that came out (post publication) last month.
Solutions may be harder to come by. Certainly we in the West have been burned by populist prejudices and as such are obligated by our tradition of fairness and open debate to examine our failings. In Dar al Islam this is more problematic. There is no equivalent of a Muslim Vatican II to authoritatively absolve or reject the idea of percieved sins of the Jews for "attempting to kill Mohammed", "being a treacherous people" or being the eternal enemy of Islam. Islam is not unified with a central authority and the public sphere has been deeply poisoned by Conspiracy Theories . Not all is bad news for internal reform - the author cites a number of Muslim voices that have identified the problem and are willing to speak out such as Tarek Fatah, Arab Nationalism: Between Islam and the Nation-State, The Trouble With Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith and Irfan Khawaja to name a few, but few of these are as yet considered mainstream.
Overall an excellent and well written book that deserves to be read and it's positions considered. I would highly recommend it!
Mecca, we have a serious problem and it needs to be discussed. The origins are a mix of ancient enmities built into Islamic scripture but also consists of many antisemitic ideas used in Christian and secular Europe, including the discredited notion that Jews killed Jesus (in Islam Jesus did not die but ascended directly to heaven) and most of the Prophets. Those who argue that Israel is the sole cause miss the point that the reaction and depth of obsession is appears in too wide a geographic distribution for what is often a slow and low level conflict. What is likely preventing a resolution is not Israeli settlements or occupation or Palestinian terrorism but the underlying prejudice which, having been weaponized as a political tool has made its users blind.
Chapters 1 and 2 lay out the evidence of Kressel's case while Chapter 3 "The Shame of the Antiracist Community" is a much needed examination of the failure/hypocrisy of so called progressive elements of the left to reject anti-Jewish discourse when it is used in support of progressive causes. Additionally, says Human Rights Watch Founder Robert Bernstein who is now critical of the organization that he founded, citing a tendency for such groups to go after the "low hanging fruit" in open societies rather than the more difficult tasks in repressive states where free expression is curtailed. Sociologist Kressel also notes that in such unfree societies, animosity towards Israel becomes amplified because this is one of the few outlets for complaint that are given legitimacy by the state. Kressel calls these "licenced grievances".
Where the book excels is in Chapter 4 "The Flawed Logic of Antisemitism Minimalization". Here Kressel presents and ably responds to a number of excuses that are regularly employed to give antisemitism a pass. The first is the myth that Zionists will always use the charge of antisemitism to ward off legitimate criticism. As Alan Dershowitz and others have noted, beyond letters to the editor and online postings by individuals, nearly all mainstream responses to legitimate criticism avoids using this response. Far more frequently it is the person who raises these issues, legitimate and otherwise, who uses this claim to shield themselves from counter argumentation. Other approaches include attempting to redefine antisemitism out of existence, arguing that is it "only" political spillover, claiming that Muslims and Islam have always treated dhimmis well or at least better than Christian Europe in the past, dismissing the intensity or effect of antisemitic feelings in the Arab and Muslim world, banishing the topic for reasons of political incorrectness, fear of Islamophobia or worries about making it worse. Kressel's analysis and answers to these are IMV very effective and one of the better reasons for reading his book.
That the problem exists is a given, though Kressel admits that studying in situ in the Muslim/Arab world is a problem due to the lack of freedoms in much of that part of the world, however a 2011 Pew Global Attitudes Study that is cited supports much of what is claimed, as does a more recent Pew survey on Muslim attitudes world wide that came out (post publication) last month.
Solutions may be harder to come by. Certainly we in the West have been burned by populist prejudices and as such are obligated by our tradition of fairness and open debate to examine our failings. In Dar al Islam this is more problematic. There is no equivalent of a Muslim Vatican II to authoritatively absolve or reject the idea of percieved sins of the Jews for "attempting to kill Mohammed", "being a treacherous people" or being the eternal enemy of Islam. Islam is not unified with a central authority and the public sphere has been deeply poisoned by Conspiracy Theories . Not all is bad news for internal reform - the author cites a number of Muslim voices that have identified the problem and are willing to speak out such as Tarek Fatah, Arab Nationalism: Between Islam and the Nation-State, The Trouble With Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith and Irfan Khawaja to name a few, but few of these are as yet considered mainstream.
Overall an excellent and well written book that deserves to be read and it's positions considered. I would highly recommend it!
December 21, 2013
This is a very strange book, particularly strange to be written by an academic.
The theme of the books is basically two fold:
(1) They hate us, they hate us, they hate us, they hate us......, and
(2) Those who should be defending us, particularly other academics, are either actively on their side or at least are very hesitant to defend us at all.
"Us" is Jews and "They" is Muslims.
Now there is more than a little truth in the first theme. Most visable contemporary Muslim "leaders" in Muslim countries are antisemitic - either actively or passively. But this book makes no real attempt to analyze why this is the case. There is one passing mention of the use of Jews as scapegoats for otherwise failed governments and largely failed civil societies. There is one passing mention of the injury to the Arab ego of having Jews best Arabs in about every department of social life (warfare, science, civil society, etc.), but there is no real in depth analysis of those theories or of any others. Also the notion that there are many Jews who hate Muslims and that Israel has been, generously, incredibly inept in its treatment of Muslims and political problems effecting Israelis is just dismissed as "something to be dealt with elsewhere."
Hence, we have a book that purportedly has been written to defend Jews that is neither very Jewish (in terms of the core values of Judaism) nor that even attempts to meet and defeat antisemitic arguments. This is a par excellance example of "ITS US VS THEM" with little or no attempt to analyze why them are them or what it means to be us. Other than as a compendium of antisemitic quotations and paraphases, mostly by people who one has never heard of and who have zero impact on Western socieites, the book is a complete failure.
The theme of the books is basically two fold:
(1) They hate us, they hate us, they hate us, they hate us......, and
(2) Those who should be defending us, particularly other academics, are either actively on their side or at least are very hesitant to defend us at all.
"Us" is Jews and "They" is Muslims.
Now there is more than a little truth in the first theme. Most visable contemporary Muslim "leaders" in Muslim countries are antisemitic - either actively or passively. But this book makes no real attempt to analyze why this is the case. There is one passing mention of the use of Jews as scapegoats for otherwise failed governments and largely failed civil societies. There is one passing mention of the injury to the Arab ego of having Jews best Arabs in about every department of social life (warfare, science, civil society, etc.), but there is no real in depth analysis of those theories or of any others. Also the notion that there are many Jews who hate Muslims and that Israel has been, generously, incredibly inept in its treatment of Muslims and political problems effecting Israelis is just dismissed as "something to be dealt with elsewhere."
Hence, we have a book that purportedly has been written to defend Jews that is neither very Jewish (in terms of the core values of Judaism) nor that even attempts to meet and defeat antisemitic arguments. This is a par excellance example of "ITS US VS THEM" with little or no attempt to analyze why them are them or what it means to be us. Other than as a compendium of antisemitic quotations and paraphases, mostly by people who one has never heard of and who have zero impact on Western socieites, the book is a complete failure.
July 22, 2015
Outstanding survey in a book with an unfortunate title. Unfortunate because uninformed browsers may find the title inflammatory and too provocative--few people know that it is a term for Jews found multiple times in the Koran and heavily cited in sermons today.
This is actually a readable, academic work, heavily footnoted, by a Harvard PhD in Social Psychology. His aims are: to provide evidence of genocidal antisemitism in the Muslim world with the goal of having us face this reality; to show how we in the West ignore, downplay, and/or under-report this phenomenon, especially the Western refusal to look into the religious sources of said hostility to Jews; and to remind that Jews serve as the "canaries in the coal mine," and that their treatment by a civilization has implications for others.
All of the book is worth reading, but I'd especially recommend Chapter 5, if one only wants to read 20 pages. Perhaps this author's chosen field (social psych) explains his inclusion of the role of "honor/shame" cultural values in his treatment of the topic--another area almost never spoken of (because it is so foreign to Western ways) and crucial to understanding the Arab-Israeli conflict and the views about Jews in the Middle East.
This is actually a readable, academic work, heavily footnoted, by a Harvard PhD in Social Psychology. His aims are: to provide evidence of genocidal antisemitism in the Muslim world with the goal of having us face this reality; to show how we in the West ignore, downplay, and/or under-report this phenomenon, especially the Western refusal to look into the religious sources of said hostility to Jews; and to remind that Jews serve as the "canaries in the coal mine," and that their treatment by a civilization has implications for others.
All of the book is worth reading, but I'd especially recommend Chapter 5, if one only wants to read 20 pages. Perhaps this author's chosen field (social psych) explains his inclusion of the role of "honor/shame" cultural values in his treatment of the topic--another area almost never spoken of (because it is so foreign to Western ways) and crucial to understanding the Arab-Israeli conflict and the views about Jews in the Middle East.
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October 14, 2013What an eye opening book!
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August 5, 2014Reviewed by Micah D. Halperin for the Jewish Book Council.
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