The Jewish Divide Over Israel: Accusers and Defenders

by Paul Bogdanor

Before 1967, Israel had the overwhelming support of world opinion. So long as Israel's existence was in harmony with politically correct assumptions, it was supported, or at least accepted, by the majority of "progressive" Jews, especially in the wake of the Holocaust. This is no longer the case. The Jewish Divide Over Israel explains the role played by prominent Jews in turning Israel into an isolated pariah nation.After their catastrophic defeat in 1967, Arabs overcame inferiority on the battlefield with superiority in the war of ideas. Their propaganda stopped trumpeting their desire to eradicate Israel. Instead, in a calculated appeal to liberals and radicals, they redefined their war of aggression against the Jews as a struggle for the liberation of Palestinian Arabs. The tenacity of Arabs' rejection of Israel and their relentless campaign--in schools, universities, churches, professional organizations, and, above all, the news media--to destroy Israel's moral image had the desired impact. Many Jewish liberals became desperate to escape from the shadow of Israel's alleged misdeeds and found a way to do so by joining other members of the left in blaming Israeli sins for Arab violence. Today, Jewish liberals rationalize violence against the innocent as resistance to the oppressor, excuse Arab extremism as the frustration of a wronged party, and redefine eliminationist rhetoric and physical assaults on Jews as "criticism of Israeli policy." Israel's Jewish accusers have played a crucial and disproportionate role in the current upsurge of antisemitism precisely because they speak as Jews.The essays in this book seek to understand and throw back the assault on Israel led by such Jewish liberals and radicals as Tony Judt, Noam Chomsky, George Steiner, Daniel Boyarin, Marc Ellis, Israel Shahak, and many others. Its writers demonstrate that the foundation of the state of Israel, far from being the primal sin alleged by its accusers, was one of the few redeeming events in a century of blood and shame.

310 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Joshua Stein · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I come into a book with the expectation of finding scholarship, I am often disappointed. Such is the case here.

The collection of essays has some brilliants moments, and can be both convincing and moving, but the bias is apparent and (at time) painful for those who are not as far right on the Zionist spectrum as the particular author.

It's worth acknowledging that the text consists largely of attacks on the work of anti-Israel academics. Occasionally, these charges a legitimate and even hugely disturbing (see the concluding section of the sixth essay, written by editor Paul Bogdanor, which presents some of Noam Chomski's most disturbing quotes) but the polemic is likely to be wholly ineffective, especially for those approaching the book with the expectation of some level of objectivity.

Perhaps there ought to be an acknowledgement in the field of study of Israel generally that there can be no objectivity, but for those who would like to sift through large amounts of information rather than a soup of rhetoric with particularly informative chunks, this is probably not the book for you.

I should say that Bogdanor wrote three of the essays in this text (two that attack Chomsky, and a third attacking Norman Finkelstein), which is not unheard of, but it does make his own biases as editor pretty apparent. Much of the work is very good, much of the writing is clever, but it is (as much of the literature on both sides often is) difficult in its bias.