Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice | 
 enlarge | Author: Bernard Lewis
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $9.49
You Save: $6.46 (41%)
New (8) Used (8) from $6.38
Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 260920
Media: Paperback
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.8
ISBN: 0393318397
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.8924
EAN: 9780393318395
ASIN: 0393318397
Publication Date: April 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW
Tell A Friend
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
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 conflict that has affected and been affected by prejudice. For a long time this was simply the "normal" prejudice between neighboring people of different religions and ethnic origins. In the present age, however, hostility toward Israel and its people has taken the form of anti-Semitism-a pernicious world view that goes beyond prejudice and ascribes to Jews a quality of cosmic evil. First published in the 1980s to universal acclaim, Semites and Anti-Semites traces the development of anti-Semitism from its beginnings as a poison in the bloodstream of Christianity to its modern entrance into mainstream Islam. Bernard Lewis, one of the world's foremost scholars of the Middle East, takes us through the history of the Semitic peoples to the emergence of the Jews and their virulent enemies, and dissects the region's recent tragic developments in a moving new afterword.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 Hopelessly partisan February 21, 2007
SJ (UK)
2 out of 16 found this review helpful
This is not so much an academic study as it is a biased piece of propaganda, carefully selecting and presenting what will suit the author's political bent. It is not surprising that historian Joel Beinin has called the author of this book "perhaps the most articulate and learned Zionist advocate in the North American Middle East academic community ..."
This is a man who was convicted in a French court for denying the Armenian genocide. Articulate and learned, yes, but still a "Zionist advocate". Not an unbiased scholar. This book can be good for fellow Zionists who need an affirmation that that they are right and everyone else is wrong. For others, it cannot be recommended.
 An excellent study of anti-Jewish fabrications and hostility November 14, 2004
Jill Malter (jillmalter@aol.com)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Violence is often linked to propaganda, incitement, and biased perceptions of others. That is why I think Lewis was right to begin his book by giving an example of a bomb that was exploded in 1980 in Paris, at a synagogue. As Lewis explains, the French Prime Minister said, "They aimed at the Jews and they hit innocent Frenchmen." Now that is clearly not the way he meant to say it. But the implication that to some extent, many French people view the Jews as neither French nor innocent is worth investigating.
Lewis starts by explaining some fundamentals: who the Jews were and are, where they lived in the past and live now, what Zionism was and is, and who the Hebrew-speakers were and are. He then explains the a little of the history of European antisemitism, or Jew-hatred, over the past few centuries. After that, there is a discussion of Muslim relations with Jews.
This background material allows us to understand a major point Lewis makes: that the close relationship between Germany and the Arab leadership that developed between "1933 and 1945 was due not to a German attempt to win over the Arabs but to a series of Arab approaches to the Germans."
This leads to an explanation of the way most Arabs use the word "Nazi" today. They don't mean by it "antisemite." Such an equivalence would make some Arabs applaud the Nazis while it could make others sympathize with the Jewish victims of the Nazis. Instead, the term is used as a term of general abuse, so that it can be applied to Jews.
Lewis then discusses the Arab war first against Zionism and then against the Jews in general. He shows that many Arabs are outraged at the success of the Jews, who had been a traditionally oppressed minority. And some view the existence of Israel as unjust. But even these views are insufficient to explain the many Arab writers who devote plenty of time and effort to reiterate European antisemitic propaganda and distribute it worldwide. Such efforts are so manifestly counterproductive to everyone, Arabs included, that Lewis feels it is appropriate to see what motivates them. And here, Lewis makes a final point: Israel and Zionism are being judged largely not on what they are but on a caricature of what they are that is provided by wild and arbitrary accusations against them.
I highly recommend this book.
A dreadful threat to the future September 5, 2003
F. P. Barbieri (London UK)
11 out of 13 found this review helpful
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.
Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict&Prejudice November 1, 2002
Barry L Werner (Seattle, WA USA)
14 out of 16 found this review helpful
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.
Anti-Semitism Unveiled July 22, 2002
Big Dave (Boise, Idaho)
37 out of 44 found this review helpful
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.
|
|
|
