Dialogues in hell: Zionism and its double.

Wistrich, Robert Solomon

The First Zionist Congress in Basel preceded the UN partition of Palestine by fifty years. Almost immediately there were sharp reactions from antisemites of all persuasions who believed that Zionism was part of a world Jewish conspiracy. This was the view of French diplomats from the Quai d'Orsay, Jesuit scholars writing in the Vatican-sponsored Civilta Cattolica in Rome and of Russian antisemites in Paris working as agents of the Okhrana (the Tsarist secret police). They had orders to implicate the Jews (especially those assembled at the Zionist Congress) as authors of a diabolical plan to overthrow the existing dynastic political order. The document they fabricated came to be known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and even today it still haunts the minds of Israel's Arab neighbors, millions of Muslims and non-Muslims in Asia as well as antisemites around the world. It was as if political Zionism had appeared on the stage of history accompanied by an antisemitic "double" (Deppelganger)--accused of having a secret agenda to conquer the world.

In 1905, the first full Russian edition of the Protocols, edited by an apocalyptic-minded Russian Orthodox mystic, Sergei Nilus, envisaged the end of the world as being imminent and presented the Jews as the instruments of the anti-Christ. (1) Later editions in Germany, like that of the proto-Nazi Theodor Fritsch (in 1922) took Zionism and the "Elders of Zion" to be one and the same thing. The Protocols were said to be identical to the "secret" speech which Theodor Herzl had supposedly made to Zionist delegates in 1897. (2) This might seem like no more than a bizarre coincidence but the subsequent history of the Protocols proves that for antisemites, Zionism is a vital link in a broader world conspiracy. Empirically speaking, the state of Israel, for example, is a living democratic society with a vibrant culture and economy as its underpinning. But for most of the surrounding Arab world, "Zionism" and Israel are merely the surface disguise for a corrupt and devilish cabal of plotters seeking to totally subordinate the Arabs to "Jewish rule". We should not underestimate the tenacity of such irrational beliefs.

Probably no other single text in the annals of antisemitism has had such a deadly effect as the Protocols-both in preparing the Holocaust and in inspiring hatred of modern Israel since 1948. Yet this document was a crude plagiarism based on a long-forgotten satire written in the mid 1860s, by a liberal French author, Maurice Joly. His book paid not the slightest attention to Jews, antisemitism or Zionism. It was an imaginative "dialogue" between two political thinkers, Macchiavelli and Montesquieu on the nature of government, authority, liberty and methods of manipulating the masses. Appropriately, perhaps, it was entitled Dialogues aux Enfers (Dialogues in Hell). The Russian forgers, who gave this text an alien antisemitic meaning, invented the mysterious, non-existent "Elders of Zion", turning them into architects of a modern hell of another kind in which Gentiles would be forever enslaved.

No doubt, the forgers never imagined that one day their crass forgery would assume such disproportionate importance, becoming a world-wide best-seller. They could hardly have believed that the Protocols would eventually circulate in millions of copies not only in Russia, Eastern Europe, France, Germany or Argentina; but also in the English-speaking world as well as in Japan and vast swathes of the Arab-Muslim world.

The Protocols were already disseminated in America in the 1920s by the famous automobile manufacturer Henry Ford. They profoundly influenced Adoff Hitler and the Nazi Party as well as nationalist antisemites across the continent, convinced that Jews were striving to destroy the nation-state and Christianity, in order to establish their own world-rule. The spread of Communism after 1917 seemed to be living proof to many conservatives of the truth of the Protocols. Although Zionism was still far from being the primary target of the antisemites, it was already perceived in the 1920s as a major political goal of World Jewry, and the more visible part of a shadowy Judeo-masonic world-government operating beneath the murky surface of events.

As the real Zionist colonization project began to advance with the draining of the swamps, the building of roads and infrastructure in Palestine for a future Jewish State, this half-secular version of Christian antisemitic demonology accompanied its progress like a dark shadow. The Protocols were even translated into Arabic by Christian Arabs in the mid-1920s. Thirty years later, especially in Egypt, the foundation of Israel would come to be seen by Muslims as a sinister blueprint for the Jewish conquest of Arab lands from the Nile to the Euphrates. (3)

This perception has become axiomatic today in the Arab and Muslim worlds (4). Any attempt to differentiate between Judaism, the Jews and Zionism in this Muslim context is wholly illusory. Such distinctions are mere propaganda for Western consumption. They are contradicted by countless speeches, articles, sermons, TV programs and websites in Arabic or Farsi. For the Iranian leadership, for Hamas, Hizballah, the Islamic Jihad, Al-Qaida, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Hizb ut- Tahrir and most other Islamist movements, "Zionism" is identical with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. At the same time it is also "Nazism", fascism, imperialism and colonialism rolled into one evil monster. Zionism is a dark, dangerous global conspiracy seeking to subvert and destroy the world of Islam, to "ethnically cleanse" the Palestinians and humiliate the Arab nation. It is the road-map for Jewish world-conquest just as Hitler always believed it to be--a blueprint which he adapted to his own ends. Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, in the last years of his rule, embraced a similar world-view. Many Arab leaders believed in the truth of the Protocols including Gamal Abdel Nasser, Sadat (before the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty), King Feisal and Saddam Hussein. Today's Islamist radicals have no less enthusiastically embraced the myth of a Jewish world-conspiracy derived from the Protocols and European Jew-hatred. They have reframed it in Islamic language peppered with quotes from the Koran. At the same time, like many European leftists, and not a few anti-Zionist Jews, they falsely claim that Israel has always encouraged Jew-baiting; that Israelis are "the real antisemites" who oppress, persecute and ethnically cleanse the "true Semites", namely the Palestinians.

Such libels have unfortunately become an essential part of the Palestinian, pan-Arab and pan-Islamic narrative, even finding some credence among liberal Western intellectuals, sections of the academic elites, the Christian Churches, and parts of the mainstream media in Europe. This is the Israel=apartheid=racism agenda that in 2001 dominated Durban I, and which will doubtless shape Durban II. It has rendered all efforts to draw a line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism increasingly futile and senseless. Those on the Left who draw this artificial line are usually incapable of recognizing antisemitism as a distinctive hatred. They prefer to sterilize it as a subcategory of racism--something academic that belongs to "history" or the memorialization of the Holocaust. This trivialization of antisemitism is often accompanied by the moral indictment of Israelis for "crimes against humanity" in defending their own lives and homes. If one really believes that today's Jews have become "Nazis", then, of course, any evocation of antisemitism is liable to be suspect--dismissed as a cynical ploy to deflect attention from Israeli "crimes". That has been the line of many journalists writing for respectable papers like The Guardian, The Independent, Le Monde, El Pais, the Scandinavian press and much of the West European media (5). But it remains a disgraceful lie, nonetheless.

Fixated on Israel's "criminal" actions, today's humanistic Jew-baiters generally disregard the paranoid and hysterical antisemitism in the Arab-Muslim Middle East, including what is broadcast in the Palestinian Authority. This is a form of journalism that is blind in the left eye, acknowledging only jackbooted skinheads and screaming neo-Nazis as true Jew-baiters. But one does not need to shout "Sieg Heil" to be considered an antisemite. Unfortunately, in liberal-left circles this is deliberately ignored. Indeed, in current "politically correct" discourse, it is difficult to even discuss antisemitism without evoking hostility to Islam at the same time, as if these were identical or similar phenomena. Even though in France, for example, most racist acts since 2001 have been unmistakably directed against Jews not Muslims (though the ratio of Muslims to Jews is 10:1) many intellectuals ignore the fact. Antisemitism is a legitimate topic but only under the misleading umbrella of racism and Islamophobia.

A related phenomenon is the patronizing and ludicrous belief that potential victims of racist discrimination (Palestinians, North African Arabs, black Americans, Hispanics, Africans, Turkish immigrants, or Third World migrants) can never themselves become racist. If this were so, it would be impossible to explain the rampant antisemitism of the Hamas and the official PA media, the popularity of Mein Kampf in the Arabic-owned bookshops of London's Edgware Road, or the sight of young Arabs wearing T-shirts with Hitler's portrait in streets around Piccadilly Circus. If Muslim immigrants are always "victims" how does one explain the anti-Jewish and anti-Christian material widely available in American mosques, or the antisemitic conspiracy theories circulating in Turkish fundamentalist circles in Berlin? In short, to be a victim of racism in no way provides a guarantee against adopting a racist discourse of one's own. The rampant Jew-baiting so manifest at the 2001 UN-sponsored "Anti-Racism Conference" in Durban further underlined the degree to which contemporary antisemitism, for example, has come to manipulate "anti-racism" against the Jewish State.

For sixty years since the foundation of Israel, its delegitimation, defamation, and demonization have indeed been a major strategic goal of its Arab enemies. These seeds of hatred have been deliberately sown in order to accelerate its downfall and destruction. Their origin lies in the old Soviet propaganda lie that Zionism=Nazism which slowly began to poison the Western media about thirty years ago. A telling example is the constant visual and verbal exploitation of the Star of David (a religious symbol) to identify the Israeli military, especially when it is engaged in punitive actions. We ourselves pointed out many years ago the ominous twinning of the Swastika with the Star of David during the first Lebanon war of 1982. With each passing year, such efforts to "Nazify" Israel have become more popular in the West, while in the Arab Middle East they have long been normative (6). During the past three decades the image of Israel as an "apartheid" state and calls for sanctions have also gained a lot of ground, while ignoring far more deserving objects of such measures around the world.

I well remember fighting the 1975 Zionism=Racism resolution (passed shortly after I had completed my doctorate at University College, London) - during the campus wars of those years. Then, as now, it was the far left (especially the Trotskyists) along with Palestinians, Arab and Third World students who led the anti-Zionist assault (7). The hollow slogans which predominated in the mid 1970s were barely different from today yet they received the official UN imprimatur after November 1975. They enjoyed the backing of the Arab States, the entire Communist bloc under Soviet leadership and most of the Non-Aligned Third World countries. Despite this support, we managed to halt the threat of boycotts, prevent the banning of Jewish societies on UK campuses, and block efforts to drive a wedge between Israel and Diaspora Jewry. Despite the traumatic effect of the Yom Kippur War, the oil crisis of 1973, an increasingly pro-Arab European policy, American appeasement under President Carter and Soviet expansionism, Israel did not capitulate to external pressures or terrorism in those years and the Diaspora stood by it.

As the Jewish State approaches its 60th birthday, it seems (at the level of hasbara) less able, than in the past, to deal adequately with the anti-Zionist/antisemitic challenge to its existence. Like the Western World it appears to lack decisiveness in its response to radical Islam. True, Islamic fundamentalism, was not yet a clear and palpable threat though its influence grew throughout the 1970s. Our student battles were fought before the Khomeinist Revolution of 1979, before the victory (with American help) of the mujahideen over the USSR in Afghanistan, before the rise of Al-Qaida, Hizballah or Hamas; or the danger of a nuclearized fundamentalist Iranian regime aspiring to achieve regional and even Islamic global hegemony. Those were the days of Entebbe, not the fumbling associated with the Second Lebanon War and the Gilad Shalit kidnapping. Israel seemed much more imaginative, audacious and determined in its responses, despite the initial debacle of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

The 1970s belonged to a pre-internet world, before the hatred of Israel and other forms of racist bigotry could be so effortlessly accessed at the click of a button, downloaded or freely passed along the superhighway of hate. In Western Europe, in 1978 (thirty years after the foundation of the Jewish State), there was still some reluctance to speak about Israel's creation as a "historic mistake". Egypt's Anwar el-Sadat had, after all, recognized Israel and a Peace Treaty would soon be signed. The systematic defamation or demonization of Israel to which we have become (shockingly) accustomed was much less frequent, except on the far Right or extreme Left. Nevertheless, it was certainly present.

Europe itself was much less ambitious in those days, less anti-American, less inclined to rationalise Palestinian terrorism. (It remains unclear whether the consolidation of Hamastan as an Iranian enclave in Gaza will provoke second thoughts.) It is true that thirty years ago Zionism was already equated with "racism" and apartheid though less systematically than it is today. The anti-apartheid movement was still focused on dismantling South Africa and Israel was not yet centre stage. But even then, Communist and Trotskyite propaganda hammered away at the "Pretoria- Tel Aviv axis", harping on the alleged similarity between the two regimes and their "racist" ideologies.

Israel's spectacular victory in 1967, with the attendant expansion of its territory, turned the Jews from "David" into "Goliath" almost overnight, especially on the Left. Nonetheless, at that time, there were still a few honest Marxists like the literary critic Hans Mayer who could write in his 1975 book Outsiders: "Whoever attacks Zionism, but by no means wishes to say anything against the Jews, is fooling himself or others. The state of Israel is a Jewish state. Whoever wants to destroy it, openly or through policies that can effect nothing else but such destruction, is practicing the Jew-hatred of time immemorial" (8). In 1968, the black American civil rights leader, Martin Luther King had also said something similar about the antisemitic character of "anti-Zionism". Even the French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, defended Israel against the Manicheanism of the gauchistes (leftists) in France in the early 1970s (9). Increasingly however, the intellectual elite of the West was beginning to embrace a Palestinian narrative which deliberately set out to delegitimise Israel, dejudaise it and reduce it to the pejorative category of a "colonial setter-State" (10). From that point on, as I argued in a 1975 pamphlet The Myth of Zionist Racism (written during my student activist days) the road was open for the multiplication of such vicious and false equations as Zionism= racism= apartheid= fascism= Nazism. Already then Israel was being branded on Western campuses as a reactionary colonialist oppressor. The Marxist Left (particularly the more militant Jews) negated its right to national self-determination and brazenly called for its dismantlement (11).

Today, in liberal Western countries like Britain, on Canadian and American university campuses and in many EU countries such impudent defamation of Zionism has become mainstream. Organized efforts to boycott Israeli products and end all contacts with Israeli universities have been adopted or advocated by British academic bodies, by some big British Trade Unions, by the National Union of Journalists and other professional organizations. The wishy-washy Anglican Church (like the World Council of Churches and the American Presbyterians) has in principle supported disinvestment, though for the moment these efforts have been blocked.

The "boycott Israel" movement reveals that moves to totally delegitimise Zionism, to collectively stigmatize the State of Israel and to demonize the Jewish people are far more acceptable than they used to be. Things are also more difficult in terms of the ability of "anti-Zionists" to adapt faster and more effectively than Israel or its supporters to the electronic media and the ideology of Human Rights, manipulating them for their own narrow political ends (12). Indeed, the most dangerous forms of anti-Israelism and antisemitism sail today under the banner of Human Rights. The assault on Israel's legitimacy is all the more plausible because it (spuriously) claims to be a righteous defense of the poor, the oppressed, and the wretched of the earth, along the lines of the UN-sponsored "anti-racism" conference in Durban in September 2001 (13).

The defense of Human Rights has, in recent years, often gone hand in hand with antisemitism, even though these should in principle be antithetical concepts. At an OSCE (Organization and Security in Europe) conference in 2004 I spoke about this perverse development. The title of that talk, not accidentally, was "Antisemitism with a Clear Conscience" (14). This is obviously not an easy problem to deal with, especially since left-wing campaigners against Nazism, Fascism, apartheid and racism are often in the forefront of the war against Zionism. This becomes even more complicated when the leftists in question are Jews who use their Jewishness to claim immunity from any bias when the contrary is more often the case. But as I have tried to show in a forthcoming book on contemporary antisemitism and in many other writings, there is a European tradition of Enlightenment and left-wing Judeophobia that long preceded the establishment of Israel. (15) The Left has been both anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist at different stages in its history. True, there were also times when it seemed to be Israel's strongest ally. But, unfortunately, the "pro-Zionist" Left is in a minority today. Indeed it is almost a historical anachronism.

It should be stressed that the radical Right (and the neo-Nazis) in Europe, Russia or North America are no less "anti-Zionist" than the radical Left or the Arab-Muslim world. They combine hatred for Israel with open antisemitism and Holocaust denial. In Central Europe, (especially Germany and Austria) they usually emphasize ethnic German suffering at the hands of the Western Allies and the Soviet Union during the war years. In Russia or Eastern Europe the antisemitic nationalists tend to present themselves as the victims of Soviet Communism--reinterpreted as a "Zionist conspiracy" and a "Jewish" genocide designed to destroy the ethnic homogeneity and independence of their own nations.

Right-wing extremists have no less enthusiastically jumped onto the anti-Zionist and anti-American bandwagon (16). For years the extreme Right has identified strongly with Palestine (activists sometimes even wear the Keffiyeh in street demonstrations) and they often defame Israel as a "genocidal" state in language virtually identical to the far Left (17). The "anti-imperialist" slogans of the neo-Nazis and the new Communists are remarkably similar; they embrace anti-globalist formulas and seem genuinely thrilled by the bin-Ladenist terrorist war against the "Crusader-Zionists." I myself have seen neo-Nazis parading in London and Berlin after 9/11 wearing T-shirts bearing portraits of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. A leading German far Right ideologue, Horst Mahler (who in the 1970s was associated with the anarchist Baader-Meinhof "Red Army Fraktion") has openly glorified Bin Laden. In vitriolic statements, especially after 9/11, he repeatedly deplored German subjection to "Judeo-American foreign rule", while denouncing the "genocide of the Palestinians" by Israel and the "Jewish organizations of the East Coast" (18).

The ideological overlap between right-wing extremists and Islamists has parallels in a growing number of countries. Antisemitism and Holocaust denial have provided much of the glue for such an unwritten alliance. This was clearly understood by President Ahmadinejad of Iran when he organized the 2006 Holocaust deniers conference in Tehran. Participants included neo-Nazis along with various far right-wing "revisionists" like the German-Australian Frederick Toeben and notorious American white supremacist David Duke. The "exterminationist anti-Zionism" of the right-wing extremists is clearly antisemitic in nature but they still prefer to wrap themselves in the mantle of Israel-bashing. This should fool nobody. It is pure hypocrisy to pretend that one can destroy Israel without being against the Jews; as if the eradication of the "filthy microbe" called Israel (to reluctantly borrow Ahmadinejad's disgusting language) would not be a genocidal act against more than five million Israeli Jews!

No less hypocritical (in a different way) are the musings of Walt, Mearsheimer and others in America about the Israel lobby or the claims that a "neo-con" conspiracy pushed the United States into the Iraq war. This type of conspiracy theory is as popular on the American far Right (Patrick Buchanan) or among the Holocaust deniers, as it is among some liberals and the more outspoken leftists. Equally, it is no surprise to find neo-Nazis world-wide quoting Jewish left-wing anti-American ideologues like Noam Chomsky who can provide them with a perfect alibi against charges of antisemitism. The German far Right National Zeitung loves "anti-Zionist" Jews like Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, as well as religious frauds like the current "Oberrabbiner" of Vienna, Moishe Arye Friedman. (19) Like the President of Iran, neo-Nazis are only too happy to use such Ultra-orthodox Jews who are sufficiently perverted and venal that their ultimate joy in life is to advocate the extinction of the "criminal Zionist entity."

Israel as a country and a State has been very slow in responding to the antisemitic challenge posed by the delegitimisation of Zionism since the 1970s. "Anti-Zionism", over thirty years ago, had already emerged as the historical heir and the most effective carrier of contemporary antisemitism (20). Yet little was done at an intellectual or political level by Israel until very recently, to counter its toxic effects. The fight was left in the hands of major American Jewish organizations rather than being organized as a world-wide campaign led from Jerusalem. Perhaps that is about to change. Nevertheless, though Israel appears to be (belatedly) more aware of the hasbara problem, it has still failed to connect the dots and commit major resources to this struggle. Its peace overtures have been and will remain futile until it counters what I have called the "culture of hatred" with the full seriousness that it merits. This should be a top priority in negotiations with the Arab world but thus far it has rarely, if ever been adequately evoked. Thus, like a blind man, Israel has been searching for the key, in the wrong place. President Ahmadinejad of Iran is doing us a great service, if only we would listen. He is clarifying matters even for the blind, deaf and dumb. By turning the existence of Israel into a "stain on mankind" and a "cancerous tumor" his "anti-Zionism" has taken us back to the genocidal language of the late 1930s (21). He is forcing Israel, America, Europe, the Arabs and the Muslim world--indeed the whole planet to stop pretending and to make a choice. In the immortal words of Hamlet: "To be or not to be. That is the question." Only Israel will need a great deal more will, resolve and leadership than that shown by Shakespeare's tragic hero or its present guides. During the last six decades the Israeli people has proved its resilience through one crisis after another. Let us hope that the threat of annihilation will concentrate the spirit. An Israel faithful to its tradition and its raison d'etre as a Jewish State will surely be capabable of frustrating the evil designs of its enemies. *

NOTES:

(1.) See Cesare G. De Michelis, The Non-Existent Manuscript: A Study of the "Protocols of the Sages of Zion", (Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism and University of Nebraska Press, 2004)

(2.) Shmuel Almog, Nationalism and Antisemitism in Modern Europe 1918-1945 (Pergamon Press: Oxford/New York together with the Vidal Sassoon Center, Jerusalem, 1990) pp. 93-98

(3.) See Pierre-Andre Taguieff, Precheurs de Haine: Traversee de la Judeophobie Planitaire (Paris: Mille et une Nuits 2004)

(4.) Reuven Ehrlich (ed.) Anti-Semitism in the Contemporary Middle East: Editions of the "Protocols of the Eldes of Zion "published in Egypt (Center for Special Studies, Jerusalem, 2004). See also Robert S. Wistrich, Muslim Antisemitism. A Clear and Present Danger (New York: American Jewish Committee, 2002)

(5.) Robert S. Wistrich, "Cruel Britannia", Azure, No. 21 (Summer 2005) pp. 100-124

(6.) Peter Pulzer, "The new antisemitism or when is a taboo not a taboo? In: Paul Iganski and Barry Kosmin (eds.), A New Antisemitism? Defining Judeophobia in 21st-century Britain (London: Profile Books, 2003), pp. 79-101. See also Robert Wistrich, "Anti-Zionism and Anti-semitism", Jewish Political Studies Review 16:3-4 (Fall 2004), pp.27-31

(7.) See, for example, Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (London; Zed Books, 1983) Also-John Rose, Israel: The Hijack State-America's Watchdog in the Middle East (London 2002). This publication of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in Great Britain, first appeared in 1986.

(8.) Quoted by Jean Amtry, "Anti-Semitism on the Left", Dissent (Winter 1982) pp. 41-50

(9.) See Jonathan Judaken, Jean-Paul Sartre and the Jewish Question (University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln and London 2006) pp. 195-240

(10.) Yohanan Manor, "L'Antisionisme", Revue francaise de sciencepolitique, Nr. 2 (April 1984) Vol. 34, pp. 295-321

(11.) Robert S. Wistrich, The Myth of Zionist Racism (London: World Union of Jewish Students, January 1976)

(12.) See Georges-Elia Sarfati, L'Antisemisme. Israel/Palestine aux miroirs d'Occident (Berg International: Paris 2002)

(13.) See Robert S. Wistrich, "L'Antisemitisme sans Antisemites", in Manfred Gerstenfeld and Shmuel Trigano (eds.) Les habits neufs de l'antisenitisme en Europe (Editions Cafe Noir: Paris, 2004) pp. 49-54 and Georges-Elia Sarfati, "L'antisionisme, un antistmitisme 'politiquement correct'," ibid, pp.55-72

(14.) Wistrich, op.cit.pp.49 ff for the text

(15.) See Robert S. Wistrich, Socialism and the Jews. The Dilemmas of Assimilation in Germany and Austria-Hungary (London-Toronto, Associated University Press, 1982); also Joseph Gabel, Reflexions sur L'Avenir des Juifs (Paris Meridiens Klincksieck, 1987)

(16.) See Yves Patrick Pallade, "Antisemitism and Right-Wing Extremism in Germany: New Discourses", The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, Vol. 2 (2008) pp. 65-76

(17.) Ibid, pp 67-8

(18.) Quoted in "Antizionismus im Islamismus und Rechtsextremismus", Bundesministerium des Inneren: Feindbilder und Instrumente im politischen Extremismus (Berlin, 2005) p.68

(19.) See the interviews with Chomsky in the National-Zeitung, 21 and 28 June, 2002; also with Moishe Arye Friedman on 7 June 2002 and 5 July 2002.

(20.) Robert S. Wistrich. Antisemitism. The Longest Hatred (London: Thames Methuen 1991). See Bernard Harrison, The Resurgence of Anti-Semitism. Jews, Israel and Liberal Opinion (Rowman and Littlefield, Inc. London and Boulder, 2006)

(21.) On Ahmadinejad, see Matthias Kiintzel, Unholy Hatreds: Holocaust Denial and Antisemitism in Iran. (The Vidal Sassoon Center, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2007) Posen Papers No. 8. Also Robert Solomon Wistrich, The Culture of Hatred. (Random House: New York, 2008) forthcoming.

ROBERT S. WISTRICH is Director of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA). A professor at Hebrew University, he has written many ground-breaking books and many articles for Midstream.