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BLAMING THE JEWS
STUDIES IN ANTISEMITISM
Alvin H. Rosenfeld, editor
BLAMING THE JEWS
Politics and Delusion
BERNARD HARRISON
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
© 2020 by Bernard Harrison
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Harrison, Bernard, 1933- author.
Title: Blaming the Jews : politics and delusion / Bernard Harrison.
Description: Bloomington, Indiana : Indiana University Press, [2020] | Series: Studies in antisemitism | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020007441 (print) | LCCN 2020007442 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253049902 (hardback) | ISBN 9780253049919 (paperback) | ISBN 9780253049926 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Antisemitism—History—21st century. | Arab-Israeli conflict—Influence.
Classification: LCC DS145 .H376 2020 (print) | LCC DS145 (ebook) | DDC 305.892/40905—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020007441
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020007442
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For Alvin H. Rosenfeld
Antisemitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm humanity, and it is often used to blame Jews for “why things go wrong.”
—INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE ALLIANCE (IHRA) DEFINITION OF ANTISEMITISM
CONTENTS
PART I. Varieties of Antisemitism
1.Hamas Addresses the Jewish Question
2.“Profiting” from the Holocaust
PART III. Is Israel an “Illegitimate” State?
6.Accusation and Narrative
7.Narrative and Reality
8.The Legacy of 1967
9.Is “Anti-Zionism” Antisemitic?
10.Israel, the Left, and the Universities
PART IV. Judaism Defaced
11.A Primitive Religion?
12.Mitzvah and Moral Theory
13.What’s Wrong with Universalism?
PART V. Antisemitism as a Problem for Non-Jews
14.Jew Baiting on Campus
15.Defamation Disguised
16.Judgment Unhinged
Selected Bibliography
Index
A DECADE AGO, RAEL JEAN Isaac published a review of an earlier book of mine on antisemitism. Her review was generally approving, though it also contained some sharp and well-deserved criticisms, with which I now find myself wholly in agreement. Isaac’s (2009) review concludes:
Harrison focuses on today’s left wing, and does a fine job of showing how it has come about that “the ‘anti-racist’ liberal left finds itself currently up to its neck in the oldest form of racism.” But at the end of the day we are left with the larger question—one hopes Harrison will one day turn his formidable analytic talents to it—“Why, over time, do so many different roads, left, right, religious, anti-religious, lead to anti-Semitism?” If nothing else it speaks to the poverty of the human imagination that it comes back endlessly to the same imaginary demons and, impervious to reason or logic, sinks into the same familiar collective madness.
The present book is my attempt, more than a decade later, to do what Isaac asked of me: to answer the above taxing but entirely legitimate question. I have returned, in this new book, to many of the issues of contemporary antisemitism that dominated
