Seeds of Hate
Review by JEFFREY GOLDBERG
New York Times Sunday Book Section
JIHAD AND JEW-HATRED: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11.
By Matthias Küntzel.
Translated by Colin Meade.
180 pp. Telos Press Publishing. $29.95.
One day in Damascus not long ago, I visited the understocked gift shop of the Sheraton Hotel, looking for something to read. There wasn’t much: pre-owned Grishams, a hagiography of Hafez al-Assad, an early Bill O’Reilly (go figure) and a paperback copy of “The International Jew,” published in 2000 in Beirut. “The International Jew” is a collection of columns exposing the putative role of Jews in such fields as international finance, world governance and bootlegging. “Wherever the seat of power may be, thither they swarm obsequiously,” the book states. These columns, which are based on the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” — they are a plagiary of a forgery, in other words — were first published in Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent more than 80 years ago.
Next to “The International Jew” was a copy of “The Bible Came From Arabia,” a piece of twaddle that suggests the Jews are not Jews and Israel isn’t Israel. And then there was a pamphlet called “Secrets of the Talmud.” Not knowing these secrets (I was raised Reform), I started reading. The Talmud apparently teaches Jews how best to demolish the world economy and gives Jews the right to take non-Jewish women as slaves and rape them.
The anti-Semitic worldview, generally speaking, is fantastically stupid. If its propagandists actually understood the chosen people, they would know, for instance, that no one, not the chief of Mossad, not even the president of Hadassah, could persuade 4,000 Jews to stay home from the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. (“And why should I listen to you?” would have been the near-universal rebuttal to the call.) Anti-Semitic conspiracy literature not only posits crude and senseless ideas, but also tends to be riddled with typos, repetitions and gross errors of grammar, and for this and other reasons I occasionally have trouble taking it seriously.
(Continued here.)
New York Times Sunday Book Section
JIHAD AND JEW-HATRED: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11.
By Matthias Küntzel.
Translated by Colin Meade.
180 pp. Telos Press Publishing. $29.95.
One day in Damascus not long ago, I visited the understocked gift shop of the Sheraton Hotel, looking for something to read. There wasn’t much: pre-owned Grishams, a hagiography of Hafez al-Assad, an early Bill O’Reilly (go figure) and a paperback copy of “The International Jew,” published in 2000 in Beirut. “The International Jew” is a collection of columns exposing the putative role of Jews in such fields as international finance, world governance and bootlegging. “Wherever the seat of power may be, thither they swarm obsequiously,” the book states. These columns, which are based on the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” — they are a plagiary of a forgery, in other words — were first published in Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent more than 80 years ago.
Next to “The International Jew” was a copy of “The Bible Came From Arabia,” a piece of twaddle that suggests the Jews are not Jews and Israel isn’t Israel. And then there was a pamphlet called “Secrets of the Talmud.” Not knowing these secrets (I was raised Reform), I started reading. The Talmud apparently teaches Jews how best to demolish the world economy and gives Jews the right to take non-Jewish women as slaves and rape them.
The anti-Semitic worldview, generally speaking, is fantastically stupid. If its propagandists actually understood the chosen people, they would know, for instance, that no one, not the chief of Mossad, not even the president of Hadassah, could persuade 4,000 Jews to stay home from the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. (“And why should I listen to you?” would have been the near-universal rebuttal to the call.) Anti-Semitic conspiracy literature not only posits crude and senseless ideas, but also tends to be riddled with typos, repetitions and gross errors of grammar, and for this and other reasons I occasionally have trouble taking it seriously.
(Continued here.)
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