From Jeffrey Herf's book review of Robert Wistrich's "A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad."
"Wistrich is certainly aware that not all criticism of Israeli policy is inspired by hatred of the Jews and Judaism, but the “logic” and the structure of influential arguments attacking Israel have been ominously identical to the imputations of vast power and enormous evil attributed to “world Jewry” by European anti-Semites of old."The “lethal obsession” of the recent past, according to Wistrich, has been a melange of the old conspiracy theories of that infamous forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,with Marxism-Leninism, secular third worldism, and Islamism. In this period, the center of gravity of anti-Semitism has shifted from Europe to the Middle East and Iran."
Jeffrey Herf teaches Modern European History at the University of Maryland, College Park. His most recent book is Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (Yale University Press, 2009).
An additional review of Wistrich's book by Walter Laquer.
