Contemporary Left Antisemitism 1st Edition by David Hirsh (Routledge)

The cover of David Hirsh's brand new book with Routledge, Contemporary Left Antisemitism, is stridently plain. It features a faded golden Star of David against a black backdrop on the top and a white backdrop with stark black lettering with title and author on the bottom. If one ignores the small logo on the bottom left, the volume almost courts the impression that Hirsh self-published this book. But the bold severity actually works to underscore the pressing seriousness and, most important, realness of the subject matter. This stratagem makes much sense given the fact, as Hirsh points out repeatedly, that one of the hallmarks of contemporary leftist antisemitism involves vigorous denial that the left harbors this animus, which it insistently identifies with Hitler, Nazism, or marginal right wing sociopaths. Since the left denounces these "quaint" and toothless forms of right wing Jew-hatred, the left believes that it cannot possibly be antisemitic. Indeed, for the left, antisemitism resides either in the looney bin margins of contemporary society, the unspeakable annals of mid-2oth century European history, or in the ravings of ignorant and superstitious "medieval" Christianity. That the left, which represents, to itself, every progressive, modern and enlightened human cause and justice, and which stands, in its own eyes, as the very embodiment of what Matthew Arnold used to call "sweetness and light" might bear antisemitism strikes of them as an offensively scurrilous and self-serving accusation. Such bellicose denials are coupled with breathtakingly remorseless critiques of Israel. While claiming it disavows antisemitism, the left has selected this small Middle Eastern democratic nation over scores of authoritarian, bellicose, and cruel nations--which practice violations of human rights on a monstrous scale--as the embodiment of a unique evil in our world. This remorseless, all-consuming vilification of Israel, which Alan Dershowitz calls the "Jew among nations," constitutes the fundamental dynamics of the left's disavowed hatred of Jewish people or, more accurately, Jewish Israeli people. The targets of vilification include all those--but especially Jews--who support of Israel's right to exist and protect its citizens and sovereign territorial integrity from antisemitic terroristic violence that, like the left, fantasizes about the annihilation of this nation. Apart from antisemitism, and the unbridled amusement involved in self-legitimized hatred for this Jewish nation, Israel, as an open democratic society composed of displaced or ethnically "cleansed" Jews from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, lends itself to this kind

of aggression through its free press, free speech, and other forms of political rights that enable Palestinians to air their grievances in the first place. In the meantime, the brazen contrast between the left's egregiously hateful view of Israel as a "white" European settler colonialist nation that dispossessed an indigenous "brown" population of Palestinians on the one hand, and the multicultural complexities of actual Israeli society on the other, have no appeal to Manichean views. Israel, in brief, is the new Nazi state, and stands responsible for everything from war in the Middle East to the virulent antisemitism expressed by many--perhaps most--Muslims in the West, particularly in Europe. Like other Israeli political leaders, Menachem Begin is a Nazi-Zionist monster who should be arrested for committing war crimes.

Hirsh, who teaches at Goldsmiths University in London and frequently engages in fora on anti-Jewish animus in England and the United States, analyzes the ideological views and characteristics of leftist antisemitism not only through a sociological lens but also through an avowedly partisan perspective These days, as a pro-Israel progressive leftist, he is an endangered species. Occupying the position of the "insider/outsider," Hirsh is, by definition, a frank, brave, and determined individual who, unlike his opponents, is willing to claim his personally invested beliefs and perspectives. He spends much time contending with leftists who, at best, regard him as guilty of what the French existentialists call mauvaise foi. In reading this book, one frequently asks oneself how he abides all the intellectual dishonesties, noisome denials, and projections. Spending time in his company restores faith in the proposition that holding fast to truth, honor, and good sense provides people with strength and fortitude.