Gave me an unexpected and refreshing perspective on the history of the Jewish people. They have much to be proud of, I learned, particularly in their need to excel without armies, national power, or centralized wealth and influence in the centuries before establishment of the present State of Israil. The perspective is especially interesting in considering the current conflict with Palestinians in the Middle East.

As a book that seeks to begin a debate about Jews' ambiguous relationship to (and even more ambiguous feelings about) political power, this book works quite well. It works far less well, however, when Ruth Wisse strays into an analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Here's where the book works. Wisse traces the Jewish communities' Diaspora politics of accommodation which resulted in highly flexible and democratic communities whose first instinct was to see whether there was anything that the community could have done or could do better in the existing circumstances and a desire to please others at the community's own expense. Wisse also does a good job of pointing out the spiritual facet of that politics which made the Jewish communities reluctant to assume political or military power and, in turn, made a fighting force the last institution the Jews developed under the Mandate. (In this context, it would have been interesting to see Ruth Wisse comment on whether this political tradition--which put so much emphasis on not doing wrong as opposed to risking doing wrong in the name of the community--had anything to do with the fact that, Ben Zakkai, a pacifist was instrumental in launching Diaspora politics.)

The book breaks down however in Wisse's analysis of anti-Semitism (it's the non-Jews' problem) and in her analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian/Israeli-Arab conflicts. Firstly, it is true that the nobility found it easy to "sacrifice" the Jews to fend off the mobs. However, in most of Europe, the majority of Jews were not well off. So the argument that they stood out more than the Gypsies did not convince me. Anti-Semitism has been described as "the rumor about Jews," in other words the West's and the East's longest-running conspiracy theory. Rather than dismiss this argument (or rather not even mention it), Ruth Wisse would have done herself and us a great service by frankly engaging with it.

Secondly, there is her treatment of the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab conflict. Although she dismisses the claims of both the ultra-Right and the ultra-Left ("the first [claim] is not subject to proof; the second is demonstrably bogus") she essentializes Arabs (a people who she says are the opposite of Jews) and Palestinians (a people who are the opposite of Jews and who seek to take on Jewish symbols) and hence makes any sort of analysis of the conflict impossible. What is more this whole line of argument was not even necessary for Ruth Wisse to make her point. All she had to do was point out the callousness with which some Jews treat Jewish claims--and contrast that to the sensitivity these same Jews show to (identical or equivalent) Arab and Palestinian claims. That, I feel, would have made her point (that Diaspora politics plays a tremendous role in shaping Israeli politics) far better than what she did. This, after all, is a book about Jewish; not Arab politics--and when it sticks to its subject it works well; when it does not it does not work and sometimes becomes downright insulting.

For anyone interested in a stimulating discussion about Jewish Diaspora politics I would recommend this book with the proviso to read section on the Arab/Palestinian-Israeli conflict with more than a grain of salt.

As a book that seeks to begin a debate about Jews' ambiguous relationship to (and even more ambiguous feelings about) political power, this book works quite well. It works far less well, however, when Ruth Wisse strays into an analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Here's where the book works. Wisse traces the Jewish communities' Diaspora politics of accommodation which resulted in highly flexible and democratic communities whose first instinct was to see whether there was anything that the community could have done or could do better in the existing circumstances. Wisse also does a good job of pointing out the spiritual facet of that politics which made the Jewish communities reluctant to assume political or military power and, in turn, made a fighting force the last institution the Jews developed under the Mandate. (It would have been interesting to see Ruth Wisse comment on whether this political tradition--which put so much emphasis on not doing wrong as opposed to risking doing wrong in the name of the community--had anything to do with the fact that, Ben Zakkai, a pacifist was instrumental in launching Diaspora politics.)

The book breaks down however in Wisse's analysis of anti-Semitism (it's the non-Jews' problem) and in her analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian/Israeli-Arab conflicts. Firstly, it is true that the nobility found it easy to "sacrifice" the Jews to fend off the mobs. However, in most of Europe, the majority of Jews were not well off. So the argument that they stood out more than the Gypsies did not convince me. Anti-Semitism has been described as "the rumor about Jews," in other words the West's and the East's longest-running conspiracy theory. Rather than dismiss this argument (or rather not even mention it), Ruth Wisse would have done herself and us a great service by frankly engaging with it.

Secondly, there is her treatment of the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab conflict. Although she dismisses the claims of both the ultra-Right and the ultra-Left ("the first [claim] is not subject to proof; the second is demonstrably bogus") she essentializes Arabs (a people who she says are the opposite of Jews) and Palestinians (a people who are the opposite of Jews and who seek to take on Jewish symbols) and hence makes any sort of analysis of the conflict impossible. What is more, the "discussion" of what the Arabs and Palestinians are "really" like was not even necessary for Ruth Wisse to make her point. All she had to do was point out the callousness with which Jewish liberals often treat Jewish claims--and contrast that to the sensitivity they show to (identical) Arab and Palestinian claims. That, I feel, would have made her point (that Diaspora politics plays a tremendous role in shaping Israeli politics) far better than what she did instead. This, after all, is a book about Jewish; not Arab politics--and when it sticks to its subject it works well; when it does not it does not work and sometimes becomes downright insulting.

For anyone interested in a stimulating discussion about Jewish Diaspora politics I would recommend this book with the proviso to read section on the Arab/Palestinian-Israeli conflict with more than a grain of salt.

To me the strangest thing about the "Arab-Israeli" conflict is that while the facts on the ground are similar to what has happened in many other parts of the world (Indian/Pakistani conflict, Greek/Turkish conflict, etc) one of the sides (the Arabs) has never accepted the reality. While Indians and Pakistanis or Greeks and Turks may not love each other, they have accepted the results and resettled their own refugees. Why the Arabs refuse to accept reality and why many countries support them? Wisse points out the unusal situation but she does not point to the not so secret Arab weapon, the oil. Even some of the "friends" of Israel are too concerned about the "feelings" of the major oil producers. Two of the Arab countries that made peace with Israel (Egypt and Jordan) are not oil producers. The large social problems of the Arab countries make it necessary for their rulers to look for a scapegoat and Israel fits that role perfectly. While there are several Israeli actions that could be criticized, I do not think a different Isreali behavior would have made a difference, given the above factors.

Wisse covers a long period of history and, as a result, she does not treat it with depth. She considers the failed revolts against the Romans as the start of the Jewish diaspora even though she mentions that a large Jewish community existed in Alexendria two hundred years earlier. The travels of Paul of Tarsus (that took place before the revolts) point to the existence of numerous Jewish communities quite far more Israel. She also metions briefly the role of Jews as the "middleman minority" without considering that this may have a characteristic of the Jews going all the way back to the Egypt of the Hyksos times.

There are several historical details that, in my view, Wisse got wrong. For example, the Armenians were not the only middleman minority in the Ottoman empire, Jews also filled some of the role, and, most numerous were the Greeks. I have read that the estabishment of a Greek state in early 19th century was part of the inspiration that led Herzl to Zionism. Here was a "middleman minority" that established an ethnic state in a land with whom had ancient links, even though at the time "Greeks" lived all over the Balkan peninsula, Asia Minor and other lands of the Byzantine Empire. Wisse mentions that Herzl was inspired by the re-unification of Italy but that parallel seems far weaker.

In short, it is a book that presents a thesis (with which I generally agree) but with no serious analysis backing it. In other words the author "preaches exclusively to the choir."

In this relatively short book, Ruth Wisse manages to cover thousands of years of Jewish history and to point out the basic aspect of Jewish faith, that God knows why everything occurs, that He has a reason for it, but that at the end, if we are good people, He will bring us back to our home in Jerusalem. Jews also understood, until recently, that they were alive a the good will of the local authorities and that the best way to maintain this good will was to make themselves indispensable. Which led to many of them acquiring advanced skills. Only after 1948 did Israel provide a defense of its citizens. Ruth Wisse style is direct and fluid.

A very nice work and a very informative read.

Jacques Beser, Ph.D.
Newport beach, CA

As Prof.Kevin MacDonald says(READ HIS BOOKS)-- Jews are again portrayed as history's powerless victims. Wisse summarizes the history of Jewish economic behavior as altruistically providing goods and services to non-Jews at the price of being politically vulnerable. Such a view ignores competition between Jews and non-Jews over the middleman economic niche, and it ignores the common role of Jews in traditional societies as willing agents of oppressive alien elites. It also ignores the emergence of Jews as a hostile elite in European societies and in America beginning in the late 19th century: Yuri Slezkine's aptly named The Jewish Century could not possibly be remotely factual if Jews were nothing more than politically vulnerable victims. Wisse's view of Jews as altruistic middlemen even applies to Israel: "Israel still lived by strategies of accommodation, trying to supply its neighborhood with useful services and goods such as medical, agricultural and technological know-how."

This is a grotesque gloss on the reality of Israeli aggression against the Palestinians and against its neighbors since the founding of Israel. Since Mearsheimer and Walt are bête noires for Wisse, it is worth pointing to some of the examples they provide: Israel is an expansionist state whose leaders were not satisfied with the original partition of 1948--a time when Jews comprised 35% of the population of Palestine and controlled 7% of the land. Israelis "continued to impose terrible violence and discrimination against the Palestinians for decades" after the founding of the state, including ethnic cleansing after the 1967 war and, according to Israeli historian Benny Morris, an occupation based on "brute force, repression and fear, collaboration and treachery, beatings and torture chambers, and daily intimidation, humiliation, and manipulation" (p. 100). Mearsheimer and Walt also point out the horrors of the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the wanton destruction of the bombing of Lebanon in the summer of 2006. They also show how Israel has aggressively promoted regime change throughout the region, using the power of the United States harnessed by the Israel lobby.

Wisse not only sees Israel as too timid, she argues that the Israel lobby in America is also weak. Her basis for this is that Edward Said, a Palestinian critic of Israel, held a position at Columbia University, and his right to speak out on Middle East issues was supported by some Jewish academics. Apparently for Wisse, the existence of even a few marginalized, powerless critics is a sign of the weakness of the lobby -- never mind its stranglehold over Congress and presidents.

Despite bewailing the impotence of the lobby, she does see hope because of the intersection of Jewish and American interests: "The Arab war against Israel and radical Islam's war against the United States are in almost perfect alignment, which means that resistance to one supports resistance to the other." That seems reasonable -- except for the fact that, as Mearsheimer and Walt note, "the United States has a terrorism problem in good part because it has long been so supportive of Israel" (p. 64).

Wisse concludes as follows:

It is seductive to hope that by accommodating our enemies, we will be allowed to live in peace. But the strategy of accommodation that historically turned Jews into a no-fail target is the course least likely to stop ongoing acts of aggression against them. Indeed, anti-Jewish politics will end only when those who practice it accept the democratic values of religious pluralism and political choice -- or are forced to pay a high enough price for flouting them.

What is most poisonous about this is that Wisse is completely blind to Jewish aggression, both on the part of Israel and on the part of the lobby. (Harnessing the power of the United States to effect regime change of governments that Israel doesn't like is nothing if not aggressive.) In her view, Jews are surrounded by enemies who desire their destruction simply because of the morally superior qualities of Jews: Jews "function as a lodestar of religious and political freedom: The Jews' attackers oppose such liberties, and their defenders promote them." She sees Jews as altruistic martyrs throughout history who will once again suffer martyrdom unless they eschew their altruism and become aggressive. Accommodation simply leads to more martyrdom, and this rationalizes even more aggression toward their enemies.

If there is anything beyond ethnocentric delusion in all of this, I think that behind Wisse's aggressive stance is the belief that they can win, where winning is defined as removing the Palestinians from most of the West Bank, enclosing the Palestinians in walled-off Bantustans where conditions are so horrible that many will eventually emigrate, and establishing hegemony in the entire area.

This is not a book about Jewish culture ,civlization and history in all its aspects. It is not therefore about the concept of Jewish power in the fullest sense of the term. It is really a book about Jewish political power, and even more so about the Jewish community's ability or inability to physically defend itself historically. It centers on the idea that Jewish ethics and morality have time and again been so demanding that they have compromised Jewish political power and independance. Other peoples have known historical defeats and have invariably blamed the other side. The Jews even from Biblical times have blamed themselves. And as Wisse rightly points out even now in the ongoing struggle of the state of Israel for survival this tendency to self- blame has led to not simply distortions of the historical record, but weakness and vulnerability. Self- criticism which is corrective may be constructive- but self- criticism which is all - encompassing and which aims only at proving the virtue of self- criticized may be disastrous.
Wisse provides a whirlwind tour of Jewish history, beginning from First Temple Times and coming fairly close to the present. The periods of time, the events covered are great in scope but she is a fine summarizer, and narrator. So far as I can tell there are no major inaccuracies in her telling of the story.
When she comes to what I suppose is her real point, the present situation of the Jews in terms of self- defense she is not really comprehensive enough. She strongly supports the sovereignty and independance of Israel, and rightly sees how it was founded through deeds of great courage and determination. She too rightly sees how Arab and now Islamist rejectionism has made accomodation impossible , for the time being anyway. She too puts in proper perspective the power relations between the vast Arab world and the minute Jewish state of Israel. She does an excellent job telling how the Arabs have cared more about envying the little the Jews have than building and developing what is their own.
And she sees correctly the nefarious anti- Jewish behavior which has become part of the present world media and political scene.
But she does not really analyze the very complex political and power situation of Israel, and the Jewish people today. She does not , as I somehow hoped she would, analyze the various forces arrayed against the Jewish state. And she does not give a picture of the overall power- situation of the Jewish people, who have not replaced their numbers since the Shoah, who are facing unprecedented assimilation, and who are nonetheless thriving in certain ways in the largely prosperous areas of the world.
On the whole though I would say that this is truly an outstanding work in surveying the Jewish struggle for communal survival historically.

"Jews and Power" is a tendentious mix of personal biography, Zionist historiography, and cherry-picking of Jewish literature and history, in the grand tradition of Zionist polemics. Somewhere halfway through the book, Wisse completely loses the train of her argument about power and just provides a ZOA-approved guide to the establishment of the State of Israel through the Oslo accords, the sort of thing that Netanyahu, Dershowitz, and Bard could do in their sleep.
Wisse repeats uncritically the narrative of "Exile and Return" that has been debunked time and time again by serious scholars; she manages to get around to David Biale's "beguilingly contrarian" thesis of Jewish power and powerlessness, which is a direct challenge to her book, on p. 174, ten pages before its conclusion. She does not give Biale's book any serious attention; on the contrary, she seems to think that his point is that Jews in the diaspora glorified powerlessness, whereas Biale showed that the Jewish experience in political power had not ended as good for the Jews as the Zionist historiography pretended.
It is not just the tendentious of the material on Zionism -- Wisse completely omits mention of Zionists like Magnes, Buber, Scholem, etc., who don't fit into her master narrative, much less intellectual and liberal opponents of Zionism. (Cultural Zionist Ahad ha-Am get a nod, but is immediately criticized, of course, for failing to realize the need for Jewish power in a hurry.) It is not just the failure to cite, much less refute, any book on Israel-Palestine that does not fit into her mold (Has she even read Morris, Segev, Shlaim, and Kimmerling? As for Khalidi, she argues with a comparison he makes between Palestinians, Kurds, and Armenians, and then proceeds to ignore entirely the main argument of his book on Palestinian identity) She passes over Kimmerling and Migdal on Palestinian identity in silence, preferring to give her own arguments against their being a Palestinian people united by anything except "its antagonism to Israel and its usurpation of Jewish symbols, history or identity." To prove this last assertion, Wisse refers to the fact that "the Palestinians commemorate the birthday of Israel as their nakba, or catastrophe." But it is not the birthday of Israel that is their nakba -- it is the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, the destruction of their lives, and the thwarting of their political aspirations
No, it is the mind-numbing shallowness of the book -- as if a professor, any professor, can write a short book on Jewish power and powerlessness that takes in (I quote from the jacket) "everything from the Kingdom of David to the Oslo Accords." When F. Baer wrote his work on Galut, for all of its Zionist tendentiousness and superficiality, at least he had some grip on Jewish history.
Most of the historical errors reveal the secular Zionist prism through which she views the data. Every Israeli knows where the city of Yavneh is located, but for Wisse it is "abroad" (p. 29), where Ben Zakkai took the first steps "to reconstitute Jewish religious and political authority outside the Land of Israel" (emphasis added.) Yavneh, no less than Jerusalem, is within the Land of Israel, and it became for a short time the center of the Jewish communities of the Land of Israel and the Diaspora. Of course, this mistake is telling: for the Zionists, the tragedy of 70 ce was the loss of political sovereignty and exile, to which the development of rabbinic Judaism was a response. But it was not the loss of sovereignty and exile that bothered the rabbis at Yavneh. Virtually none of the tannaim even mention "exile", and for good reason, they lived in Israel. Rather, it was the loss of the cult of the Temple, which stood at the center of Palestinian Judaism up until time.
As I have written in the Magnes Zionist blog, there was no exile following the destruction of the Temple or the Bar Kokhba revolt; there was, according to Baron, increasing voluntary emigration of Jews over centures because of the depressed economic state of the country. The Zionist narrative of exile, founded on Christian and Jewish myths, is like them -- a myth. This is not to say that later there was not a consciousness of living in exile, or a messianic hope for a restoration which waxed and waned. But to reduce Jewish history to: first, the Jews put their faith in Divine power, and then they decided, before it was too late, to bring about their own rededemption through their own power is Zionist poppycock. And what's worse; it is stale poppycock, the sort of propaganda that one finds emanating from Zionist circles a half a century ago.
In a rather odd conclusion, Wisse writes as the thesis of her book:
Jews probably could have endured in the Diaspora had theirs been the only type of political organization in the world. But their political system was not basically structured to defend itself against outside enemies seeking it annihilation.
In fact, Jews and Judaism have survived in the Diaspora, and they are doing rather well at that. It is hard to see how a series like Nextbook, despite its occasional amaratzes, dilletantism, and rightwing slant, could have been produced in Israel (unless some rich American Jewish neocon donated money to the Shalem Center). Wisse should ask why no Israelis are writing Hebrew versions of "Jews and Power," and why there is no public in the Jewish state for such books. Or why nobody in Israel under the age of sixty writes the history of the Israel-Palestinian confilct the way she does, unless associated with the Shalem Center or Bar Ilan.

Wisse presents a first-rate historical analysis of Jewish history in terms of the political influence they were able to exert in the context of their lives after the destruction of the 2nd temple, up to present times. Yes, the current analysis tends to be polemical, but justifiably so in laying out the situation as it is. Very well written and easy to read.

This is a disappointing book which still makes a very powerful point- Israel which was created by the United Nations- and has from its beginning been attacked by members of the United Nations bent on its eradication. These members have never been sanctioned for this intransigent, persistent aggression against a sovereign entity. In Ms. Wisse's view the Arab states are engaged in anti-Semitism. These states have merely transferred the animus historically directed against the Jewish people to the Jewish state based on the the same political motives which fueled antisemitism in the nineteenth and twentieth century. In the maelstrom of daily events it is important to remember the international pedigree which accompanied Israel's birth which is Ms. Wisse's crucial point.

Ruth Wisse begins this book by exploring some of the ways in which Jews have traditionally examined their own behavior. And that's an interesting point of view. Is it really true that the Arab-Israeli conflict is partially cultural, with Jews tending to blame themselves for much of what happens? Is Arab culture different in this respect? If so, that could explain a tendency of both sides to examine Jewish behavior far more than Arab behavior, and it might explain what I consider an exaggeration of Israel's importance by both sides in the conflict.

Wisse is quick to point out that while Jews had been confined to ghettos for centuries, emancipation led to a different type of problem: modern anti-Semitism. The accusations by anti-Semites were intended to show that Jews "were unworthy of the legal and social position conferred upon them." And even when anti-Semitism reached epidemic proportions, the carriers of this malady saw no reason to stop: it appeared to put them at no disadvantage. Meanwhile, the Jews themselves were powerless to stop it, as they were the prey.

As Wisse explains, while some anti-liberal political parties were not "originally or innately anti-Semitic," there were "no anti-Semitic parties that were not innately anti-liberal."

We then get to Zionism, and Wisse explains some of its origins. But, as Wisse tells us, Zionism lacked one ingredient, namely "the military planning force that every nation assumes it needs in order to regain, gain, or maintain its land." Although Wisse traces the start of Jewish defence forces back to 1920, I think that only after years of even more calamities, topped by the 1939 British White Paper, did the majority of Jews realize the need for an independent state, including armed forces.

The most interesting part of this book deals with the innovations of anti-Zionism, and the ways in which it has gone beyond anti-Semitism. Once again, as in the case of anti-Semitism, the animus against the accused was "not directed to any correctable attribute or rectifiable lapses." But there were differences. While National Socialist Germany took the lead in anti-Semitic propaganda, it did not organize "a Pan-European movement around that issue." On the other hand, "opposition to Israel became the glue of Pan-Arabism."

European anti-Semites blamed Jews for their existing social crises (and I would add that they blamed the Jews for suffering the effects of anti-Semitism), but "Arab leaders created the crisis for which they blamed the Jews." That is, they refused to allow the resettlement of Arab refugees simply in order to blame Jews.

Although the European anti-Semites did sporadically boycott Jewish stores and businesses in the 1930s, Arabs went beyond this to arrange systematic boycotts of Israel. I agree: just ask yourself if you have ever seen Israel participate in the Mediterranean Games. I think we all realize that Israel has a Mediterranean coastline. Don't you ever wonder what the nations who go along with such a boycott are thinking? I think the threats of academic boycotts of Israel are also an example of this phenomenon.

I think most of us are aware of the mass rallies that the National Socialists held. Once again, as Wisse points out, anti-Zionists have gone beyond this to use weapons of mass communication.

A fifth aspect of the enhancement of anti-Zionism over anti-Semitism that Wisse mentions is the use (Wisse uses the word "conscription") of the United Nations. I would add two more aspects: the conscription of some of the Western media and some Western academic departments.

The author says that while the purpose of Zionism and Israel was to normalize Jewish existence, this did not happen, just as Jewish emancipation did not regularize the political status of European Jews. The Arab-Israeli conflict turned out to be "an asymmetrical attack by the Arab-Islamic world on the idea of a Jewish homeland." Yes, some folks say that the source of the problem is the fact that Israel has some territory in the West Bank. But Wisse answers that "since the disputed territories are Israel's as a result of Arab aggression, they could not retroactively have become its cause."

Wisse does discuss the Levantine Arabs, and says that Rashid Khalidi compares these people with peoples who lack independence, namely the Armenians and Kurds. Of course, Armenia actually exists now, but Wisse shows us that there really are huge differences between the Levantine Arabs and peoples who have long had their own language and culture. In addition, it is curious that the Kurds and Armenians (along with the Jews) have long been opposed by the Arabs.

Meanwhile, Wisse goes into detail about the extent to which the Levantine Arabs have fashioned their entire identity, myths, symbols, slogans, and domestic and foreign policies around opposition to the Jews. I agree that all this is terribly counterproductive, not only for what it does to the Levantine Arabs outright, and not only for the immediate threat to world peace, but also because of the precedent it has set: what goes around can come around.

The author does mention the terrible mistake of the Oslo agreement, which "triggered an immediate escalation of terror, not only against Israel but against the West." This was an avoidable error which many people easily foresaw but were unable to prevent. Wisse adds that no Israeli initiative could correct what went wrong in Arab societies, just as no Jewish initiative "could have solved the German problem" that led to National Socialism.

Wisse concludes by wisely explaining that aggressors against a democratic system can be invigorated by their anti-Semitism to move against society as a whole: "why stop at the Jews?" I agree: it is unlikely that anti-Zionism will stop with the Jews.

I recommend this book.

From King David, to the philosopher Spinoza, to boxer Barney Ross, the Jewish Encounter Series has been as varied as it has been excellent. Now, into this mix comes Ruth Wisse's thoughtful, provocative essay, "Jews and Power" polemical in the best sense of the word. Against a grain of modern scholarship that tends to run counterfactual in its effort to imagine Jews and the Jewish state as both ordinary and extraordinarily bad, Wisse produces a work which effectively demolishes both perspectives. Her relatively short book examines Jewish history from the period of the 2nd Commonwealth to the modern state of Israel in a manner both engaging and highly readable.

Wisse argues that the uniqueness of the Jewish community exists in a relentless self criticism going back at least to Roman times. Unlike other cultures which faced with powerlessness tended to blame the other, Jews through their first and second exile sought to affix the blame neither to their neighbors nor their stars, but to themselves. Moreover, Wisse shows no shyness about asking tough questions, such as those who imagine prefer being powerless and in danger to being strong. This will make some uncomfortable, but still she pulls no punches.

Another interesting topic covered is the contradiction in anti-Judaism, despising Jews for being both too weak (stateless, poor) and too strong (seizing control of the world, too smart, too rich, and though she gives it insufficient coverage, killing god). As it happens the same paradigm exists today. Two professors from distinguished universities raise a firestorm by arguing that neo-cons and the Israel lobby (read Jews) have seized control of the American government policy against the national interest (an impressive trick by any standard) even as others argue against all evidence that the world's perpetual denunciations of Israel is the same as the treatment of any other state.

To her great credit Wisse does not embrace the false modesty of imagining the Jews as the same as any other people, recognizing how, against all odds, they continue to make contributions to culture, the sciences, and philosophy that far outstrip their meager numbers. She likewise recognizes the uniqueness of the State of Israel, both in terms of the good (the return of an exiled people to their homeland, a thing without precedent in human history other than the last time they did it), as well as the bad the failure of the Zionist enterprise to achieve the normalization of the status of Jews that its founders imagined.

If one were to quibble with Wisse's book, its main shortcoming is that she could have delved further into the theological underpinnings of Jewish self identity. Does Judaism's relentless monotheism, lacking a serious conception of a devil foster the tendency towards self criticism that she describes? Is that Jewish theology embraces an oversized eschatological goal - the perfection of the world through Jewish action - likewise have an affect?

That said, this book, at less than 200 pages, could hardly be expected to be all embracing. What it is, however, is small and impactful to a degree that belies it size, just like the phenomenon it seeks to describe.

Ruth Wisse begins this book by exploring some of the ways in which Jews have traditionally examined their own behavior. And that's an interesting point of view. Is it really true that the Arab-Israeli conflict is partially cultural, with Jews tending to blame themselves for much of what happens? Is Arab culture different in this respect? If so, that could explain a tendency of both sides to examine Jewish behavior far more than Arab behavior, and it might explain what I consider an exaggeration of Israel's importance by both sides in the conflict.

Wisse is quick to point out that while Jews had been confined to ghettos for centuries, emancipation led to a different type of problem: modern anti-Semitism. The accusations by anti-Semites were intended to show that Jews "were unworthy of the legal and social position conferred upon them." And even when anti-Semitism reached epidemic proportions, the carriers of this malady saw no reason to stop: it appeared to put them at no disadvantage. Meanwhile, the Jews themselves were powerless to stop it, as they were the prey.

As Wisse explains, while some anti-liberal political parties were not "originally or innately anti-Semitic," there were "no anti-Semitic parties that were not innately anti-liberal."

We then get to Zionism, and Wisse explains some of its origins. But, as Wisse tells us, Zionism lacked one ingredient, namely "the military planning force that every nation assumes it needs in order to regain, gain, or maintain its land." Although Wisse traces the start of Jewish defence forces back to 1920, I think that only after years of even more calamities, topped by the 1939 British White Paper, did the majority of Jews realize the need for an independent state, including armed forces.

The most interesting part of this book deals with the innovations of anti-Zionism, and the ways in which it has gone beyond anti-Semitism. Once again, as in the case of anti-Semitism, the animus against the accused was "not directed to any correctable attribute or rectifiable lapses." But there were differences. While National Socialist Germany took the lead in anti-Semitic propaganda, it did not organize "a Pan-European movement around that issue." On the other hand, "opposition to Israel became the glue of Pan-Arabism."

European anti-Semites blamed Jews for their existing social crises (and I would add that they blamed the Jews for suffering the effects of anti-Semitism), but "Arab leaders created the crisis for which they blamed the Jews." That is, they refused to allow the resettlement of Arab refugees simply in order to blame Jews.

Although the European anti-Semites did sporadically boycott Jewish stores and businesses in the 1930s, Arabs went beyond this to arrange systematic boycotts of Israel. I agree: just ask yourself if you have ever seen Israel participate in the Mediterranean Games. I think we all realize that Israel has a Mediterranean coastline. Don't you ever wonder what the nations who go along with such a boycott are thinking? I think the threats of academic boycotts of Israel are also an example of this phenomenon.

I think most of us are aware of the mass rallies that the National Socialists held. Once again, as Wisse points out, anti-Zionists have gone beyond this to use weapons of mass communication.

A fifth aspect of the enhancement of anti-Zionism over anti-Semitism that Wisse mentions is the use (Wisse uses the word "conscription") of the United Nations. I would add two more aspects: the conscription of some of the Western media and some Western academic departments.

The author says that while the purpose of Zionism and Israel was to normalize Jewish existence, this did not happen, just as Jewish emancipation did not regularize the political status of European Jews. The Arab-Israeli conflict turned out to be "an asymmetrical attack by the Arab-Islamic world on the idea of a Jewish homeland." Yes, some folks say that the source of the problem is the fact that Israel has some territory in the West Bank. But Wisse answers that "since the disputed territories are Israel's as a result of Arab aggression, they could not retroactively have become its cause."

Wisse does discuss the Levantine Arabs, and says that Rashid Khalidi compares these people with peoples who lack independence, namely the Armenians and Kurds. Of course, Armenia actually exists now, but Wisse shows us that there really are huge differences between the Levantine Arabs and peoples who have long had their own language and culture. In addition, it is curious that the Kurds and Armenians (along with the Jews) have long been opposed by the Arabs.

Meanwhile, Wisse goes into detail about the extent to which the Levantine Arabs have fashioned their entire identity, myths, symbols, slogans, and domestic and foreign policies around opposition to the Jews. I agree that all this is terribly counterproductive, not only for what it does to the Levantine Arabs outright, and not only for the immediate threat to world peace, but also because of the precedent it has set: what goes around can come around.

The author does mention the terrible mistake of the Oslo agreement, which "triggered an immediate escalation of terror, not only against Israel but against the West." This was an avoidable error which many people easily foresaw but were unable to prevent. Wisse adds that no Israeli initiative could correct what went wrong in Arab societies, just as no Jewish initiative "could have solved the German problem" that led to National Socialism.

Wisse concludes by wisely explaining that aggressors against a democratic system can be invigorated by their anti-Semitism to move against society as a whole: "why stop at the Jews?" I agree: it is unlikely that anti-Zionism will stop with the Jews.

I recommend this book.

From King David, to the philosopher Spinoza, to boxer Barney Ross, the Jewish Encounter Series has been as varied as it has been excellent. Now, into this mix comes Ruth Wisse's thoughtful, provocative essay, "Jews and Power" polemical in the best sense of the word. Against a grain of modern scholarship that tends to run counterfactual in its effort to imagine Jews and the Jewish state as both ordinary and extraordinarily bad, Wisse produces a work which effectively demolishes both perspectives. Her relatively short book examines Jewish history from the period of the 2nd Commonwealth to the modern state of Israel in a manner both engaging and highly readable.

Wisse argues that the uniqueness of the Jewish community exists in a relentless self criticism going back at least to Roman times. Unlike other cultures which faced with powerlessness tended to blame the other, Jews through their first and second exile sought to affix the blame neither to their neighbors nor their stars, but to themselves. Moreover, Wisse shows no shyness about asking tough questions, such as those who imagine prefer being powerless and in danger to being strong. This will make some uncomfortable, but still she pulls no punches.

Another interesting topic covered is the contradiction in anti-Judaism, despising Jews for being both too weak (stateless, poor) and too strong (seizing control of the world, too smart, too rich, and though she gives it insufficient coverage, killing god). As it happens the same paradigm exists today. Two professors from distinguished universities raise a firestorm by arguing that neo-cons and the Israel lobby (read Jews) have seized control of the American government policy against the national interest (an impressive trick by any standard) even as others argue against all evidence that the world's perpetual denunciations of Israel is the same as the treatment of any other state.

To her great credit Wisse does not embrace the false modesty of imagining the Jews as the same as any other people, recognizing how, against all odds, they continue to make contributions to culture, the sciences, and philosophy that far outstrip their meager numbers. She likewise recognizes the uniqueness of the State of Israel, both in terms of the good (the return of an exiled people to their homeland, a thing without precedent in human history other than the last time they did it), as well as the bad the failure of the Zionist enterprise to achieve the normalization of the status of Jews that its founders imagined.

If one were to quibble with Wisse's book, its main shortcoming is that she could have delved further into the theological underpinnings of Jewish self identity. Does Judaism's relentless monotheism, lacking a serious conception of a devil foster the tendency towards self criticism that she describes? Is that Jewish theology embraces an oversized eschatological goal - the perfection of the world through Jewish action - likewise have an affect?

That said, this book, at less than 200 pages, could hardly be expected to be all embracing. What it is, however, is small and impactful to a degree that belies it size, just like the phenomenon it seeks to describe.