Never Again?: The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism - Hardcover

Foxman, Abraham

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060542462 ISBN 13: 9780060542467

Publisher: HarperOne, 2003

Synopsis

The ongoing war on terror, instability in the Middle East, and a faltering world economy are capturing headlines everywhere. But through it all runs a disturbing current of which many people are only dimly aware.

Anti-Semitism, which had been on the decline worldwide since the end of World War II, has over the past few years made a perilous return. How could the twenty-first century -- the new millennium launched with such optimism just a few short years ago -- have so quickly been marred by the emergence of age-old hatreds, now armed with the powers of global terrorism?

As national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham H. Foxman fights against the menace of intolerance every day. As a result of the disturbing events of the last few years, he is convinced that we currently face as great a threat to the safety and security of the Jewish people as we faced in the 1930s. Foxman writes: "Within living memory, we’ve seen what can happen when a nation or a continent experiences an unrestrained outbreak of anti-Semitism. The Jews of the world -- and all people of goodwill who share their desire for a just and free society -- learned a series of critical lessons from the tragic history of the twentieth century. Today, we understand how important it is to recognize the emergence of new forms of anti-Semitism so that we can warn the world and stave off the worst effects."

Anti-Semitism remains a pernicious form of ethnic and religious intolerance, with consequences for all of humankind. In communities from the United States to the Middle East, Europe to South Africa and Latin America, Jews are being persecuted in old and new ways. Exploring the history of anti-Semitism and providing the first comprehensive examination of the new rampant anti-Jewish sentiment worldwide, Never Again? offers a crucial discussion of the steps that must be taken to prevent this century from witnessing a replay of the horrors of the last.

About this title

About the Author:

Abraham H. Foxman is the national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and one of today's preeminent voices against hatred, discrimination, and violence in the United States and worldwide. Born in Poland in 1940, he survived the Holocaust when his parents entrusted him to their Catholic nursemaid, who baptized him and raised him as her own son. Foxman has been with the ADL for more than thirty-five years, and for nearly half of them has served as the national director.

From Publishers Weekly:

"Everybody's afraid to touch anything that's religious because most of the people out there [in Hollywood] are Jewish, and it's a frightening thing for them to promote Christianity," claimed Dolly Parton, unable to develop a TV miniseries about a born-again Christian folk singer. Such a casual reiteration of the myth that Jews control Hollywood is one example Foxman, the longtime national director of the Anti-Defamation League, cites in showing what he claims is a new acceptance of global anti-Semitism. Arguing that this new anti-Semitism is not "a handful of incidents... but rather a little-noticed, under-the-radar pattern of repeated attacks, often violent, occurring in country after country," Foxman presents a frightening tally of hate crimes and hate speech in both Europe and the U.S. With examples at once shocking and predictable, such as the Arab press's caricatures of Israelis based on "imagery drawn from Nazi propaganda" and the president of the Southern Baptist Convention stating, "God doesn't hear the prayers of the Jews," Foxman's enumeration of such cases is frightening and important, but his presentation is problematic, in part because of his lack of political nuance. In the opening chapter, he repeatedly speaks of an anti-Semitic coalition of "extreme left-wing and right-wing groups," when what he is describing is similar anti-Semitic rhetoric coming from each separately. Another difficulty is that Foxman details his own experience (and that of the famous people he meets) so often that the book feels self-aggrandizing, like the struggles of one man against an anti-Semitic world rather than a political analysis. These problems don't seriously injure the book's credibility, but make it far less potent than it might be.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperOne
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0060542462
• ISBN 13: 9780060542467
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 305