Israel Denial: Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism, & the Faculty Campaign Against the Jewish State - Hardcover

Nelson, Cary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0253045053 ISBN 13: 9780253045058

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 2019

Synopsis

Israel Denial is the first book to offer detailed analyses of the work faculty members have published―individually and collectively―in support of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement; it contrasts their claims with options for promoting peace. The faculty discussed here have devoted a significant part of their professional lives to delegitimizing the Jewish state. While there are beliefs they hold in common―including the conviction that there is nothing good to say about Israel―they also develop distinctive arguments designed to recruit converts to their cause in novel ways. They do so both as writers and as teachers; Israel Denial is the first to give substantial attention to anti-Zionist pedagogy. No effort to understand the BDS movement's impact on the academy and public policy can be complete without the kind of understanding this book offers.

A co-publication of the Academic Engagement Network

 

About this title

About the Author:

Cary Nelson is author or editor of over 30 books, including studies of modern poetry and the politics of higher education, Nelson's most recent book is Dreams Deferred: A Concise Guide to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and the Movement to Boycott Israel.

Review:

This is a fine book on the strategies and argumentation of the BDS movement, and on some of its leading proponents. Nelson offers his readers powerful dissections and refutations of many of the BDS's talking points, as well as some thoughts about moving towards accommodations regarding –if not a solution to―the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

(BENNY MORRIS, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, author of One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict and other books)

" Israel Denial is an epic response to BDS and its pseudo-intellectual underpinnings."

(elder of Ziyon)

"[T]his book fills a desperate need―the need to expose the bigotry of the anti-Israel academy and the thinly veiled fictions they propagate."

(Commentary)

The campaign to boycott Israel wants to be seen as a symbolic marker of the true community of the good; it poses as the simple global resistance to the Israeli right. Israel Denial disrupts this dishonest and menacing positioning. It raises its banner within the community of the progressive, it articulates opposition to both the BDS and the pro-settler nationalist flag-wavers, it embraces a politics of peace and it consistently opposes both anti-Arab racism and antisemitism.

(DAVID HIRSH, Goldsmiths University, author of Contemporary Left Antisemitism)

"The book completely discredits BDS by demonstrating in devastating detail how much it corrupts academic standards and undermines the chances for peace. With its more than 400 pages of text, some 50 pages of notes, and an extensive bibliography, the book not only reflects Nelson's longstanding concern about the corrosive effects of BDS activism, but also his vast experience and erudition as a prolific scholar whose academic career spans almost five decades."

(The Algemeiner)

"

After Nelson's book, no one should be able to take the work of the BDS professors seriously, given their reliance on propagandistic lies. Cary Nelson's Israel is not the mythic realm of demons fantasized by BDS advocates but an actual place that contains signs of hope.

"

(David Mikics, Tablet)

"

Israel Denial is a staggering work of rigorous intellectual inquiry that helps us understand how a deep anti-Israel animus in academia has fueled the rise of intersectionality as a movement to isolate and exclude Jews.

 

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(Jewish Journal)

"

Israel Denial seeks to take the rug out from beneath the feet of scholars pushing vilification of Israel and promoting discrimination against Israeli institutions by discriminating against Israeli faculty and students. This is an important book for those who want to be equipped with fighting what is called academic BDS.

"

(Israel Diaries)

About this edition

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0253045053
• ISBN 13: 9780253045058
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 658