Although our government hardly acknowledges the fact, and fails to
orient its policies accordingly, begins Gabriel Schoenfeld in this
profoundly disquieting book, the United States is today locked in a
conflict with adversaries for whom hatred of Jews lies at the core of
their beliefs. To anyone with even a modest acquaintance with current
events, it is clear that the Muslim world is today the epicenter of a
particularly virulent brand of anti-Semitic hatred. But anti-Semitism
has also reawakened dramatically in Europe, where it was long thought to
be completely dormant if not entirely extinct. And as Schoenfeld shows,
it is also making unprecedented headway in the United States, a country
where it has never before found truly fertile soil. The Return of
Anti-Semitism traces the confluence of several lethal currents: the
infusion of judeophobia into Islamic fundamentalism; the rise of
terrorist movements (including al Qaeda) that are motivated in large
measure by a pathological hatred of Jews; the deliberate and
well-financed export of anti-Semitism from the Muslim world into Europe
and from there into the United States; and the rebirth of older
anti-Semitic traditions in the West that were thought to have ended
along with Nazism. Schoenfeld shows that the most vicious ideas about
Jews today are not voiced by the downtrodden and disenfranchised fringe
elements of society, but by its most highly educated and progressive
segments. This is true in the Islamic world, and it is even truer in the
West. One is less likely to find anti-Semites today in beer halls and
trailer parks than among the mass media and in faculty lounges. And
while yesterday's anti-Semitism appeared in periods of economic and
political stress, its alarming return comes at a time when the Western
democracies are secure and free from the social turmoil that contributed
to the rise of fascism. An old disease, one that many assumed was
permanently eradicated, has reappeared in our world. The Return of
Anti-Semitism is a profound analysis of a great and growing danger.
