Rating: 
Summary: More then ever, a needed discussion of an important issue
Review: Poor Howard Dean gets practically called an anti-semite by Joe Lieberman on National TV for daring to suggest America ought to have a 'even-handed' policy toward the Israel/Palestine conflict. And then he gets a nasty letter from Nancy Pelosi warning him NEVER to utter such a remark again. Such is the pathetic nature of the Democratic Party and the American Left.This is in response to the review by the Jewish-American from New York City who claims he can support Israel without supporting the policies of Israel toward the Palestinans. Such whining hypocrisy is typicial of the double-speak that is really causing the problems. Such attitudes carry over to the anti-war Left dominated disproportionately by ethnic (but not religious) Jewish "Left-overs". In this context, the 'war for oil' nonsense by the anti-war Left is merely another example of the political correctness of the Democratic Party/American Left (what's the difference?) that NO-ONE can criticise Israel under any circumstance. In this time of Neo-Conservative control of the Republican Party that is leading us to war and disaster, the Left must break through the self delusion that support for Israel is different from support for Israel's policy of repression of the native people of the land now called "Israel". Read this book and be armed to challenge the notion that a 'even-handed' policy toward the Israeli/Palestinan problem is 'anti-semitic'.
Rating: 
Summary: Provocative yet ultimately disappointing
Review: The author raises interesting questions about what constitutes anti-semitism and rightly notes that equating all criticism of Israel with anti-semitism can have as its only purpose the stifling of a very necessary debate. The author does not, however, adequately address the reason(s) why outrage over Israel's more controversial acts is so selective. If not anti-semitism, then just what is it that drives so many activists worldwide, journalists among them, to denouce Israel's settlement building more bitterly than the mass murders committed in places like the Sudan, East Timor, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein? The author's arguments here come across as defensive and are ultimately not convincing. In the end, this book reads like yet another anti-Israel polemic, as irrational in its own way as anything written by Israel's most devoted apologists.
Rating: 
Summary: listen to yourselves...
Review: The book description and the reviewers posted here belie their own claims that their understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict is based purely on impirical fact and devoid of prejudice. On the contrary, they serve to show once again that the line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is becoming dangerously thin. If you truly want peace on the Middle East, you won't get there by taking sides as Cockburn & his readers have done. You have to work toward a just two-state solution that provides security for both parties. And to be taken seriously, you really should try to avoid absurd statements like "if anti-Semitism didn't exist the Zionists would have to invent it" and "the Palestinians are the most brutalized [paraphrasing - I forget the exact word used] people in the world." Read some history and think for yourselves, people. America's enemies aren't automatically in the right, and our allies aren't automatically in the wrong.
Rating:
Summary: How Political Correctness Hides Brutality
Review: The people of Palestine may be in the most desperate condition of any people in the world. Naturally, we hear almost nothing of their plight. Worse, they are depicted in the American media and political sphere in racist terms, as fanatical automatons strapped with suicide belts. Anyone who tries to break through this foul fiction is crushed, branded an anti-semite, exiled to media oblivion never to be heard from again. It happens every day. Even to people in power. Ask former members of Congress Cynthia McKinney and David Hilliard, who criticized Israel and immediately lost their seats in Congress. Ask the veterans of the USS Liberty, the Navy ship that was attacked and nearly sank in 1967 by the Israeli military. Their demands for justice remain unmet and are largely unheard. This courageous book begins to set things right. Edited by two seasoned investigative journalists, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, and featuring essays from professors, such as Shahid Alam and Michael Neumann, Israelis (such as Uri Avnery and refusenik Yigal Bronner) and American Jews, Norman Finkelstein, Bruce Jackson and Lenni Brenner, the Politics of Anti-Semitism is a full-bore assault on the craven political correctness that has stymied the media and held the US congress hostile to every whim of a rogue state that terrorizes its neighbors, brutalizes its citizens and robs land and resources. Israel is the new South Africa, only worse. The time has come to tell the truth. This book is a formidable first step.
Rating:
Summary: Utter Nonsense
Review: The quality of this book can be shown by its trumpeting of the USS Liberty incident, the favorite topic of anti-Semites and Israel-baiters for decades, as an example of Israeli malfeasance and the power of the pro-Israel lobby to cover things up. Well, recently released tapes from the National Security Agency show that contrary to the allegations that Israel intentionally attacked a US Navy vessel, Israel thought that the ship was a hostile Arab ship (it was during the Six Day War). A Google search for USS Liberty and Tapes will bring up the stories. So much for the vaunted investigative skills of Cockburn et al. Don't waste your money or time on this crap.
Rating:
Summary: Zionist propaganda!
Review: The zionists are a clever bunch that lie and deceive the public with their please for understanding whilst they occupy foreign land and sham helplessness. This is another zionist hack job to deepen this sympathy and to get more people to support their goal of global domination.
Rating:
Summary: The prejudice, hate- filled character of Cockburn et al
Review: There are two major false claims in this book which are repeated by some of the Amazon reviews.
1) Anyone who criticizes Israel is said by the Cockburn company to be condemned as Anti- Semitic. Israel is a vibrant democracy with perhaps even more criticism of the government made by its citizens than the United States. The idea that anyone who criticizes Israel is called by Israelis Anti- Semitic is completely absurd.
2) The Cockburn ilk claim that they are not Anti- Semitic only anti- Israel. Considering the exaggerated, spiteful, hateful nature of their criticism and the fact that they totally ignore the Arab aggression to which Israel has been submitted for the past eighty years there is no doubt that the Cockburn crowds are bigoted prejudiced hate- filled human - beings. Whether they are called Anti- Semites or not is really beside the point. The point is that their blanket condemnation of Israel is wrong, and even evil.
I would make one more point. The gleeful chorus of those who join Cockburn in one- sided and hateful condemnation of Israel know in their hearts that this comes because for whatever reasons they do not particularly like Jews.
The Jewish people has had many enemies throughout our long history and we nonetheless have managed to contribute much to the well- being of mankind.
Let me pray that with the help of God we will continue to do so.
Rating:
Summary: Good reading, Bad pleading
Review: There is a disjoint between the title of this book and its contents. Anti-Semitism is a deep-seated reaction for whatever cause (religion, politics, race) and the intensity has risen and fallen, but it is always lurking in the European background. The old notion of Eastern European prejudice, while still valid, has been overtaken by new forces only slightly less subtle. This book is a perfect example of the latter - a situation recently documented by the EU in their as yet unreleased study on anti-Semitism. It concluded that the force behind it was a coalition of Leftists and Muslims united in hatred of Israel and the West and espousal of Arab dictatorships and radical Islam. If the purpose of the book was to document the mistreatment of Palestinians it succeeded admirably but then that was not the purpose. It was to focus blame on Israel when, as a matter of historical record, she is only the last in a long list of perpetrators that include Turks, Egyptians, Christians, Jordanians and Syrians. A quick history suffices - After Israel declared independence she was immediately attacked by several Arab armies whom she defeated. Thousands of Palestinians elected to leave and the land originally set aside for a Palestinian state was taken over by Jordan and Egypt. The next decades saw state-sponsored and religiously sponsored hate directed at Jews which served as a surefire rallying point by which dictators sought to relieve the misery of their own peoples. The two sides have diametrically opposite viewpoints concerning human and political rights. The creation of a Palestinian state would be a disaster of major proportions for other Arab leaders in that it would deny them a much-need escape valve. Who really believes that Sudanese or Pakistanis or Indonesians would be affected one way or another by a new state? There is nothing so tragic or absurd as Western intellectuals joining forces with an established terrorist and his gang of thugs to pressure the one democratic state in the region.
Rating:
Summary: The TRUTH!
Review: This book educates the ignorant about the ugly truth that many pro-Israeli pundits and supporters use to stifle any debate and criticism of Israel and it's brutal crimes against the Palestinian nation. The label "anti-Semitism" being a quick and efficient tag to attack any person's credibility thereby destroying his/her subsequent arguments on the Israeli state. It's an eye-opener but truly sad that some pro-Israeli Americans have stooped so low.
Rating:
Summary: A dismal failure.
Review: This book fails almost completely to engage the issue of anti-Semitism. In fact, it spends so much time criticising Israel and Jews that it almost confirms the very thesis it purports to dismiss. The worst essay is one in which the author tries to argue that the idea that "4,000 Israelis" did not show up for work at the World Trade Center on 9/11 is not really so unreasonable. A close second is the essay slamming Noam Chomsky for failing to accept that Jews are all-powerful in the United States. The book does not really have a central theme. At its most serious, it attempts to show that "[p]artisans of Israel often make accusations of anti-Semitism to silence Israel's critics," as one essay puts it. But it devotes little energy to proving this statement. The idea that all supporters of Israel always or often characterize all criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism is, one suspects, a convenient belief for many of these critics. It absolves them of the need to do proper research, to use precise language, and to tolerate criticism of their own critiques. The book is of little value except as a window onto a peculiar and dangerous kind of denialism that segments of the left have fallen into. To characterize all criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism is absurd. But it is also absurd to pretend that no criticism of Israel could possibly have anything to do with anti-Semitism. Both views are blind to reality. Both views are dangerous.
| 
