Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice

by Bernard Lewis

"A powerful book. It combines the coolness of scholarship with conclusions that cannot fail to engage the passions."―Saul Bellow The Arab-Israeli conflict has unsettled the Middle East for over half a century. This conflict is primarily political, a clash between states and peoples over territory and history. But it is also a conflict that has affected and been affected by prejudice. For a long time this was simply the "normal" prejudice between neighboring people of different religions and ethnic origins. In the present age, however, hostility toward Israel and its people has taken the form of anti-Semitism-a pernicious world view that goes beyond prejudice and ascribes to Jews a quality of cosmic evil. First published in the 1980s to universal acclaim, Semites and Anti-Semites traces the development of anti-Semitism from its beginnings as a poison in the bloodstream of Christianity to its modern entrance into mainstream Islam. Bernard Lewis, one of the world's foremost scholars of the Middle East, takes us through the history of the Semitic peoples to the emergence of the Jews and their virulent enemies, and dissects the region's recent tragic developments in a moving new afterword. "A powerful and important work, beautifully written and edited, and based on a range of erudition (in the best sense) that few others, if any, could command."―George Kennan

Genres: History, Religion, Politics, Antisemitism, Nonfiction, Judaism, Islam

298 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Bernard Lewis was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies Emeritus at Princeton University and the author of many critially acclaimed and bestselling books, including two number one New York Times bestsellers: What Went Wrong? and Crisis of Islam. The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Internationally recognized as the greatest historian of the Middle East, he received fifteen honorary doctorates and his books have been translated into more than twenty languages.

Reviews

[Jordon Gyarmathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lewis started a strong foundation for the book by contextualizing the origin and definition of semite and the developing constructs of race and nation. I thoroughly enjoyed this etymological/anthropological discussion. The seventh and eighth sections are dull history retellings but the end of the book is a good synthesis and analysis of the introductory sections and the histories with modern context. Overall informative and helpful for understanding the very complex issue of anti-semitism, especially in relation to Israel.

[Eugene · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fascinating look into the history of Anti-Semitism. Although I very much enjoyed this book, and highly recommend it, I would advise those that read it to not read it too quickly.

I read it while on a cruise, over the course of 3 days, which was both overwhelming and increasingly sobering.

This book is vital for anyone seeking to understand the current state of anti-Semitism in the world.

[John-paul Pagano · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good explication of modern anti-Semitism in the Muslim Third World, shorn of the specialist's perspective that some people find troubling about Lewis. This isn't Lewis writing about Muslim rage deriving from the Turkish failure to grasp timekeeping as well as Europeans; it's a reasonable and knowing treatment of anti-Semitism in a particular time and place.

The book contains one very valuable scholarly distinction that is worth the price of admission. There are two main kinds of racism: the exploitive and pragmatic variety, and the eliminationist and ideological type. An example of the former is Antebellum slavery in the United States; an example of the latter is Nazi Germany. This is a quantitative rather than qualitative distinction -- Lewis isn't saying one is "worse" than the other -- and it's analytically crucial. You come to realize that with exploitive racism, the aim is slavery and a byproduct is death; with eliminationist racism, the aim is death and a byproduct is slavery. The type of mind given to Manichaean fantasy and conspiracy theory -- the extremist ideologue -- is attracted to eliminationist racism, which is one way hatred and killing become the bread and butter of his kind of mass movement.

[Natan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read Hebrew translation

Yet another of Bernard Lewis' excellent books. He really is the leading expert on Middle East issues.
The most interesting part of the book for me was his tracing the history of Anti-semitism in the Arab world. He shows that the modern-day Arab Anti-semitism, is actually imported from good, old-fashioned Christian European Anti-semitism that we all know so well, while classical Islam's stance toward Jews was quite different.
Another interesting thing is that the book was written in 1986, but really could have been written yesterday. Nothing has changed. I had always thought that the post-modern Left's unwavering support of the Arabs, whether or not it's Anti-semitism in disguise, was more recent.
Unfortunately, the ending has proven to be a bit optimistic. Radical and violent Anti-semitism is still the order of the day in schools in the Arab world, and, since the book was written another generation has grown up indoctrinated with hate, including in the Palestinian territories, who have ostensibly signed a "peace" treaty with Israel.
My one complaint is that only the final chapter is dedicated to answering the question posed at the beginning, and it's rather short.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought the book was rather good and said a lot that I agree with. The self-contradictions, maybe not noticed by a less careful reader prevented my from rating it more highly. Also, the author approached the obvious conclusion that modern anti-Zionism is old wine in new bottles; i.e. anti-Semitism.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 2 out of 5]

But he is so anxious to demonstrate the congruence between European and Arab anti-Semitism that he seems to forget his own arguments about the difference in historical circumstances. He thus becomes incapable of making sense of much of the evidence of Arab anti-Semitism that he cites here.

Joel Beinin, Middle East Research and Information Project

[Masoud · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent, well-written book by one of the best experts on Middle Eastern history. It shed light on the roots of anti-Semitism from the beginnings of Christianity to the nowadays Israel-philistine conflict in the region. I like the part of the book that explains the relations of the Arab nations (who are also Semites) with Nazi Germany before the World War II and the reinterpretation and misinterpretation of the anti-Semitic attitude of the Nazis, first against Zionism and then against the hatred of Jews in their newspapers and in the pamphlets, distributed among the population; because they needed the support of the Arab leadership against the British forces.

I always wanted to know how and where this problem had started. The historical facts on this subject were fantastic, especially regarding contemporary Arab anti-Semitism, which was based on the Christian anti-Semitism or Jew-hatred of the last few centuries.

[Austin Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

What an amazing 100 first pages!!! However the book eventually loses speed...

I fully disagreed on Lewis' interpretation that the radical left is anti-semitic. Even though he does pick the most damning of quotes from Marx, Engles, Bakunin, and Proudhun.

I'm happy to have this book within my collection none-the-less.

[Onur Umut · Rating 5 out of 5]

Müthiş bi kitap. Soykırımı, İsrail'in kuruluşunu, hristiyan-yahudi, müslüman- yahudi çatışmasını, anti-semitizmin doğuşunu ve ilerleyişini, yahudilerin tarihsel sürecini bütün olarak çok iyi ifade ediyor. Büyük keyif aldım diyebilirim. Bernard Lewis alanında en iyisi.

[Abhishek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Its a very short book and describes the perception and misconception of Gentiles towards Judaism in a very perfect way.