The Resurgence of Anti-semitism: Jews, Israel and Liberal Opinion (Philosophy and the Global Context) (Philosophy and the Global Context (Hardcover))

Astonishing…a thorough examination of those forms of anti-Israel and anti-Zionist polemic which skirt close to, and frequently cross over into, political anti-Semitism…This is a powerful, explosive book. Read it from cover to cover. Now and again you will need to deploy the arguments it so cogently presents you with, the ones you always knew were there but could not produce for yourself. We needed it. A non-Jew has provided it.

Bernard Harrison has brought talents he honed for 40 years in what he calls ‘the amiable sharkpool of analytic philosophy’ to brilliantly dissect the anti-Semitism currently purveyed by the left. An elegant stylist, Harrison is deadly in shredding the claims of the exponents of the new anti-Semitism. Harrison is superb dissecting the meretricious reasoning characteristic of anti-Semitism, the internal contradictions, the incoherence, and the evasion of contradictory evidence.

Bernard Harrison, a philosophy professor at the University of Utah, has done something unusual. In today’s climate of fearful academic inquiry, which often wavers between conspiracy theories and a refusal to acknowledge harmful trends, Harrison has written a sane, balanced book on the growing anti-Semitism in Left-influenced liberal circles.

By bringing the gifts of analytic philosophy and moral passion to bear on the antisemitism of liberals, Bernard Harrison, like George Eliot before him, has revealed the link between bad reasoning – vilification and canard – and its violent consequences. The Resurgence of Antisemitism is an admirable work of heroic conscience, and merits the attention of every open and honest mind.

I write as a long-time leftist, writer on Marxist theory, and charter member of the New Left. Harrison brings a precise philosopher’s intelligence to the vexing, frightening, and at times disgusting phenomenon of left-wing anti-semitism. If his history is at times one-sided and his account of the left simplistic, he has nailed the many failures of left moral clarity and intellectual imagination. If you’ve ever wondered why and how seemingly liberal, left, anti-racist, nice people can hold such distorted views on Israel, this is an excellent book for you. If you think of yourself as progressive and think Israel has no right to exist, or is the sole cause of the conflict, you’d better read it immediately.

Let me say straight out that this is an extraordinary book and a delight to read. Intellectually it goes far beyond anything else written on the “New Anti-Semitism.” It is a wonderful remedy for the close-mindedness and lazy thinking that beset so much of modern culture, and that are most manifest when intelligent people opinionate about anti-Semitism and Israel. Harrison is attempting to reveal to well-intentioned and bien-pensant readers the blind spots in their own consciousness which deflect them into very dangerous and distasteful channels of anti-Semitism. Anyone who felt that Edward Said’s Orientalism opened up new intellectual vistas is bound to have a similar – if disconcerting – thrill of the disturbingly new when reading this book.

Outlining a precise boundary between anti-semitism and legitimate criticism of Israeli policies, the author demonstrates, through critical analysis of liberal literature and commentaries, that the Left’s articulation of moral indignation verges on-if it is not rooted in-an anti-semitism that has a long, bloody history. Recommended.

What makes this book so impressive is that it goes beyond the current political controversy and makes an original and worthwhile contribution to moral philosophy. Harrison presents a subtle pluralist view of morality, arguing that some moral problems-like some of those arising from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict-have no solution that can be fully satisfactory from a moral point of view. He lucidly analyzes a certain zealously moralistic ethos, which used to be religious but which can now be found secularized on the political left. The book is a timely warning that what seems to be a solid moral high ground may in fact be a terrain prone to subsidence and collapse.