A timely book that avoids the “cudgel” of antisemitism, “cynically deployed to silence voices for Palestinian human rights.”
Two social activists and journalists investigate the complicated layers of persistent antisemitism in society, especially in light of what they consider Israel’s unjust treatment of Palestinians in Gaza.
Self-described Jewish leftists, Burley, author of Fascism Today and Why We Fight, and Lorber urge an “intersectional” approach to combating antisemitism, which has gained traction across the globe since Israel’s strong-arm tactics in clearing the Gaza Strip of Hamas terrorists. Rather than excluding Muslims, Christians, and rightists, for example, the authors aim for a better strategy by “forming alliances across differences, building bridges not walls, and striving alongside others for a future free from inequality, exploitation, and oppression in all its forms.” The authors first examine the roots of antisemitism, beginning with the demonization of the “other,” though they reject the notion that antisemitism is simply an “eternal hatred” that has always been and will always be. Rather, it is rooted in conspiracy theories, drawing from “a deep reservoir of stereotypes and narratives” and serving to explain the “hidden hand behind worker revolt, changing gender and social norms, racial justice movements, and other despised progressivism.” In short, antisemitism involves power, class, and politics. The authors examine the tropes used in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (“jumbled and disorganized, switching haphazardly between a broad array of topics, presenting little in the way of clear argumentation”), as well as QAnon, Trumpism, Christian Zionism, and white nationalism, among others. They devote a third of the book to the importance of being able to criticize Israeli and American policies in the name of social justice while avoiding the “chilling” accusation of antisemitism. Burley and Lorber admirably and forthrightly explore the “multitudes” of Jewish experience through a variety of voices and organizations.
A timely book that avoids the “cudgel” of antisemitism, “cynically deployed to silence voices for Palestinian human rights.”Pub Date: June 4, 2024
ISBN: 9781685890919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Melville House
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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SEEN & HEARD
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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