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

According to Lewis, the first Arab protests against Zionist settlement in what is now Israel were not anti-Semitic in nature. The Princeton professor and author (The Arabs in History insists here that opposition to Israel is not necessarily an expression of anti-Jewish sentiment. Yet he describesand is alarmed bya virulent strain of anti-Semitism that presently pervades the Arab states and traces this prejudice back to the early 1930s when racist Nazi tracts surfaced in the literature of such groups as Young Egypt. Current Arab demonization of the Jew, Lewis points out, makes no distinction between Jews, Israelis and Zionists. This clearsighted, dispassionate analysis of anti-Semitism includes a chapter debunking the notion that both Jews and Arabs are ""Semites'' (Semitic refers to a linguistic group) and an illuminating comparative history of Jewish existence under Christian and Muslim rule. First serial to New York Review of Books. (May 27)