In Search of Anti-Semitism

Gabriel Schoenfeld's widely touted book The Return of Anti-Semitism gets a pan from George Liebmann, writing in the Hudson Institute's journal American Outlook. Here's the lede:

Based on news clippings and prepared, according to its acknowledgments, "under the strain of a tight deadline," Gabriel Schoenfeld's The Return of Anti-Semitism is a polemical work that represents itself as a survey of contemporary anti-Semitism in its Islamic, European, and American manifestations. The book is virtually bereft of hard data. Readers will find no polling results, no crime or employment statistics, no evidence of discrimination, and little history. Moreover, the conclusion acknowledges that what the author describes as anti-Semitism accelerated at the time of the Palestinian intifada in 2000 and "does appear to be an epiphenomenon of the Arab-Israeli conflict." A book with such an ill-founded premise is unlikely to yield much light, though this one does generate a good deal of heat.

Liebmann does appreciate Schoenfeld's information, "however haphazardly assembled," on anti-Semitism in Asia and among Muslim Europeans. Otherwise, he writes, the book is merely "a shot in the 'culture wars' which seeks to deflect criticism of the current Israeli government, and the policy of the Bush administration with respect to Iraq and Palestine, by indiscriminately tarring critics of both with the brush of anti-Semitism and by demonizing or marginalizing those who hold opposing views."