Gilbert Achcar - The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives

GILBERT ACHCAR, who grew up in Beirut, is Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His many books include The Clash of Barbarisms: The Making of the New World Disorder (Saqi Books, 2006), published in thirteen languages, The 33-Day War: Israels War on Hezbollah in Lebanon and Its Aftermath (with Michel Warschawski, Saqi Books, 2007), and Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy, a book of dialogues with Noam Chomsky.

A work of breath-taking empathy, examining one of the most painful and emotion-laden topics in the modern world with dispassion, sensitivity and high erudition [A] magisterial study Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies, Columbia University

Essential reading for anyone who seeks a balanced understanding of the place of Jews and the Holocaust in Arab thinking today. Whether or not one agrees with Gilbert Achcar on every issue, he provides a welcome and well-informed counterpoint to caricaturists and hate-mongers and fear-promoters of every persuasion. Michael R. Marrus, Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor Emeritus of Holocaust Studies, University of Toronto

An erudite, perceptive, and highly original study that shines much-needed light on a field which has tended to be dominated by partisanship and propaganda Avi Shlaim, Professor of International Relations, St Antonys College, University of Oxford

A sensitive and insightful exploration of an important dimension of the Middle East conflict Achcars book, which combines meticulous scholarship and an engaging style, is a significant contribution to the mutual understanding that is in such short supply. Peter Novick, Professor Emeritus of Modern History, University of Chicago

A penetrating analysis of the multiplicity of attitudes and responses in the Arabic-speaking world toward Nazism, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust Francis R. Nicosia, Raul Hilberg Distinguished Professor of Holocaust Studies, University of Vermont

A courageous undertaking [Achcar] succeeds in treating the subject of the relationship of Palestine and the Nazi Holocaust with original thinking, profound scholarship, and meticulous analysis. Naseer Aruri, member of the Palestine National Council; Chancellor Professor (Emeritus) of Political Science, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth

In a field fraught with bad faith and sheer propaganda, Gilbert Achcars book stands out as scholarly and even-handed. Idith Zertal, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Jewish Studies, University of Basel

A systematic and scholarly refutation of the simplistic myths that have arisen following the formation of Israel the best book on the subject so far Tariq Ali, Guardian

A refreshing and original study, showing clearly that Muslim anti-Semitism is neither universal, nor inevitable, nor subject to pat explanations. The Economist

Gilbert Achcars The Arabs and the Holocaust is for the most part a fascinating, subtle and original analysis of Israeli and Arab historical narratives. Simon Sebag Montefiore, BBC History Magazine

Achcar is in full mastery of both the Arabic and the Western sources on his subject. His exhaustive survey of Arabic sources is particularly important in correcting the many distortions circulated by polemicists seeking to paint Arabs and Muslims as anti-Semites Policy makers would do well to heed Gilbert Achcars call for a more balanced approach to the tragedies that make the Palestinian-Israeli conflict so intractable. Eugene Rogan, Times Literary Supplement

Lucid and penetrating Stephen Howe, Independent

[Achcar] carefully examines the long history of Arab-Jewish conflict back through the 19th century, illuminating the range of opinions The Washington Post

Calm and judicious in tenor yet unyielding in its intellectual rigor, this selection may show the path out of a seemingly intractable dispute. Booklist

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brothers eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

PART 1: THE TIME OF THE SHOAH
Arab Reactions to Nazism and Anti-Semitism 19331947

PART 2: THE TIME OF THE NAKBA
Arab Attitudes to the Jews and the Holocaust
from 1948 to the Present

This book had its inception early in 2006, when my friend Enzo Traverso asked me to contribute a chapter on the reception of the Holocaust in the Middle East to the monumental work on the history of the Shoah that he and three other scholars were co-editing for the Italian publishing house UTET in Turin. The editors were looking for someone who could write about the reception of the Holocaust in the Middle East. I accepted the invitation, but only after much hesitation: the short six months I was given to complete my essay an author who had been approached before me had bowed out late in the day made the task, given its scope and complexity, a perilous one.

I took it on nonetheless, motivated by what might be called a sense of duty. The work being put together would, I knew, be a good one, and I did not want to see the issue I had been asked to discuss a delicate question if ever there was one treated incompetently or left aside. Out of a concern for intellectual rigour, I limited the field of my research to countries that lay directly in my area of competence, countries whose language I knew those of the Arab world from which I come. After my editors had approved this restriction, I began intensively researching and writing, and I eventually turned out the long chapter that closes the second and final volume of that work. Enzo was the first to suggest, insistently, that I work this chapter up into a book. At the time, I was not particularly inclined to plunge back into intensive research on the same topic.

But I continued to give it thought, since the questions raised were being posed ever more sharply in the Middle East. For example, late in 2006 a Tehran conference called Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision promoted Holocaust denial, with the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, contributing his own deliberately provocative statements. Urged on both by readers of the original chapter including the publishers of the French, British and American editions of the present book and by my own desire to discuss the problem in a form more widely accessible than the voluminous compendium published solely in Italian, I undertook the project of transforming the chapter into a book.