Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

‘A beautiful shoah’

by
August 2006, no. 283

Beyond Chutzpah: On the misuse of anti-semitism and the abuse of history by Norman G. Finkelstein

Verso, $35 hb, 332 pp

Book 2 Cover Small (400 x 600)

Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood by Idith Zertal

CUP, $59.95 hb, 236 pp

‘A beautiful shoah’

by
August 2006, no. 283

Beyond chutzpah is a long, tedious and barely readable rant, known less for its content than for the childless controversy it succeeded in provoking. Despite the promise of its subtitle, the book makes no meaningful attempt to describe or to understand the misuses of anti-Semitism. It is, instead, an obsessive assault on another book, The Case For Israel (2003), by the Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who has gained prominence for defending O.J. Simpson, Mike Tyson, Klaus von Bülow and, more recently, Israel.

Jonathan Pearlman reviews ‘Beyond Chutzpah: On the misuse of anti-semitism and the abuse of history’ by Norman G. Finkelstein and ‘Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood’ by Idith Zertal

Beyond Chutzpah: On the misuse of anti-semitism and the abuse of history

by Norman G. Finkelstein

Verso, $35 hb, 332 pp

Book 2 Cover Small (400 x 600)

Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood

by Idith Zertal

CUP, $59.95 hb, 236 pp

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.