Since the inception of the ‘War on Terror, ‘ Israel has become increasingly important to Western imperial strategy and ever more aggressive in its policies towards the Palestinians. A key ideological weapon in this development is the cynical and unjustified accusation of ‘anti-Semitism’ to silence protest and dissent.
For historical reasons, this tactic has been deployed most forcefully in France, and in the first of the two essays in this book French writers Alain Badiou and Eric Hazan demolish the ‘anti-Semitism is everywhere’ claim used to bludgeon critics of the Israeli state and those who stand in solidarity with the banlieue youth.
In ‘The Philo-Semitic Reaction, ‘ Ivan Segr� undertakes a meticulous deconstruction of a rampant reactionary trend that identifies Jewish interests with the ‘democratic’ West. Segr�’s aim is to uphold a universalist position and to defend Jewish tradition from Zionist ideological distortion.
A propos de l’auteur
Shlomo Sand studied history at the University of Tel Aviv and at the �cole des hautes �tudes en sciences sociales, in Paris. He currently teaches contemporary history at the University of Tel Aviv. His books include The Invention of the Jewish People, On the Nation and the Jewish People, L’Illusion du politique: Georges Sorel et le d�bat intellectuel 1900, Georges Sorel en son temps, Le XXe si�cle � l’�cran and Les Mots et la terre: les intellectuels en Isra�l.