Pierre Birnbaum’s Tears of History: The Rise of Political Antisemitism in the United States, was published in English last summer, after first appearing in French in 2022, so it can be forgiven for the fact that the picture it paints of anti-Semitism in the U.S. looks very different from the picture that has come into focus after October 7. Yet the distinguished historian of French anti-Semitism makes errors of analysis that are less excusable, beginning with his theory that the presence of Jews in prominent positions in the Obama administration—like, in his view, the presence of Jews in Franklin Roosevelt’s administration—has been a major catalyst for political anti-Semitism in America. Allan Arkush writes in his review:

That the right wing of the 2010s branded Obama’s administration as a tool of the Jews just as thoroughly as its predecessors had branded FDR’s is, it seems to me, something that Birnbaum asserts but fails to substantiate. He does not really engage in a detailed comparison that would warrant such a conclusion, and the evidence he does provide is sometimes dubious.

Enough time has now passed to answer Birnbaum’s question as to whether Biden’s appointment of many Jews to high positions in his administration would rejuvenate an American version of [the French reactionary] Édouard Drumont’s anti-Semitic and antidemocratic “myth of the Jewish Republic.” It has not.

But for Arkush what rankles most is not Birnbaum’s misapprehension of the American political scene, but his apparent prescription that Jews ought to “stay on the sidelines” of politics to preserve their safety—a prescription perhaps best articulated by the doomed Austrian Jewish writer Stefan Zweig during the Nazi rise to power. Arkush writes:

Speaking for myself, I am glad that I live in a country where a leader of the majority party could make a speech like the one Chuck Schumer delivered on the Senate floor in November. Many of the new anti-Semites in America, he declared in his remarkable address, “aren’t neo-Nazis, or card-carrying Klan members, or Islamist extremists.” They were, instead, leftists whom liberal Jews such as himself had generally regarded as political allies. . . .

If taking part in the democratic system on all levels entails certain risks—and I don’t think that they are by any means as great as Birnbaum supposes—then our leaders, like Senator Schumer, will have to ignore the message of Stefan Zweig and continue to take them.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.