Reviews for History and the Enlightenment

The average rating for History and the Enlightenment based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-04-19 00:00:00 Jose Luis Labalsa Llaquet Got this to help make Edward Gibbons' Fall and Decline of Roman Empire easier to understand, but this book was boring and too much work on top of Gibbons. It's sad that historians too often take fascinating periods of history and grind them into long, dusty sagas.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-04-14 00:00:00 Paul Puccio A vast tome revealing and analyzing the shocking reality of Jew-hatred today. Dissects and explores the roots of this frightening and revolting phenomenon. The author abundantly shows how it is a dangerous myth that anti-Semitism can only come form the far-right and points out that people who believe this falsehood are caught in a seventy year time warp. In this large volume, Wistrich captures the venom and records for our use and vital understanding about how all the ills of the world today are blamed by Islamists and the radical left on the tiny state of Israel, which is demonized and blood libeled , Israel's people are repulsively labelled as Nazis and accused of all manner of blood libels and their murder justified, ultimately resulting in what the author refers to accurately as a ' a warrant for genocide'. This book exposes the intensity of the culture of genocidal hatred extant in the media, mosques and universities today, to name a few of the sources. The three totalitarian ideologies that have caused so much death and destruction in the last century, Communism , Nazism and Islamism have all taken Jew-hatred and the new anti-Semitism, Israel hatred to the heart of their ideology. The Soviet Union from the 1960s demonized the Zionist movement and the Jewish State as bent on world domination and controlling the economies of the major Western capitalist states, and working for the enslavement of the Arab world and other Third World peoples. This propaganda has outlived communist rule in the USSR and is the staple diet of the Western Left and various parts of the Third World (such as Venezuela, Cuba and South Africa). Witrich pulls no punches in showing the horrific scope of today;s manifestation of the world's oldest hatred. If you substitute the word 'Jew' for 'Zionist' you will see little difference between Leftist/Islamist propaganda and Nazi propagnda of the Hitler era. After all the Nazis aimed for the eradication of the Jews of Europe, the anti-Zionists aim for the eradication of the Jewish State and the ethnic cleansing of the levant of all Jews. Israel accounts for 40% of world Jewry and is the largest Jewish community in the world. The destruction of Israel would certainly lead to the death or displacement of five million Jews, so in point of fact anti-Zionism amounts to very little difference to Nazi anti-Semitism. Witrich explores Israel-hatred in Europe, the Third World and the Islamic world and none of it makes for a pretty picture. Witrich condemns the sheer hypocrisy of left-wing Israel-haters " The same radical left that foams at the mouth at the very mention of Israel/Palestine has little difficulty in closing it's eyes to the religious and gender apartheid in Islam, the murderous crimes of such Communist leaders as Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, not to mention the mass murders in Africa from Idi Amin in the 1970s to Rwanda over a decade ago and Sudan today. While real massacres are ignored, a huge propaganda effort continues to be invested globally in pillorying Israel as a perpetrator of genocide. This far transcends the Left since it also involves the United Nations, the Arab states, the Muslim world, non government organizations and parts of the Western media who black out Israeli victims of suicide bombers" Most leftwing and liberal anti-Zionists in the West often mask their hostility by a highly selective humanitarianism that sees only Palestinians as worthy of compassion. Witrich disproves many lies and myths about the conflict including that Israel resembles Apartheid South Africa, and that the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis prior and during the Second World War. He dissects anti-Israel prejudice in Britain and explores the venomous rantings of the likes of anti-Jewish/anti-Israel intellectual and political bigots such as George Galloway, Jenny Tonge, Robert Fisk, John Pilger and Tam Dalyell. He also quotes those brave and lone voices such as Melanie Philips and Julie Burchill who have stood up to this hatred. Julie Burchill explaining why she left the highly noxious Guardian for the more balanced The Times explained that as a non-Jew she observed a 'quite striking bias against Israel...which for all it's faults is the only country in that barren region that you or I, or any feminist, atheist, homosexual or trade unionist could bear to live under". Burchill points out that anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism are the only forms of prejudice that still unite left and right. She expressed her revulsion at the "slime of hypocritical hatred" Their are frightening and revealing chapters on the Red-Green Axis in Europe and the repulsive phenomenon of Jewish elites who have dedicated their lives to hatred of and determination to harm the Jewish State, such as Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Lenni Brener, Michael Neumann and Jacqueline Rose. In recent years Finkelstein who has openly praised Hamas and Hezbollah and condoned their terrorism against Israeli civilians has become 'the go to Jewish-icon for Islamists, neo-Nazis Holocaust deniers, and deluded leftists determined to believe that demonic Israel is the source of all their woes". Denial of the Holocaust is another mainstay of Islamic Jew-hatred and Israelophobia. In exploring Arab and Islamo-Fascist Jew-hatred Wistrich traces the history of Hitler's close ally and collaborator Mufti Haj Amin Al Husseini , Arafat, the PLO, Nasser, Hamas , Hezbollah and the IslamoNazi Khamenei/Ahmadinejad regime in Iran. Shocking examples of this bottomless venom include the statements of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah that one of the central reasons for the creation of Hezbollah has been the violent eradication of Israel "That is the principal objective of Hezbollah...As we see it this is a cancerous state and the root of all the crises and wars and cannot be factor in brining about a true and just peace in the region". The spiritual guide to Hezbollah sheik Muhammad Husayn Fadallah has said that even if all Jews in Israel converted to Islam they would still have to leave or die, as their 'blood is tainted with the crimes of Zionism' Hamas and Hezbollah leaders have both expressed praise for the 'noble acts' of killing 'Zionists' ESPECIALLY they have noted WOMEN and children. In 2002, Muhammad Tantawi, chief Mufti of Egypt and sheik of Al Azhar has declared that Muslims must return to the teachings of Islam "in order to fight against Allah's enemy and to cleanse the sacred ground of the Jews." Tantawi issued a fatwa in 2002 stating that assassins should be considered as martyrs especially of Jewish women and children were killed in the attacks. The authior disproves the myth that Jews were well treated and prospered under Islamic rule through the centuries and actually points out that the tradition of the yellow badge that Jews were forced to wear by the Nazis during the Holocaust, originated in Baghdad, and has been revived in Iran today. The last two chapters detail the Iranian Islamo-Nazi regime and the goals and ideology of the late Ayatolllah Khomeini and the Iranian supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today,and Ahmadinejads's repeated vows to wipe Israel off the map and his nuclear weapons programme being built with the express purpose of doing so. It is worth concluding with the words of scholar Mathias Kuntzel that "Just as Hitler sought to 'liberate' humanity by murdering Jews, so Ahmadinejad believes he can ;liberate' humanity by eradicating Israel"