In Memoriam: Professor Robert Wistrich
Crosspost from UK Media Watch
Robert S. Wistrich, professor of Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, head of the Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, and perhaps the world’s foremost scholar of antisemitism, died of a heart attack yesterday in Rome.
He was 70.
Wistrich was born in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic in 1945, raised in Britain and educated in the US. He settled in Israel in 1982.
Professor Wistrich published dozens of books throughout his long career about the history of Jew hatred, including From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, the Jews and Israel, and his magnum opus, A Lethal Obsession: Antisemitism — From Antiquity to the Global Jihad, published in 2010.
Though he was an accomplished academic, Wistrich also possessed the unique ability within academia to communicate effectively to non-academics, and was able to speak clearly and plainly even when contextualizing the often complex dynamics of historical and contemporary antisemitism.
This writer was honored to share a panel with Professor Wistrich at a CAMERA event in Jerusalem earlier in the year, where he addressed the relationship between media coverage of Israel and rising antisemitism.
Here’s a video of his talk:
This past Thursday, Wistrich spoke at the Global Forum for Combatting Antisemitism in Jerusalem, where he addressed the increasing threat posed by Islamist antisemitism to Europe’s Jews, a topic, he often lamented, which is routinely downplayed by both the American and European media.
During his speech, he emphasized that Islamism represents the spearhead of the resurgent antisemitism – hatred of Jews qua Jews disguised as ‘mere’ hatred of Israel. He explained that the problem is not Islam as such, but the malevolent ideology of Islamism which misuses, abuses and hijacks one of the great universal faiths to legitimize extreme racism and violent Jihad.
Wistrich was a giant in his field, and a brave, sober and intellectually serious voice on anti-Jewish racism – a scourge he referred to as “the world’s longest hatred.”
He will be sorely missed.
— By Adam Levick
More from SNAPSHOTS
Professor John Quigley Falsely Condemns Israel and U.S. Support in His Syndicated Column
April 30, 2019
John B. Quigley In his widely distributed April syndicated opinion piece mainly about ISIS, the Islamist terrorist entity, John B. Quigley, an Ohio State University law professor, argues that claims of an imminent ISIS resurgence [...]
The New York Times’ Slow Reaction to Hamas Crackdown on Palestinian Protesters
April 4, 2019
The New York Times took a slight jab at Hamas, the terrorist organization that rules the Gaza Strip, in a recent story about Hamas's crackdown on Palestinian protesters who spoke out against its policies in [...]
CNN’s Zakaria Deals With U.S. Proclamation Recognizing Golan As Part Of Israel
April 3, 2019
Fareed Zakaria hosted an eight-minute discussion of the Golan matter at the end of his weekly (weekend) program, “Global Public Square “ (GPS) hour-long Cable News Network (CNN) broadcast. The broadcast, on both CNN and [...]
NY Times Reporter David Halbfinger Editorializes Israel as “Brutal”
March 6, 2019
New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief David Halbfinger Israel, according to the New York Times, is a brute. A March 3 news analysis piece—not an opinion piece—by the newspaper's Jerusalem bureau chief David Halbfinger uses [...]
Palestinian Malevolent Indoctrination Exposed; Mainstream Media Are Indifferent
February 26, 2019
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), an Israel-based non-governmental organization, analyzes and presents in English to the world the ongoing inflammatory indoctrination of Palestinians in Arabic particularly via Palestinian Authority (PA) television (West Bank). PMW is a [...]
Did WCC Activists Attend A Birthday Party Promoted by Palestinian Extremist Organization?
February 4, 2019
The video is a bit fuzzy and grainy. But the footage of birthday party for Shadi Farar, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy who spent three years in an Israeli jail on charges of intent to murder, [...]