The Jewish Divide over Israel: Accusers and Defenders  reviewed by Emanuele Ottolenghi in National Review Online

Despite all the clamor about Jewish lobbies’ silencing of critics of Israel, and about the difficulties faced by true Jewish heroes who break ranks to “tell the truth,” most Jewish detractors of Israel are well-established figures — from MIT professor Noam Chomsky to New York University historian Tony Judt, from Oxford don Avi Shlaim to New Yorker star reporter Seymour Hersh, from Stanford University Talmudic scholar Daniel Boyarin to a plethora of tenured Israeli radicals. These commentators tend to have easy access to publishing houses and to the op-ed sections of prestigious and influential newspapers and magazines. In the literary landscape of op-eds, pamphlets, and academic works, it is the pro-Israel voice that is constantly struggling to be heard.

Enter Paul Bogdanor and Edward Alexander, editors of the new book The Jewish Divide over Israel: Accusers and Defenders. This book is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand not only why so many Jewish intellectuals turn against Israel, but also the mechanisms by which their otherwise shoddy and superficial scholarship and journalistic work earns so much praise.

As with other collections, it is hard to offer a comprehensive view of this volume, which includes analyses of the works of such anti-Israel figures as Noam Chomsky and his student and follower Tanya Reinhart, George Steiner, Israel Shahak, and others. But two main themes emerge that deserve scrutiny. The first is the claim, made by so many Jewish intellectuals, to be the authentic expression of Judaism’s prophetic tradition in their crusade against Israel and Zionism. And the second is the crucial role their rhetoric plays in excusing, condoning, and — in effect — abetting anti-Semitism.

There is something appealing in the idea of a Jewish antinomian as the quintessential embodiment of what being Jewish is all about. Jewish intellectuals who rise as Israel’s accusers claim to be doing so in order to save Judaism from Israel and Zionism. In effect, their crusade against Israel is less about justice for the Palestinians than about coming to terms with their own tortured Jewish identity...

Not that anti-Semitism would not exist without self-hating Jews, but they provide a stronger case for it. And in so doing, they gain acceptance and full recognition in the circles to which they want to belong. Their adherence to the political dogma of the progressive and liberal Left is a small entry fee, given their effective alienation from Jewish life, Jewish values, and Jewish communities. But it is also evidence that they are anything but the antinomian dissenters they purport to be. In fact, they are the expression of a herd instinct and living proof that nobody is immune from anti-Jewish prejudice, not even the Jews themselves.