This volume is a collection of breaking news reports from the front lines of the propaganda war against Israel, the Jews, and the infidel West. Dr. Chesler tracks the slow motion Holocaust that began in Israel in 2000, a holocaust that remained invisible to most of the world, and that foreshadowed the global expansion of Islamic Jihad. Dr. Chesler documents how educated Westerners and the mainstream media distort the war against the Jews by presenting Jewish self-defense as criminal aggression and by burying or misnaming the facts. This book is a must-read addition to your library in these most frightening and challenging of times.
I have been tracking the propaganda war against Israel since the early 1970s. The Western media and professoriate's coverage of the bloody Intifada against the Jews has distorted both facts and context in grotesque ways. In a world of false narratives, those in the West who benefit from free speech and full human rights defend the utter absence of such rights in the Muslim world. Instead, academics and journalists call Israel the worst possible nation on earth.
From 2003 through 2015, I wrote more than 200,000 words about anti-Semitism / anti-Zionism. I have selected the most important, most representative, or most unique pieces in this 63,000-word volume. I hope that this book will arm students on campus, professors who have an independent mind, future historians, and religious and government leaders. I want you to remember these events and to never forget them
SELECTED REVIEWS AND INTERVIEWS
Breitbart
The Growing Cognitive War Against Israel: A Q&A With Dr. Phyllis Chesler by Frances Martel
In her new book, Living History: On the Front Lines for Israel and the Jews 2003-2015, best-selling author, lecturer, columnist and retired psychotherapist Dr. Phyllis Chesler explores the growth of the anti-Israel campus movement and the alliance of leftist academic intellectuals with leaders of anti-Semitic Islamist movements in the East.
Speaking to Breitbart News via email, Chesler expands on the "cognitive war" being waged against Israel and the West, the startling growth of leftist pro-Palestinian movements on campus, and the nature and appeal of the anti-Israel "death cult" that has taken advantage of young college students looking to empathize with the oppressed.
Q: The book is a series of essays from the past twelve years that gives the reader a wide breadth of how expansive the propaganda war, as you call it in the book, against the state of Israel is. It covers everything from your first experiences with the anti-Israel movement on campus to events as recent as Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech to Congress on the Iranian nuclear talks earlier this year. My first question to you is a simple one: why this compilation of essays now?
A: I wanted to preserve these representative and strengthened essays as a legacy and for widespread use on campuses and at organizations and conferences. This is a reliable and accessible way of both remembering and teaching the coming generations about what has been happening globally in terms of the Orwellian defamation of Jewish Israel and of Western civilizational values.
Q: How has the anti-Israel movement on campus grown in the past decade, in your estimation, and what can pro-Israel students and activists do to stem that growth?
A: The Soviet-era Arab League, Saudi and Qatari money, Palestinian propaganda groups, Muslim Brotherhood student groups, human rights groups, and the United Nations, have been working on demonizing Israel for the last 35-60 years. Professors, think tanks, Middle East Studies programs, films,student conferences—with the strong backing of the Muslim Brotherhood's Muslim Student Association and Students for Justice in Palestine and what has become an "Islamophobia" industry—have forcefully indoctrinated American students (and the media) into believing that the earth is flat. Now, anyone who does not hew to such politically correct Junk Science, will be physically intimidated, jeered, cursed, economically punished, censored, and possibly fired. What to do? First, we must admit that a Cognitive War was declared long ago and, second, that it is a war we simply refused to fight. Worse, it is a war in which we collaborated against ourselves. Now, we must seize courage in both hands and commit ourselves to this battle for the next one hundred years.
Q: Is there a notable distinction to be made between anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli activism? If so, where is the line, and how should supporters of Israel approach each?
A: Currently, there is no longer any difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. In the distant past, an honorable theoretical discussion could be had about whether the long-persecuted Jews would ultimately benefit from a state "like any other state," which some believed would absolve Jews from their God-given mission of being a "light unto the nations." What kind of Jewish state Israel should be has been appropriately discussed and argued. It still remains a more than lively discussion. But now, there are those, including some Jews, who believe that if Israel cannot be perfect, it does not deserve to exist; that Israel has caused the existential danger it now finds itself in; that even though Israel is surrounded by enemies (not only geographically but also theologically, ideologically, economically, internationally, militarily, and by the Biggest Lies ever, etc.), Israel-alone should still be judged by standards that one never applies to Sudan, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Hamas, Fatah, ISIS, and Boko Haram.
In 2002, I, and a mere handful of others, stated that anti-Zionism is partly what anti-Semitism is now about. I also stated that a Perfect Storm was coming our way (both Israel's and America's). That Storm is an alliance between western, politically correct intelligentsia and Islam. It took others about a decade to begin stating this as well.
Q: One of the most striking things for me about the book is how many topics it covers and, in turn, the way it highlights how versatile the left can be in hijacking any topic to bash Israel, from feminism to sports to theater and the performing arts. How much effort should supporters of Israel spend fighting in the political realm vs. combatting opponents in other venues that are not traditionally political? Is any one of these– entertainment, sports, international law, social justice– not getting as much attention from the pro-Israel movement as it should?
A: Israel needs a global "Iron Dome" to defend itself against the all-out cognitive war that is currently being waged against it. I spell out some specific ideas in a lecture that I am working on. I have also made many cogent suggestions over the years (some are contained in this book), which have never been tried or funded. Israel's supporters need to do everything, simultaneously, and we need to understand that we are coming from behind. However, that is also how our patriarch Jacob/Israel once approached crises and battles. We have the talent, we do not have the money. Arab and European governments have funded our Big Lie opponents for more than half a century. Funders must now do likewise. And we need team players working in concert. We exist.
Q: You are among one of the most unabashed feminists at the forefront of the pro-Israel movement. A young, politically conscious American woman reading or watching only liberal mainstream media would have a difficult time believing you can be both feminist and a hawk on foreign policy or, as you mention in "The Brownshirts of Our Time," feminist and pro-Israel. What do you say to those that can't see where the two ideologies meet?
A: I am a civil libertarian and a free thinker. I am not an ideologue. I am in service to original ideas—but we live at a moment in history when ideology trumps independent thinking and when celebrity trumps all. Thus, I oppose totalitarianism, fascism, and barbaric misogyny. I cannot make common cause with those who have been trained to demean the West and to celebrate all other cultures as both "equal" to and "oppressed" by the West. I once lived in the Islamic world and I move in Muslim (dissident) circles to this day. Therefore, unlike most Western feminists, I understand the nature of Islamic gender and religious apartheid—and I oppose it. I also understand that the history of Muslim leaders has been one of imperialism, colonialism, conversion by the sword, anti-black racism, slavery, persecution of infidels, and the gross subordination of women. I do not share the same need for sacrificial atonement that so many feminists currently display.
I lived in a polygamous household in Kabul and disagree with pseudo-feminists in the West who believe we should consider this cultural practice in a "relativist" way. I also saw my first burqas in Kabul and view them as a dangerous human rights violation and a health hazard. I also learned a little about family-initiated femicide, aka honor or horror killings, and know they are not at all like Western domestic violence.
Q: Given that Israel is the most female- and LGBT-friendly nation in the Middle East, should there be a responsibility among the feminist and LGBT rights movements to support Israel?
I also know that despite many flaws, Israel is the most democratic and liberal nation in the Middle East; it towers above any Arab or Muslim country in terms of rule by law, freedom from censorship, women's rights, gay rights, and Arab Muslim and Arab Christian rights. It also has the most ethical army in the world. In short, I know that the world's view of Israel is "upside down" and I mean to right it.
Q:What do you think is the appeal of the pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist movement on campus to young people who otherwise share socially liberal values incompatible with the ideals of groups like Hamas?
A: It is, essentially, a death cult appeal but one couched in the language of empathy for the suffering oppressed. It demands the utter eradication of individuality for a presumably noble purpose, that of sweeping away all evil on earth—no matter the cost. (Hmmm, where have we heard that before?) If Christians must be crucified and exiled; if Jews must be completely exterminated; if infidels must all convert to Islam or die—then so be it. What Westerners envision as "revolutionary" is really quite reactionary but the herd instinct, the pressure to be a politically correct anti-racist, has been dangerously romanticized. This madness must be de-programmed. First, the Islamists must be defeated militarily. Then, we can put our best minds to the task of de-programming.
Q: Beyond Israel, Europe appears to be a strong preoccupation for the book, particularly the rise of anti-Semitism there. What is Europe doing wrong to invite events like the Charlie Hebdo attack or even casual discrimination in cities like Paris and Malmo?
A: Europe, like America, and like Israel, symbolizes Western values which are despised, envied, and condemned by tribal Islam. Today, Europe is doing nothing wrong—and yet it is doing everything wrong. There is a tragic history here.
Europe wanted cheap Arab oil and cheap Arab and Muslim workers. They did not expect these workers to stay or to eventually bring half their villages along with them. Many Europeans have traditionally been racists. That is why so many are now "atoning" for the sins of their grandparents by adopting a more "politically correct" version of racism. (Dark-skinned Muslims may live as they wish, we have no desire to seriously integrate them; anyway, this is their preference as well).
Many immigrants remained illiterate or felt disenfranchised; they lived on the dole in hostile, parallel, anti-European communities and became radicalized via mosque, jail, and satellite TV. Jean Raspail, the French novelist, envisioned what could happen in his brilliant book In The Camp of the Saints. As I write in one of the essays in Living History: On The Front Line for Israel and the Jews, 2003-2015, I sometimes think that Europe is reaping a terrible, karmic destiny. It murdered six million friendly, non-violent, often highly assimilated Semites—the Jews—and has now reaped the whirlwind of many millions of non-friendly, violent, anti-assimilation Semites—the Arab and African Muslims.
FAMILY SECURITY MATTERS
Living History: On the Front Lines for Israel and the Jews 2003-2015 by Norman Simms
What follows is an expanded version of a brief set of reader comments entered on the amazon.com page for Chesler's new collection of essays.
Phyllis Chesler's new book brings together eighty-six of her essays over more than twelve years which as they came out one by one have always been powerful, frightening and shocking exposés of the truth suppressed by mainstream media, intellectual elites and institutions of higher learning. Above all, she brings her own personal witness to bear on her arguments. These days anyone who stands up for Israel, the Jews or America risks-rather, invites-the opprobrium of peers, colleagues and friends. We have entered one of the darkest days in world history since the end of World War Two. When a new dawn will break through remains uncertain.
After 9/11 Chesler became aware that as a feminist, a liberal, a Jew, a human being she was alienated from former professional colleagues and the political groups she once was an honourable member of; butalienation is actually too soft a word for what she faced and still does, since she has sometimes been required to hire bodyguards to protect her when she goes to speak, if she has not been dis-invited to talk on radio, address university forums, or participate in seminars and workshops. She is, of course: many pro-Israel and pro-American intellectuals have had to confront a new reality. These honourable spaces of public discourse and academic discourse have been politicized; many have been squashed under the weight of ideological fanatics, self-deluded so-called intellectuals, and poorly-educated students. These events are filled with screaming mobs, threatening thugs, hate-filled partisans of terrorism, trivializers of mass murder, and rationalizers of anti-Semitism and western democracy. Organizers of such events usually prove unwilling to control the mobs; police, fearing the consequences of a riot, turn on the proponents of liberal and democratic causes as agents provocateurs, and, so, gradually, surely, and increasingly, the airwaves, the print and electronic media are closed off to debate, and propaganda substitutes for fact and debate. Under such conditions, it is no wonder that many either run away or try to defend themselves with strident polemical voices. As Conrad Black said in a recent editorial in The Sun, what most threatens western democracy and civilization is less the rantings of fanatics faraway or even their random, spectacular but generally ineffective acts of terrorism, is our own loss of faith in each other as well-intentioned participants in dialogue and debate. That has allowed immature minds to gain control of many university functions and to fill the airwaves with shrill voices of meaningless jabber. It is all indeed very frightening.
To speak the truth about Israel or America or about western civilization today is often to be stigmatized as a racist, a colonist, an imperialist. Chesler calls this a process of bullying and exclusion one of Palestinianzation, Stalinization, and Fascism. It is not just likely to happen everywhere in a surge of irrationality, but it is happening too often to be comfortable with, and in many places it has already happened and the battle has gone to the side of bigotry and evil. Where? If Chesler is to be believed, on university campuses, on major television news networks, in feminist organization, in synagogue community centres-on the streets, in private homes, in the minds of too many people. Not everyone, to be sure, but way too many for comfort.
To read the essays in On the Front Lines, some of which have been tweaked, trimmed and condensed to avoid repetition, is to relive her experience of watching former close friends reject her, feminist organizations she helped found turn against her and the ideals they once had, Jewish leaders who used to live by the principles of rabbinical tradition in her eyes scurry away to hide behind politically correct chicanery. Though she is not a journalist and her essays are not meant to be objective reports from the front lines, she is a cogent commentator on events as they occur. This is not an easy task. Events do not all at once reveal their origins or consequences. Yet someone must react quickly. Words must be spoken-and this precisely where wisdom and experience of a lifetime should come into their own. In a sense the little essays are polemical responses to outrageous things done and said; in another, they are sometimes welcome meditations and reflections on these disturbing things, providing them with historical contexts, juxtaposing them to meaningful analogies drawn from Jewish history, literary texts and real-life anecdotes and memories, providing a sustained and developing commentary on a world in the process of falling apart.
Thus, to go through all the essays in one long session is also to force oneself to relive the past dozen years and to feel again, only more intensely, with greater horror and deepening premonitions of doom, the loss of integrity in our major news media and educational institutions. The world falls apart in a general historical sense as it loses its way and its so-called moral compass spins wildly out of control. It also fragments one's own social world by causing gaps to develop where long-time friendships once seemed to guarantee support and standards of trust.
On a much lower level of intensity, I have had analogous experiences, from snide comments from former colleagues, icy silence and cutting stares from one-time friends, removal of professional privileges from a place I worked at for over forty years and sometimes to threats of hostility hacked into the internet. I grew up with Phyllis in Boro Park, a Jewish neighbourhood in Brooklyn during the 1940s and 1950s, but where she became an activist and continued throughout her career to stand boldly for many liberal and radical causes, I moved away from the centres of intellectual activity, literally down to the very bottom of the universe, in New Zealand, and into the sanctuary (as I thought) of academic scholarship but then I discovered, even before 9/11, that who was standing in the way of my career advancement were the very people that once seemed to be my mentors and ideals. It is not a very pleasant experience.
When I first perused Chesler's op-ed pieces, blogs and essays they did more than shock me by the violence they portended and the revelation of violations all the essential values of Jewish morality and Enlightenment insights. Her voice is usually persuasive and vivid, occasionally irascible, always important. Often I could find confirmation of her insights and observations in the various media available to me; she also reported on people and events absent from the local press and television news. My own experiences are too far away for me to judge everything. When the chips are down, I depend on her.
Just as I always took pride in noting her accomplishments as an academic and her fame as a feminist-and took reflected pleasure in her contact with so many important and influential people-I feel the agony of her rejection, exclusion and alienation. I sympathize with her heart-felt cries of pain and her calls to arms. I wish I knew how to cleanse the world of such indignities and insults to truth and justice.
This new book witnesses to a world gone mad. I have to thank Phyllis Chesler for having the gumption, thechutzpa, the strength of character and the sharpness of mind and pen to say what has to be said-and in a language I don't have the skills or the courage to use. For those who have the health, the strength and the energy, read this book. It is encouraging and depressing at the same time. Too many bad things have happened, but it may not be too late to re-take control of universities, media outlets and community organizations. Chesler has laid down the gauntlet-she asks us all to do something now before it is too late. Don't let any lie go by unchallenged.
ISRAEL NATIONAL NEWS
On the Front Lines By Fern Sidman
From 2003 through the early months of 2015, I wrote more than 200,000 words about anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism," says Prof.. Phyllis Chesler in the introduction of her recently released book, "Living History: On the Front Lines for Israel and the Jews 2003-2015" (Gefen Publishers).
This admission should come as no surprise to anyone even tangentially familiar with the voluminous amount of essays and articles that Dr. Chesler has written on the subject over the last 13 years, donning an impressive variety of hats. As an astute political analyst, researcher and investigative journalist, she has honed these skills in her quest to offer her reader a meticulous examination of a panoply of hot button geo-political issues pertaining to Israel and the Jewish people.
In this anthology-style compendium that contains the corpus of her work in non-redacted form, Chesler prodigiously confronts the seemingly eternal scourge of global anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism, the pernicious nature of radical Islam, the proliferation of visceral Jew hatred and incessant Israel bashing onuniversity campuses, the exposure of the most egregious forms of propaganda in films and books, the truth about the nefarious agenda of multicultural relativism and critiques the role of the left-liberal media in creating the "perfect storm."
Chesler throws down the gauntlet and debunks the "Big Lies" in a brutally honest manner. Crafting cogent arguments with the trademark depth and aplomb that has come to define her writing since 1972, she takes no hostages.
As she takes us on a sojourn that unravels the "slow motion holocaust" that is being perpetrated against the Jew but nary acknowledged or even discussed in "polite circles," Chesler explains that this cognitive war against the Jewish nation is predicated on a corruption of the truth. Fueled by unsavory alliances between the denizens of the leftist/progressive camp and radical Jihadists of all stripes, anti-Zionism (which is tantamount to anti-Semitism, says Chesler) is no longer considered an odious worldview but one that smacks of a perverse sense of moral rectitude; straight out of an Orwellian-style groupthink salon.
Case in point: Chesler speaks directly to her erstwhile colleagues in the Western feminist movement who ostracized her for blowing the lid off the anti-Israel sentiment in its ranks. Shining a light on their misplaced invective against the Jewish state, Chesler writes, "Since 1972, I have been explaining to Ms. feminists that we should not hold the only Jewish state to a higher or different standard than we hold all other nations states; when we do, it is called racism, Jew-hatred, or anti-Semitism."
While Israel continues to be the world's 'bogeyman'; its detractors are clearly multiplying at blinding speed as evidenced in Chesler's writings The Jew isclassified by the intellectual elite as the "aggressor', the "cruel occupier" of Palestinians and the ruthless engineer of an apartheid state through a series of sophist arguments and Goebbels-like agitprop.
Chesler writes that Western academics haves became increasingly "Stalinized and Palestinianized." Addressing the burgeoning phenomenon of academic boycotts that emanate from world class universities, Chesler clarifies the gravitas of the situation by writing "they have disinvited Israeli scholars, fired Israeli academics, rejected university applications from Israeli students, refused to stage exhibits by Israeli artists or sell textbooks to Israeli universities, written inflammatory and defamatory editorials in prestigious journals condemning Israel for massacres that never occurred, etc".
Chesler's writing exudes passion, pathos, optimism, and melancholy combined with the blunt force of realism. What is most remarkable and at times quite eerie is the degree to which prescience plays a significant role in her assessment of the abysmal failure on the war on terror. In a 2008 essay, in which she offers a critique of then presidential contender Barack Obama, she writes: "He is a United Nations-style anti-American and postmodern multi-cultural relativist, and that means Obama may refuse to call barbarism by its rightful name if that barbarism is practiced by Muslims," this years before anyone even heard of "Jihadi John."
Most troubling to Chesler is the rapid succession of horrifying events that may indeed presage the type of calamitous scenario that she warns of in terms of lethal Jew hatred. In 2004, she wrote: "Today, the danger to Jews is far graver and more complex than it ever was before, including the 1930s," Lest we forget the murders of the four Jewish men in a kosher grocery store in Paris in January of 2015, the murder of a Jew in Copenhagen earlier this year and the attacks on synagogues throughout Europe.
Dr. Chesler exhorts us to lift our heads out of the sand. Denial by Western liberals of the real threat that Islamic jihadism poses to the glorious civilization they have built and the hard core fact that Israel and the Jews are in existential peril, will, says Chesler, lead us into "a Dark Age."
This page turner is a must read for anyone who wishes to make sense of a world gone mad. With dismal news swirling around us, the keen clarity, vision, and indomitable spirit that Chesler's imparts is a light in a dark tunnel.
Passionate voice of and for truth, for freedom and for Zion By Marion D.S. Dreyfus
The Most Important Voice for Truth, Freedom, and Zion. I have followed Dr. Chesler's work for most of the new --21st-- century, and her work is comprehensive, eloquent, crucial, profoundly urgent, yet intuitively easy to understand. Chesler prophesied a "slow-motion Holocaust" in Israel, the globalization of Jihad, the rise of left-wing and Islamist anti-Semitism in Europe, and much else. These have, sadly, all come to pass, as she predicted. This latest light from a strong and engaging seer will arm readers with the facts and unblinking truth; in short, with the fundamental information and analyses that we need in order to play a role in the battle of ideas, a battle that will determine whether Western civilization--and Israel, so pivotal to that civilization--will survive or expire by its own hand.
Chesler has written an amazing and necessary book. This is a genuine Must Read By Barbara Joans
What an amazing book. Dr. Chesler is one of the rare women, rare feminist leader and rare academic intellectual who happens to know what is going on in our country, and all over the world in terms of the horrifying return of anti-Semitism. She writes about the Islamist Jihad against the West and how it is scapegoating Israel. Her work is carefully researched and clearly and brilliantly written. And it is a good thing too because as anti-Semitism grows, it will affect us all. Her book can be a useful tool to let us both see what is happening and what we can do about. it. I really cannot recommend this book highly enough.
THE JEWISH PRESS
'The Litmus Test Of Political Correctness Is One's Stance On Israel': An Interview With Pioneering Feminist Author Phyllis Chesler By Elliot Resnick
Holding true to one's principles – even liberal principles – in an age of political correctness can be dangerous. Just ask Dr. Phyllis Chesler. Once a highly regarded feminist, today she is persona non-grata in left-wing circles. Her crime? Defending Israel and criticizing Islamic societies for their treatment of women.
Chesler was born to an Orthodox family in Boro Park, Brooklyn, in 1940 and is the author of over a dozen works, including The Death of Feminism (2003), An American Bride in Kabul (2013), and, most recently, Living History (2015).
The Jewish Press: In recent years you've been increasingly associated with conservative circles, yet you're still very much a feminist, aren't you?
Chesler: I remain a very live feminist, but what has died in the feminist movement is the vision of universal human rights and what has taken its place is this multicultural relativism in which anybody formerly colonized, not white, preferably Arab, and, most importantly, Palestinian, quote unquote, is the victim de jure – the victim uber alles.
You write in Living History that at a certain point in your career you "lost most of [your] intellectual and feminist friends." When did that occur?
When I published the 2003 version of The New Anti-Semitism, for the first time in my career, a book [I had written] was not reviewed. It was ignored by the mainstream media – the very media where I was once very prominent. And any number of feminist friends were angry, shocked, or, at best, silent.
Then I began to publish in conservative venues because they were the ones who applauded The New Anti-Semitism, and I was castigated severely by my friends. They said, "You're making alliances with right-wing Christians and Jewish conservatives." And I said, "But you're making a perfect storm of an alliance with misogynist, Islamist barbarians."
How can America defeat Islamists, considering that they are so dispersed geographically? Should we go to war against states like Saudi Arabia and Iran that fund radical Islam to the tune of billions of dollars? Should we stop all immigration from the Middle East? What should be done?
Let me say a number of things. I work with Muslims who are dissidents and Muslim feminists who are anti-Islamist. Having said that, the majority of Muslims [are] just like the majority of Germans under Hitler. Yes, they themselves may not act on their beliefs that infidels should be killed, but they're guilty because they're bystanders.
So what do we do? The first thing is we have to tell the truth and it has to be repeated as often as necessary. The second thing is we have to influence legislators about immigration. I'm happy to have America give asylum to the victims of Islamic persecution – Christians and females. But I'm not happy to allow in fanatics who are about to bring this country down. We therefore need to have immigration people who are trained to tell the difference and to make very hard, firm decisions. And they have to be legally empowered to do so. Otherwise we will become like Europe.
What is your take on Europe and radical Islam in light of the recent attacks in France?
Sometimes I think Europe has reaped a karmic destiny. It was complicit in the murder of six million friendly, non-violent Jews, and for that crime it has now reaped a whirlwind of many, many millions of very hostile Semites who wish to take Western civilization down.
Some conservative pundits like Mark Steyn believe Europe is lost – that hostile Muslim immigrants will take over the continent within the next century by virtue of their high birthrate. Do you agree?
Well, the demographics are against Europe because as women become more educated and men become progressive about women's rights, the birthrate goes down. If you're not under siege, this is fine – you have two children instead of eight. But if you [accept within your midst] a culture that believes in polygamy and believes that a woman should have eight children, your country will be flooded.
Now that doesn't mean we want to force white Caucasian women to breed, breed, breed, but it does raise questions about immigration, deportation of radicals, restriction of access to radical mosques, etc. It also raises questions about using European laws to punish very seriously honor and shame crimes committed on European soil.
You write in Living History – in reference to standing up to radical Islam – that people would "rather live on their knees than risk dying on their feet." Can you elaborate?
Jews are an anxious group – understandably, given the millennia of persecution – and want to have no trouble. They don't want to bear the burden – or glory – of having to support a Jewish state that has been demonized into pariah status. They don't want to spend their lives fighting. They don't want their salaries risked. They don't want to receive hate mail. They want to have opportunities and take vacations.
Anyone who takes up Israel's cause is demonized as a "Zionist," a "conservative," and a "Republican." I mean, these are all curse words. And once [you defend Israel] – even if you are a staunch civil libertarian, as I am, or a committed feminist, as I am, it doesn't matter – you have crossed the line of what is permissible and nothing you say thereafter will be deemed credible. The litmus test for political correctness is where you stand on Israel.
Why, in your opinion, do many liberals focus on the occasional Muslim killed in self-defense by Israel when Muslims are killed in far greater numbers in so many other places, such as Syria where more than 200,000 people have died as a result of the ongoing civil war there?
It's a good question, and I think part of the answer – the darker part of the answer – is nobody really cares about Muslims. The world doesn't care about barbarians vs. barbarians, or Muslims vs. Muslims or persons of color vs. persons of color – just as in Ferguson and Baltimore nobody really cares about the black-on-black crime. They care only if a white policeman is killing a young black man.
In addition, it's a psychological defense mechanism. Rather than focusing on real genocide committed by Islam in terms of religion and gender – which is a bigger and harder problem to solve – you focus on the tiny, not totally perfect, state of Israel. That way, people don't have to feel helpless in the face of terrorism or barbarism but rather can feel: "If only Israel were abolished, everything would be okay."
In your 2013 book, An American Bride in Kabul, you reminisce about your marriage to an Afghani Muslim 50 years ago. How did a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn wind up eloping with a Muslim to Afghanistan?
I was a born rebel. In 1948 in Boro Park, where I grew up, I joined a left-wing Zionist group, Hashomer Hatzair, which envisioned a mystical, political, and harmonious union between Yishmael and Yitzchak. Perhaps that concept reverberated with me over time so that so that my guard was not up as it should have been.
But I was not openly rebelling by the time I got involved with this man. I was a child and I knew no danger and it was a great adventure. I had no intention of staying in Afghanistan, nor did I wish to get married, but he said, "Well, I can't introduce you to my family and we can't travel the world unless we are married," so I said, "Well, all right." It was a civil ceremony that meant little to me.
However, once we landed there, they took my American passport away and I became a citizen of no country and the property of a very large, wealthy polygamous Afghan family. And this is a man whom I met in college – very urbane, very sophisticated, very well spoken. We never once discussed religion. He had no problem with the fact that I was Jewish. It's something that no one talked about in 1960 in America. Islam was not taught anywhere in colleges, and I did not understand how wild [that part of the world] really is.
I was not prepared and was held captive for five months. I came back and literally kissed the ground when I arrived at JFK, which at the time was still called Idlewild, something I've only done once since – on my first visit to Israel.
How did you manage to get back to America?
I nearly died in Afghanistan. I was very ill with hepatitis. I had made many escape plans, all of which failed, but at the last minute, my then-father-in-law gave me an Afghan passport. He probably didn't want a dead American kid on his hands and clearly his son, my husband, was not letting me go, so he let me go.
I'd say I got back because I was blessed by God. And maybe it was all bashert because otherwise how could I understand the Jew-hatred that's endemic in the Islamic world? How could I teach it at this moment in history?
And how could I know what I know about the burqa and women in the Islamic world had I not been there, had I not witnessed it and endured some of it myself? So maybe this was all part of some divine plan.
Well, the demographics are against Europe because as women become more educated and men become progressive about women's rights, the birthrate goes down. If you're not under siege, this is fine – you have two children instead of eight. But if you [accept within your midst] a culture that believes in polygamy and believes that a woman should have eight children, your country will be flooded.
Now that doesn't mean we want to force white Caucasian women to breed, breed, breed, but it does raise questions about immigration, deportation of radicals, restriction of access to radical mosques, etc. It also raises questions about using European laws to punish very seriously honor and shame crimes committed on European soil.
You write in Living History – in reference to standing up to radical Islam – that people would "rather live on their knees than risk dying on their feet." Can you elaborate?
Jews are an anxious group – understandably, given the millennia of persecution – and want to have no trouble. They don't want to bear the burden – or glory – of having to support a Jewish state that has been demonized into pariah status. They don't want to spend their lives fighting. They don't want their salaries risked. They don't want to receive hate mail. They want to have opportunities and take vacations.
Anyone who takes up Israel's cause is demonized as a "Zionist," a "conservative," and a "Republican." I mean, these are all curse words. And once [you defend Israel] – even if you are a staunch civil libertarian, as I am, or a committed feminist, as I am, it doesn't matter – you have crossed the line of what is permissible and nothing you say thereafter will be deemed credible. The litmus test for political correctness is where you stand on Israel.
Why, in your opinion, do many liberals focus on the occasional Muslim killed in self-defense by Israel when Muslims are killed in far greater numbers in so many other places, such as Syria where more than 200,000 people have died as a result of the ongoing civil war there?
It's a good question, and I think part of the answer – the darker part of the answer – is nobody really cares about Muslims. The world doesn't care about barbarians vs. barbarians, or Muslims vs. Muslims or persons of color vs. persons of color – just as in Ferguson and Baltimore nobody really cares about the black-on-black crime. They care only if a white policeman is killing a young black man.
In addition, it's a psychological defense mechanism. Rather than focusing on real genocide committed by Islam in terms of religion and gender – which is a bigger and harder problem to solve – you focus on the tiny, not totally perfect, state of Israel. That way, people don't have to feel helpless in the face of terrorism or barbarism but rather can feel: "If only Israel were abolished, everything would be okay."
In your 2013 book, An American Bride in Kabul, you reminisce about your marriage to an Afghani Muslim 50 years ago. How did a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn wind up eloping with a Muslim to Afghanistan?
I was a born rebel. In 1948 in Boro Park, where I grew up, I joined a left-wing Zionist group, Hashomer Hatzair, which envisioned a mystical, political, and harmonious union between Yishmael and Yitzchak. Perhaps that concept reverberated with me over time so that so that my guard was not up as it should have been.
But I was not openly rebelling by the time I got involved with this man. I was a child and I knew no danger and it was a great adventure. I had no intention of staying in Afghanistan, nor did I wish to get married, but he said, "Well, I can't introduce you to my family and we can't travel the world unless we are married," so I said, "Well, all right." It was a civil ceremony that meant little to me.
However, once we landed there, they took my American passport away and I became a citizen of no country and the property of a very large, wealthy polygamous Afghan family. And this is a man whom I met in college – very urbane, very sophisticated, very well spoken. We never once discussed religion. He had no problem with the fact that I was Jewish. It's something that no one talked about in 1960 in America. Islam was not taught anywhere in colleges, and I did not understand how wild [that part of the world] really is.
I was not prepared and was held captive for five months. I came back and literally kissed the ground when I arrived at JFK, which at the time was still called Idlewild, something I've only done once since – on my first visit to Israel.
How did you manage to get back to America?
I nearly died in Afghanistan. I was very ill with hepatitis. I had made many escape plans, all of which failed, but at the last minute, my then-father-in-law gave me an Afghan passport. He probably didn't want a dead American kid on his hands and clearly his son, my husband, was not letting me go, so he let me go.
I'd say I got back because I was blessed by God. And maybe it was all bashert because otherwise how could I understand the Jew-hatred that's endemic in the Islamic world? How could I teach it at this moment in history?
And how could I know what I know about the burqa and women in the Islamic world had I not been there, had I not witnessed it and endured some of it myself? So maybe this was all part of some divine plan.
Dr. Phyllis Chesler Takes on Hot Button Issues With Clarity By BklynGal54
This exceptionally impressive compendium containing the corpus of Dr. Phyllis Chesler's writings from 2003 to date is a must read for anyone seeking to make sense of a world gone mad. Dr. Chesler prodigiously confronts a veritable gamut of hot button geo-political issues with the kind of depth and aplomb that has come to define her writing since 1972. For the layman, a spectacular cogency awaits you as Dr. Chesler provides a cutting edge analysis of the alarming escalation of global anti-Semitism, the inherently tendentious nature of the mainstream media as it pertains to Israel, the failure of the Obama administration to make headway in the war on terror, the proliferation of bald faced propaganda in books and films and much more. And she does all this, I might add, with remarkable clarity. Considering the horrific times in which we live, the reader will find themselves constantly referring back to her prescient words and gaining the kind of insight that can rarely be found elsewhere. Phyllis Chesler's book is enormously important. The far left and the far right have united in their opposition to Israel's existence. Hungary's Jobbik Party, North Korea's Kim Dynasty and Iran's mullahs all agree that Israel is their greatest enemy, despite the fact that they have no rational reason to fear or even to oppose Israel.
Marxism and Islam vs. Israel and women's rights By George Jochnowitz
We need a book like this to help the world wake up and understand that Israel is not evil. We need people like Phyllis Chesler to inform us that Israel is a country where women are not persecuted, as they are in Saudi Arabia, and where girls are not routinely kidnapped, which is what Boko Haram does. The people who are opposing Israel's existence are the same ones who are opposing women's rights, human rights, and education.
A Mother of Truth for Israel By Charlie Bernhaut and Helen Freedman
Carry this book with you to campus, demonstrations, conferences; order it for your organization or for your classes. It is a true and accurate picture of the war against the Jews and Israel in the 21st century, as well as the 20th century. Chesler's analyses are bold battle cries, but they are as comforting as they are disturbing. Her political perspective is also prophetic, religious, scholarly, and compelling. This book is an essential weapon in the fight for the survival of America and Israel and for all the values that bind us. Helen Freedman.
A significant collection By areviewer13
This important volume collects the best of Chesler's coverage since 2003 of the war of ideas regarding Israel and the Jews. She challenges the frustrating groupthink that many progressives seem to engage in when it comes to racism against the Jewish people and the relentless bias expressed against Israel in the world media. A must read for anyone who everyone who is willing to approach these issues with an open mind and heart.
Absolute must read for Israel and Freedom Lovers Everywhere By M.H. Hoffman
Chesler is a staunch defender of the values of Western Civilization and has no reticence about saying it. As in all her other work, Chesler tells the truth with passion and commitment. She is at her best exposing and challenging the lies underlying wide spread campus attacks against Israel and is totally prescient about the developing anti-Antisemitism in Europe. She pulls no punches in describing the desertion of truth by Western intellectuals, including lesbians and feminists.Her film reviews alone are worth the read. You will not find anything like this anywhere else!
Phyllis Chesler nails it again
Phyllis Chesler does it again. She GETS it -- often long before anyone else does, and then she presents it in ways that make transparently clear what's been going on right before everyone's eyes. The essays are short, to the point, incisive, devastating, well-researched, an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the cognitive war raging against Jews and Israel all over the world -- but most frighteningly in the Western world, in Europe, and in the United States, particularly in its media and on its campuses. The Western world, western values -- individual liberties, freedoms of speech, religion, of the individual -- are under assault from the spreading Islamism, one that has cleverly understood how to make alliances with the political left that end up being utter moral and cognitive inversions of reality. Jews, who are worldwide victims, are seen worldwide as aggressors; values such as "diversity" and "tolerance" end up being invoked in attacks on Israel, the one state in the region that actually embraces such values, and invoked to support the Islamists who in fact reject such values. The cognitive war is occurring on many fronts, on many levels, and Chesler engages them all with utter honesty, respect for truth, and incredible bravery. A must read book for all who care about genuine truth and justice .... She is an inspiration to us all.
Phyllis Cheslier Illuminates Where Darkness Prevails By Meryle Lee Kates
Those of us who cherish freedom of speech, and humanity's freedoms, should also cherish the writings of Dr. Phyllis Chesler, as I do. Champion of women, democracy, and human rights, Phyllis Chesler's written record attests to her extraordinary research, education and knowledge base, that has enriched all of her readers over the years. As an eloquent analyst of our contemporary political and social ethos, Dr.Chesler has brought understanding to critical issues of our time through her books, her essays, and her online columns. She has used her wit, wisdom, and intellectual curiosity to research and unpack some of the most critical themes of our day. Her powerful voice has lent a clarity to the often-twisted narratives and revisionist history that has coloured world opinion - about Israel, Judaism, the true and essential meaning of modern-day feminism. In this collection of essays and published articles, we can provide our friends, colleagues, family members with the gift of knowledge that Dr. Chesler has given us through her many published works. I hope that this important book will be read widely, shared widely, and used to educate and empower.
Today when it is unfashionable to be pro-Israel, Dr By Rosalind M
Today when it is unfashionable to be pro-Israel, Dr Chesler is determined to out those who deny the resurgence of antisemitism in the guise of anti-Zionism or anti-Israel. The refusal of the West to name the enemies of democracy, freedom of belief and expression allows the subversion of all that Israel and Judaism stands for. We are living in a surreal, perverse, Orwellian time where truth and lies are inverted and where Israel is libelled as the evil of all evils, while human rights abusers are elevated to positions of power in the United Nations. Apparently, Israel has the "right to defend itself" but only in theory because when Israel is attacked, in defending its own people, Israel is portrayed as the aggressor. By exposing this "slow motion Holocaust" Dr Chesler shames those pseudo-left wing intellectuals whose attachment to political correctness has led to this perverse attack on the only free and democratic country in the Middle East: Israel.
She's is a great person, a real hero- G- bless her By Moishe Kampin
It's absolutely true, "this book is a must-read addition to your library in these most frightening and challenging of times". That's because it contains the words of Phyllis Chesler. She's is a great person, a real hero- G- bless her!!!
Phyllis Chesler is a strong, reasonable, and knowledgeable ... By Betsy Nowrasteh
Phyllis Chesler is a strong, reasonable, and knowledgeable voice on the critical importance of Israel in our world. The rise of anti-semitism once again threatens not only the Jews, but all of us who believe that freedom and faith form the bedrock of our civilization, our creativity, and our humanity. She's a warrior with words in the arena of ideas that can become, and is becoming, an arena of blood and horror. We must never forget not only the past, but our sacred obligation to the present and the future.
Truth is the only answer that can create Love, Peace,Tolerance and Non-Violence By Jeff Trag
Everyone needs to learn the truth and this book is an essential step towards the real truth about the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Jeff Trag https://www.facebook.com/lptnv?ref=hl
A Must Read By eve epstein
This book captured one of my most important concerns of the 21st century. The sysiphean battle to tell the truth about Israel and the Jews; the corruption of art and film with anti-Zionist propaganda; the betrayal of this truth by our leading intellectuals, academics, journalists, and diplomats; the campus disaster zones; the clear and present danger of Jihad and Islamism denied, minimized, enabled. Read all about it here. Chesler writes brilliantly.
Engaging writing By Leslie Williams
Phyllis Chesler's writing is compelling--you just want to keep reading! The subject is important, and the style is engaging. Seeing these writings all together is a kind of "time-lapse" picture of the last decade's events, It's interesting to see what she wrote in the earlier years and compare it to the later years and see how early she spoke out with views that were unpopular in mainstream liberal Jewish circles. It's also interesting to be able to recall through these essays some of the world events that have gone into the background of our memories and to now see their places in recent history of Israel, Jewish Americans, and Jews in the world.