Jeffrey Herf, University of Maryland

“What’s in your syllabus?” is an initial effort to foster pluralism and diversity of scholarly perspectives in teaching about Israel and the conflict with Palestinian organizations at the University. The University exists to foster independent and critical thinking and seek truth about important matters. In order to that it is essential that students be exposed to a plurality of scholarly views.  Yet, in recent years, too often, scholarship that looks on Israel favorably and casts a critical gaze on both secular and Islamist forms of antisemitic terrorist organizations does not find its way onto required readings in relevant courses. As a result, discussions both within and outside the classrooms rest on an unfair and unbalanced view of both the history and current status of relations between Israel and other forces in the Middle East which, in turn, contributes to antisemitism. To foster the kind of scholarly pluralism necessary to redress this imbalance, I offer these suggested readings.

On the history of the Zionist movement up to the establishment of the state of Israel, see Walter Laqueur’s now classic A History of Zionism: From the French Revolution to the Establishment of the State of Israel (New York:  Knopf, 1997, 2003).

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and Hamas refer to the war of 1948, in the course of which the state of Israel was established, as “the Nakba” or “catastrophe.” The narrative of Palestinian innocence and Zionist depravity became a constant theme of their political warfare against Israel and then entered into academic writing. The actual history of that war offers a far more complicated picture. On the relationship between the political and military history of the war and its outcome for Israelis and Palestinian Arabs see Benny Morris, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 2009); and his Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001 (New York: Vintage, 2001).

Those who attack Israel in recent decades often associate it with “imperialism” and “colonialism.” In fact, if, as often happens, that terminology is applied to the United States and Britain, students and faculty should know that diplomatic and military leadership of both powers emphatically opposed the establishment of the state of Israel. In those same years, the Soviet Union and the Communist states in Eastern Europe offered political, diplomatic and military support to the Zionists. On these either forgotten or too little-known international realities, see Jeffrey Herf, Israel’s Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945-1949 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022). For a   summary  of the opposition from the U.S. State Department see Herf, “The State Department versus the Zionist Project at the Dawn of the Cold War,” Caravan: The Hoover Institution (November 2023).

Zionism has also been described as a form of racism, a label that not only distorts the actual history of the Zionist movement but also serves as an effective instrument of political warfare which diverts attention away from the virulent antisemitism of one extremist interpretation of Islam called “Islamism.” From the 1930s to the Islamic Republic of Iran and Hamas today, Islamists have been most emphatic in rejecting any compromise, first to prevent the peaceful establishment of both a Jewish and a Palestinian state, and then to arrive at a compromise settlement. The theme of Islamist Jew-hatred and the resulting campaign to destroy the state of Israel has generated a large scholarship in Israel, Germany and the United States. Resistance to addressing this face of antisemitism in the academy is considerable. A fair and balanced set of required readings in courses about Israel, the Middle East, and the history of antisemitism should include scholarship addressing this issue. Here are a few suggestions:

Bernard Lewis, Semites and Antisemites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice (New York: Norton, 1999), recalls Nazi Germany’s support for Arab opposition to the Zionist project and the distinctively Islamist forms of antisemitism. On the Jews in Islamic countries and the issue of antisemitism, see Norman Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands: A History and Sourcebook (Jewish Publication Society, 1998). Bassam Tibi’s Islamism and Islam (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012) distinguishes between the two, and makes the point that Islamists do not want to make a distinction between Islam and Islamism for two reasons. First, they think their view of Islam is correct, and second, refusal to make the distinction enables them to describe their opponents as guilty of something called “Islamophobia.” On that concept, see the French essayist, Pascal Bruckner’s An Imaginary Racism: Islamophobia and Guilt (London:  Polity Press, 2022). Robert Wistrich’s A Lethal Obsession: Antisemitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (New York: Random House, 2010) offers an important synthesis of antisemitism in its Nazi, Soviet-era, secular leftist, and Islamist forms.

On the collaboration of Islamists with Nazi Germany during World War II and the Holocaust, see Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (Yale University Press, 2009), and his Three Faces of Antisemitism: Right, Left, and Islamist (London: Routledge, 2024). German political scientist, Matthias Kuentzel, in his Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East (London: Routledge, 2023) draws attention to the continuities from Arab collaboration with the Nazis to the decision to go to war in 1948 to prevent the establishment of the Jewish state. These works are important for understanding Hamas and the attack of October 7. On that see Herf, “Ideology of Mass Murder,” published in the journal Quillette on October 10, 2023. On the Islamization of Palestinian politics, see this essay by Meir Litvak, historian at Tel Aviv University: “Martyrdom is Life:  Jihad and Martyrdom in the Ideology of Hamas,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism,  (2010), 33:8, 716-73. 

Very soon after the Hamas attack of October 7, pro-Hamas organizations on American campuses began to accuse Israel of engaging in genocide in the war it launched to defeat Hamas in Gaza. The government of South Africa raised the accusation in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The accusation rests on a distortion of facts and the law. On this see the Opening Statement of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs January 2024 by its Legal Adviser Tal Becker.  On the factual and legal shortcomings of the South African case to the ICJ see Norman Goda’s essay in Quillette, “South African Lawfare at the Hague.” Also see “Dissenting Opinion of Judge Sebutinde,” that is, of Judge Julia Sebutinde from Uganda, who also serves as Vice-President of the ICJ. If the term “genocide” is to be applied to events of the past year, it ought to be to the Hamas attack of October 7. On that see Jeffrey Herf “An Interrupted Genocide,” in Quillette, July 2024. 

The attacks on Israel in the aftermath of October 7 coming from departments of Women’s Studies have been particularly disturbing and bizarre, given the sexual violence of that day and the generally reactionary views of women and gay people promulgated by Hamas. Kara Jasella, in “A History of Feminist Antisemitism,” Quillette (December 2023)  documents the longstanding antagonism to Israel, and attendant misunderstanding of racism and antisemitism that have been developing in some currents of American academic feminism. On the mistaken efforts to construe an “intersectional” connection between racism in the United States and the Israel-Palestinian conflict, see various essays in scholarly journals and in Fathom Journal in London in May 2020 by the German social theorist Karin Stogner “Intersectionality and Antisemitism --A New Approach.”  

Following the terrorist attack of October 7, a mixture of apologia, excuses, justifications and occasionally enthusiasm for the murder of the Jews appeared on American campuses. On the traditions of leftist enthusiasm and justification for terror that re-emerged in the past year, see the remarkable piece of writing by Susie Linfield of New York University, "The Return of Progressive Atrocity" in Quillette in November 2023.Also see Linfield’s splendid collection of essays, The Lion’s Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky (Yale University Press, 2020). On the liberal tradition of rejection of terrorism, see Albert Camus’ classic The Rebel, as well as Paul Berman’s Terror and Liberalism (New York: 2003). On the views of racism, violence and antisemitism in American universities since the 1960s, see Berman’s recent essay “A Stupid Cartoon and the University Ideology,” first in Liberties Journal  and now online in Quillette.  On the concept of settler colonialism, see the excellent short book by Adam Kirsch,  On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice (New York: Norton, 2024).

In recent decades, scholars of antisemitism have examined its “three faces,” those of the extreme right, the left, and Islamists. Alvin Rosenfeld, Director of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism at the University of Indiana has edited a number of volumes on the subject. See for example, Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: The Dynamics of Delegitimation (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2021). From the large scholarship on the interaction of antisemitism and anti-Zionism in Soviet and Communist bloc antagonism to Israel see essays by Izabella Tabarovsky including “Mahmoud  Abbas' Dissertation,” The Tablet Magazine (January 2023), and Jeffrey Herf,  Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left, 1967-1989 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Antisemitism became a major political issue in Britain when Jeremy Corbyn, who expressed sympathy for Hamas, became the leader of the Labor Party from 2015 to 2020.  David Hirsh, a sociologist at Goldsmith’s College in London has examined those years in Contemporary Left Antisemitism (London: Routledge, 2017). Also see from the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, Hirsh and Rosa Freedman, eds., Responses to October 7: Antisemitic Discourse (London: Routledge, 2024). 

An issue beyond the syllabus concerns effort to boycott Israeli universities. As the American Association of University Professors has recently changed in its longstanding opposition to such endeavors, I draw your attention to the following:  Cary Nelson, “The AAUP Abandons Academic Freedom :Its Decision to Allow Boycotts Betrays Its Values,”.  Also see his Israel Denial: Anti-Zionism, Antisemtism, and the Faculty Campaign against the Jewish State (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2019); and Hate Speech and Academic Freedom: The Antisemitic Assault on Basic Principles (Academic Studies Press, 2024). 

The core of a university is what goes on in its classrooms. The reason for the university’s existence is to seek the truth about important, and often difficult, issues. Students, faculty, and administrators cannot achieve that goal unless they are willing to read and discuss the full spectrum of scholarship regarding such issues. Despite the difficulties entailed, students must not be exempted but treated as the adults they are when it comes to addressing such serious matters.  This full spectrum may not be appearing on course syllabi at this and other universities. This partial listing of relevant scholarly works and essays of commentary should serve to foster access to  a needed plurality of interpretations in order to work toward finding the truth about these important matters.

Jeffrey Herf, Distinguished University Professor, Emeritus, Department of History, University of Maryland, College Park. His scholarly publications address the history Nazism, antisemitism, and its impact on the Middle East and include most recently Three Faces of Antisemitism: Right, Left, and Islamist (Routledge, 2024).