Preachers of Hate
Islam and the War on America
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
Like no book before it, Preachers of Hate uncovers an ancient hatred that threatens the life and livelihood of every American. The “new” anti-Semitism targets not only Jews, but Americans specifically and the West in general. It targets our values, our lifestyle, and our freedoms. It is the single most important issue we face when trying to make sense of the Arab world.
Most Americans will be stunned to discover the depth and extent of anti-Semitic hatred in today’s Middle East and Europe, and that many Muslim leaders are not just encouraging it, but spending a great deal of money to spread the lies that spawned the terrorists responsible for the September 11 attack on America. In Preachers of Hate, bestselling author Kenneth R. Timmerman (who is not Jewish) contends that, besides Islam itself, the core unifying force in the Muslim world is a virulent strain of anti-Semitism that postulates the existence of a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. From the pulpits of fiery Muslim clerics to the Arab street, and to the highest reaches of government and state-sponsored media, there is a belief that this thousand-year-old conspiracy has already taken hold in America and is now, especially after the war in Iraq, about to do the same in the Middle East and beyond. It is seen as no less than Muslims’ historical destiny to prevent such a takeover, and to do so by any means possible. To misunderstand the ferocity of that belief is to vastly underestimate the resolve of many Muslims to repel America, Israel, and all things Western.
Timmerman explores the roots of this hatred, examining its history, the religious sources upon which it draws, and how it is being transmitted to young people growing up in Arab societies by their leaders, their teachers, and their mosques. He documents how U.S. and European Union money has been used to finance hatred in Palestinian schools. He exposes the double-talk of Arab leaders and their supporters in the West. As it so often was throughout history, this new strain of Jew hatred is really about much more than Jews. They get attacked first, when the enemies of America can’t attack Americans. However, what begins with the Jews never ends with the Jews.
“Is there a conspiracy between America and the Jews?” asks Timmerman. “Indeed there is: A common heritage, a dedication to improving the human condition through compassion and tolerance of differences—a conspiracy of freedom. And that is why they hate us.” As with the Jews throughout history, America has been “unfairly successful.” As have the Jews, Americans have “profited” from the misery and poverty of others. If you hate Jews, you must also hate America. Such is the simple logic of the anti-Semite. Such, increasingly, is the logic of the Middle East. It is a message that is reinforced day in and day out by the official government-sanctioned Arab media, from the streets of Egypt, London, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Paris, and Gaza, and in the mosques where impassioned clerics quote verbatim texts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a pillar of anti-Semitic hatred that originated in czarist Russia.
As America reasserts her role in the Middle East and attempts to bring peace between Jews and Arabs, Preachers of Hate is an essential book that reframes a very complicated issue as a matter of life and death.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Western media commonly report that in much of the Middle East, anti-Zionism has edged into full-blown anti-Semitism, and Timmerman, in this travel journal intermixed with political analysis, gives potent and frightening examples of this phenomenon. The most visceral, and common, illustration he has found in interviewing Middle Eastern clerics, reporters and politicians is the widespread acceptance of the 1895 fraudulent document The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which details an alleged Jewish plot for world domination. Over the past two decades, he reports, the Protocols have become required reading throughout most Arab countries. Equally frightening is his analysis of the anti-Semitic sentiments routinely found in school texts in Arab countries. Timmerman, who has written for Time,Newsweek and Reader's Digest, has a forthright and compelling journalistic style that is also highly opinionated and often inflammatory. Many of his noteworthy reports and observations are undercut by heedless generalizations, such as his comment that "among European limousine liberals... it has become fashionable to punished by the international community, or simply eradicated," which will seem to many to be a gross simplification of a very complicated political reality. When he is not writing about the Middle East, Timmerman takes on such topics as what he sees as anti-Americanism on U.S. university campuses with the same lack of delicacy. MIT linguistics professor Noam Chomsky is described as typifying "the hate-America-first faction of campus radicals" and Timmerman baldly misrepresents his political positions. Timmerman, whose best selling Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson made the bestseller lists but which was frequently and severely criticized for its reliance on incendiary far-right rhetoric, has touched on some important topics in this book, but they are to a large degree lost in his tendency to overgeneralize and overstate.
