Robert Solomon Wistrich (April 7, 1945 – May 19, 2015) was a scholar ofantisemitism, considered one of the world's foremost authorities on antisemitism.[1][2]
The Erich Neuberger Professor ofEuropean andJewish history at theHebrew University of Jerusalem, and he was also the head of the university'sVidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA).[2] Wistrich considered antisemitism "the longest hatred" and viewedanti-Zionism as its latest incarnation. According to Scott Ury, "More than any other scholar, Wistrich has helped integrate traditionalZionist interpretations of Jewish history, society, and fate into the study of antisemitism." Other researchers have reproduced much of his work without questioning its founding assumptions.[3]
Robert Wistrich was born inLenger, in theKazakh Soviet Socialist Republic on April 7, 1945.[4][2] His parents wereleftistPolish Jews who had moved toLviv in 1940 in order to escape from theGermans; however, they discovered that Soviet-styletotalitarianism was little better thanNazism. In 1942 they moved to Kazakhstan, where Wistrich's father was imprisoned twice by theNKVD.[2][5] After World War II, the Wistrichs returned to Poland. Later, finding the post-war environment in Poland to be dangerously anti-Semitic,[6] the family moved to France and then to England. Wistrich grew up in England, where he went toKilburn Grammar School, where in Wistrich's words, he was taught by "Walter Isaacson, a refugee from Nazi Germany who first taught me how to think independently"[7][2] His parents later returned to Poland under a repatriation agreement betweenStalin and thePolish government-in-exile.[citation needed]
In December 1962, aged 17, Wistrich won an Open Scholarship to study history atQueens' College, Cambridge. In 1966 he graduated with a BA (Hons) from theUniversity of Cambridge, which was raised to aMA degree in 1969.[2] At Cambridge, he foundedCircuit, a literary and arts magazine that he co-edited between 1966 and 1969. Between 1969 and 1970, during a study year inIsrael, he became the youngest ever literary editor ofNew Outlook, a left-wing monthly inTel Aviv, founded byMartin Buber.[citation needed] Wistrich received hisPh.D. from theUniversity of London in 1974.[4][2]
Between 1974 and 1980, Wistrich was Director of Research at the Institute of Contemporary History and theWiener Library (at that time the largest research library on theThird Reich existing in Europe) and the editor of theWiener Library Bulletin in London. Appointed a Research Fellow at theBritish Academy, he had already written several well-received books by the time he was given tenure at theHebrew University of Jerusalem in 1982.[2]
Between 1991 and 1995, Wistrich was appointed the first holder of the Chair of Jewish Studies atUniversity College London, in addition to his position at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He also wrote several dramas forBBC Radio andKol Yisrael on the lives of historical figures ranging fromLeon Trotsky toTheodor Herzl. In 2003, Wistrich acted as the chief historical consultant for the BBC documentaryBlaming the Jews, which explores contemporary Muslim antisemitism. He also served as the academic advisor for the controversial documentary filmObsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West (2005).
As head of theVidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA) at theHebrew University of Jerusalem since 2002, Wistrich was a sought-after lecturer and scholar on antisemitism. He served as a rapporteaur on antisemtism for theState Department,OECD,Council of Europe,United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and theOffice of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.[1] Wistrich also served as a member of the board of theIsrael Council on Foreign Relations.
He was one of six scholars who sat on theInternational Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission from 1999 to 2001 to examine thewartime record of Pope Pius XII, with special reference tothe Holocaust.[1][8] From 2002, he was the director of SICSA, and edited its journal,Antisemitism International.
Wistrich wrote prolifically on antisemitism in the Islamic world, insisting that “The Islamists have never made any secret of the centrality for them of the religious dimension of the Muslim–Jewish conflict—something very poorly understood in the West. This is clearly spelled out in the radically antisemitic Hamas Covenant of 1988, which constitutes the ideological basis for its continuing jihad to annihilate Israel. The Covenant draws on an ancient hadith attributed to Muhammad himself in which he purportedly declares: ‘The Day of Judgment will not come until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say, O Muslims, O Abdullah [servant of Allah], there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’”[9]
In 2014, Wistrich authored an exhibition entitled "The 3,500 year relationships of the Jewish people to theLand of Israel". The exhibition was scheduled for display at the headquarters ofUNESCO, but was canceled under pressure from Arab nations. The exhibit eventually opened six months later after the phrase "Land of Israel" was replaced with "Holy Land". In response to the controversy, Wistrich said the cancellation "completely destroyed any claim that UNESCO could possibly have to be representing the universal values of toleration, mutual understanding, respect for the other and narratives that are different, engaging with civil society organizations and the importance of education."[2]
Over his career, Wistrich edited and published dozens of notable books about Jews and antisemitism. In 1985 his bookSocialism and the Jews won the joint award of SICSA at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and theAmerican Jewish Committee. His 1989 bookThe Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph received theAustrian State Prize in History. His next book,Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred (1991) won theJewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize in the UK a year later, and was the basis forThe Longest Hatred, a three-hour British-American TV documentary on antisemitism, which Wistrich co-edited.[2][1] In 1993, he also scriptedGood Morning, Mr. Hitler, an award-winning documentary on Nazi art commissioned by the UK'sChannel 4.[citation needed]
His 2010 bookA Lethal Obsession: Antisemitism — From Antiquity to the Global Jihad was awarded Best Book of the Year Prize by theJournal for the Study of Antisemitism.[2]
Wistrich died of aheart attack on May 19, 2015, inRome, Italy. He was due to address theItalian Senate about the rise of antisemitism in Europe.[1]
At his death, he was considered the world's foremost authority on antisemitism.Malcolm Hoenlein of theConference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations called his death a tragic loss to "the entire Jewish community and to all those engaged in the efforts to counter resurgent antisemitism".Irwin Cotler, formerMinister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, said "the world of academe has lost an outstanding scholar and historian; the world of Jewish studies has lost a seminal thinker."Charles A. Small of theInstitute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy called Wistrich "a scholar committed to the sober documentation of facts and the highest caliber of scholarship."[1][2]
According to theJerusalem Post, Wistrich was an outspoken critic of European policy regarding antisemitism and pessimistic about the future ofJewish communities in Europe.[1]
Wistrich was the most prolific writer on antisemitism for some decades. Scott Ury has argued that many of the core themes in Wistrich's approach to antisemitism emerged in the works of his predecessor, the polemical Ukrainian-Israeli historian Shmuel Ettinger (1919–1988) who, Ury maintains, was a pivotal figure in restoring the ideas about both antisemitism and anti-Zionism that had been current a century earlier, fromLeon Pinsker andTheodor Herzl and other early Zionist thinkers onwards. That original outlook, which emphasized the inevitability and uniqueness of antisemitism in theChristian world, and the need to overcome it by affirming Jewish national identity, had been challenged after WW2 by historians likeSalo Wittmayer Baron, philosophers such asHannah Arendt,Theodor Adorno andMax Horkheimer, who denied that a normal Jewish life could not continue in thediaspora, that Jewish history and the Jewish people should not be defined in terms of a perennial antagonism, and that antisemitism is better approached in terms of specific historical contexts and within the wider analytical frameworks afforded by the more general issues of prejudice and racism.[10] From this perspective, Wistrich's late embrace of the idea that antisemitism was a "historically continuous, unique, and potentially ineradicable phenomenon," his polemical and visceral anger at the Left's criticism of Israel which he viewed as a "betrayal" of Jews, and his anxieties over the putative emergence of anew antisemitism all reflect points made by the earliest Zionists in the context of comparable tensions at the end of the 19th century in Europe.[11] For Ury, the resurgence of the old paradigm evidenced in the works of Ettinger and Wistrich, to the point that they now form the "dominant academic and public framework" for studying antisemitism, is puzzling. For the re-emergence of "assumptions, concepts, and paradigms that were introduced and canonized in debates that shaped turn-of-the-century society and politics across Eastern and Central Europe" in contemporary scholarship re-embraces "a set of postulates that supply ready-made answers to familiar questions" which only lead, in his view, to circular arguments. The line between politics and scholarship is consequently blurred.[12]
In the last article he wrote before his death, which was published posthumously, entitled "The Anti-Zionist Mythology of the Left," he declared: "The negative symbolization of Israel and the Jews in this abject discourse is not, of course, confined to the left. False analogies, misleading amalgams, and Orwellian doublespeak long ago replaced intellectual integrity or reasoned thought in the anti-Zionist camp—transcending older political divides. This is as true of liberals, conservatives, or proto-fascists as it is of leftists. The relentless efforts over the last forty years to equate Zionism with racism, colonialism, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, or Nazism are indeed among the more pathological symptoms of a universal pollution of contemporary political vocabulary. It is, however, the “anti-racist” pretensions of the anti-Zionist left that make their specific betrayal of socialist values particularly repugnant and shameful."[13]
