Volume 4 No 2 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

742 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 4:741Taken together, Landes and Katz, and Webman, provide readers with31 important essays (15 and 16, respectively) regarding the Protocols.License to Murder, however, Grobman’s thin volume (text 99 pages;endnotes 40 pages) is far more problematic: It covers material already wellknown to anyone who has read the Protocols and the ancillary literature,though it does so rather succinctly. Perhaps, in his capacity as director ofthe American-Israel Friendship League, Grobman, a worthy academic witha solid publishing record, had a different agenda: to place into the hands ofthose who know little of this antisemitic text important summary data asthey, too, continue to address the scourge of antisemitism and anti-Zionismand participate in relevant conversations on both antisemitism and Israel.More than this, however, this reviewer cannot say, as Grobman does not tellus, though the back cover informs us the book was “written for a popularaudience,” and “is a vital tool for resisting hate-speech wherever found.”(How this text is to be used is equally problematic, as Grobman does notconsider this either.)Turning next to Landes and Katz, the essays in The Paranoid Apocalypsewere originally presented as papers at the 2005 conference held at theElie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies at Boston University in collaborationwith the Center for Millennial Studies. (Seven years, however, is far toolong to wait for this important contribution.) As Landes and Katz note intheir Introduction:The chapters in this volume attempt to provide the reader with a range ofinformation and analytic tools to understand four major questions:1. What are the cultural origins of the Protocols?2. What explains the Protocols’ continued appeal?3. Under what conditions does belief in the Protocols get activated and produceatrocities?4. What, if anything, can be done to oppose the spread of belief in so dishonestand disastrous a libel?Three major themes emerged from the conference in terms of thepower exercised by the Protocols: (1) the psychological nature of paranoiain its appeal; (2) the problem of “truth” and the exegetical shiftiness thatdetaches the text from its empirical moorings as a forgery; and (3) thepower of apocalyptic belief in “activating” the text as a social and politicalplayer (Landes and Katz, 3).Turning to a number of the essays/contributions themselves to providea “flavor” of this important collection: Landes, himself a specialist in millennialism,in the first contribution notes that “[The Protocols] is actually areasonably sophisticated text that works entirely from the main axioms of