Interreligious Heroes: Role Models and Spiritual Exemplars for Interfaith Practice ed. by Alon Goshen-Gottstein (review)

Abstract

While Lubet briefly mentions the Antisemitism in Odeh’s upbringing and the PFLP, he only hints at how antiJewish fallacies served her U.S. defense. The Palestinianrights activists who supported her resorted to conspiracy theories of undue Jewish power’s influencing the American legal system to persecute an innocent woman, ironically in the presence of family members of the murdered students. For the uninitiated into the leftwing paradigm of the world’s oldest hatred, a reader might miss its relevance to this story. To assuage this potential misunderstanding, the author could have included a paragraph describing the function of Antisemitism in the guise of antiZionism among social justice movements. This book reveals how a breakdown in interideological dialogue perpetuates false narratives and demonization of the other. Outside the Levant, the worldwide obsession with the IsraelPalestine conflict reflects personal ideology more than complex understanding. Sidetaking is de rigueur. Lubet’s balanced recounting of Odeh’s trials juxtaposes the antiIsrael bias of her supporters and reminds any lucid activist of the Antisemitism that threatens to delegitimize movements for Palestinian selfdetermination.