Edward Said called Palestinians “the victims of the victims,” and such Holocaust inversion has been baked into the Palestinian story, turning Jews and Israelis into Nazis. This strategy of feigned victimhood and weakness underlies the success story of the Palestinian narrative.

Yemini, former opinion editor at the Israeli daily Maariv and now a columnist for Yediot Ahronot, unpacks the relationship between Israel and its global image. The Industry of Lies argues that the global Israel-boycott movement has emboldened a growing disconnect between facts and perceptions. Yemini also highlights how academia has become fertile ground for cultivating lies about Israel, stating that “there are many intellectuals who will ... create a new reality, invent facts, publish innumerable tracts containing known lies and speak and quote each other.”

Yemini’s book is a solid guide to the challenges that Jews face today, both different and disconcertingly similar to those of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Today the debate is not about race as it was in the 1930s but focuses on Zionism, enabling those who hate Jews to proclaim that they do not hate Jews, just Zionists.

An atmosphere that enables intolerable ideas has become accepted as the norm. This situation needs to be challenged continually, and Industry of Lies offers an excellent point of departure.

Asaf Romirowsky
Scholars for Peace in the Middle East