Beyond chutzpah is a long, tedious and barely readable rant, known less for its content than for the childless controversy it succeeded in provoking. Despite the promise of its subtitle, the book makes no meaningful attempt to describe or to understand the misuses of anti-Semitism. It is, instead, an obsessive assault on another book, The Case For Israel (2003), by the Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who has gained prominence for defending O.J. Simpson, Mike Tyson, Klaus von Bülow and, more recently, Israel.
Beyond Chutzpah: On the misuse of anti-semitism and the abuse of history by Norman G. Finkelstein
Verso, $35 hb, 332 pp
Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood by Idith Zertal
CUP, $59.95 hb, 236 pp
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