Hannah Arendt, Adolf Eichmann, and the Jews
A book that hasn’t lost its ability to appall.
February 23, 2018
Hannah Arendt, Adolf Eichmann, and the Jews
A book that hasn’t lost its ability to appall.
In 1963—a year after Adolf Eichmann’s sentencing by an Israeli court—reports on the trial by the German-born Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt appeared in the New Yorker and were soon published as a book. This “report on the banality of evil,” as the book was subtitled, outraged many Jews, including many of her erstwhile friends and admirers, on account of her manifest contempt for the entire preceding, her disgust for the state of Israel, her accusation that a wide array of European Jewish leaders (if not the majority of the victims) were complicit in their own murder, and her bizarre insistence that Eichmann was “not a monster,” or even an anti-Semite, but a mindless, faceless bureaucrat. While extensive evidence has been brought to light that Arendt was wrong both in her claims of Jewish passivity and her evaluation of Eichmann as the head of the SS’s Jewish section, her book remains widely read and admired. Ruth Wisse comments on its enduring legacy:
February 23, 2018
Europe Can’t Effectively Stop the U.S. from Reimposing Sanctions on Iran
Despite threats to the contrary.
Anti-Semitic Violence in France Continues Unabated, as Does the Indifference of French Politicians
Shouting “death to the Jews” doesn’t count as incitement.
Archaeologists May Have Found a Clay Seal Belonging to the Prophet Isaiah
The right name, the right time, and the right place. But is it the right Isaiah?
Islamic State and al-Qaeda Are Still Formidable Enemies
They’ve lost many battles, but not the war.