QUILLETTE
Islamist Terror; Journalistic Error
Jeffrey Herf
December 2, 2022

In “Can The Whole World” Be Wrong?,” Richard Landes, a historian of apocalyptic movements in medieval Europe, re-examines the reporting of Palestinian attacks on Israel, starting with the Second Intifada that began in September 2000. Principally, he looks at the ways in which postcolonial ideology and the intimidation of journalists have been used to obscure the links between Islamist ideology and terrorist practice, and how this process disfigures public discourse and understanding…Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran after the revolution of 1979, the publication of the Hamas Covenant in 1988, and al Qaeda’s declaration of jihad against Jews and Crusaders in 1998, the governments of the West’s liberal democracies have, with only a few exceptions, been reluctant to speak clearly about the causal connection between Islamist ideology and violence. READ MORE

JNS Phyllis Chesler: The history of the media intifada against Israel Historian Richard Landes’s new book shows how a war of lies and language endangers not only the Jewish state, but the West itself.