From ambivalence to betrayal : the left, the Jews, and Israel / Robert S. Wistrich.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The racist temptation in the labor movement -- Karl Marx, Moses Hess, and Jewish emancipation -- German social democrats on the Völkisch Movement -- The Jewish question from Engels to Bernstein -- Anti-capitalism or antisemitism? The enigma of Franz Mehring -- Socialists and antisemites in Europe before 1914 -- Bernard Lazare: anarchist, Dreyfusard, and revolutionary Jew -- Social democracy and Judeophobia in imperial Vienna -- An Austro-Marxist critique of Jewish nationalism -- Karl Kautsky and the controversy over Zion -- The internationalism of Rosa Luxemoburg -- Leon Trotsky, a Bolshevik tragedy -- From Lenin to the Soviet black hundreds -- The holocaust inversion of the left -- Bruno Kreisky, Israel, and the Palestinian question -- Anti-Zionist myths on the contemporary left -- Great Britain: a suitable case for treatment? -- The Marxist-Islamist alliance.

From Ambivalence to Betrayal is the first study to explore the transformation in attitudes on the Left toward the Jews, Zionism, and Israel since the origins of European socialism in the 1840s until the present. This pathbreaking synthesis reveals a striking continuity in negative stereotypes of Jews, contempt for Judaism, and negation of Jewish national self-determination from the days of Karl Marx to the current left-wing intellectual assault on Israel. World-renowned expert on the history of antisemitism Robert S. Wistrich provides not only a powerful analysis of how and why the Left emerged as a spearhead of anti-Israel sentiment but also new insights into the wider involvement of Jews in radical movements. There are fascinating portraits of Marx, Moses Hess, Bernard Lazare, Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, and other Jewish intellectuals, alongside analyses of the darker face of socialist and Communist antisemitism. The closing section eloquently exposes the degeneration of leftist anti-Zionist critiques into a novel form of "anti-racist" racism.