Scapegoat: Reading Steven Friedman’s Good Jew, Bad Jew

Ivor Chipkin

doi:10.25159/2663-6689/19217

Authors

Ivor Chipkin Gordon Institute of Business Science https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3623-2351

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25159/2663-6689/19217

Keywords:

Israel, Zionism, anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, scapegoat

Abstract

This essay uses a review of Steven Friedman’s book, Good Jew, Bad Jew, to identify an ideological logic, which it calls “scapegoating”. In this regard, the book conjures a totemic figure, something Friedman calls the “Israeli state”, a racist, thieving fetish that devours, kills and lies, even transforming anti-Semitism itself into a self-serving ideology. The “Israeli State” has no history, no inner life, no complexity.

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