Insight on Arendt

UNKIND TO ARENDT
By Walter Laqueur, Reply by Jeremy Waldron
In response to What Would Hannah Say? (March 15, 2007)

To the Editors:

Jeremy Waldron ["What Would Hannah Say?" NYR, March 15] quotes me attributing Hannah Arendt's alleged misjudgments about Israel and things Jewish to the fact that she had read too much anti-Semitic literature for her own good. I attributed nothing of the sort, the reference was to Ms. Arendt's streak of paranoia believing that the Jewish establishment was out to get her by foul means including bribing a well-known New York judge to write a negative review of one of her books...

Walter Laqueur
Washington, D.C.

Jeremy Waldron replies:
Walter Laqueur did make both the observations about Hannah Arendt that I reproached him for. On page 492 of his article "The Arendt Cult" in the Journal of Contemporary History (October 1988) he wrote (concerning Arendt's response to a negative review of the Eichmann book): "There was a streak of paranoia in Arendt on such occasions; perhaps she had read too much anti-Semitic literature for her own good."...