Oh for goodness sake, the critique by Wasserstein is neither new nor relevatory. Arendt meticulously noted her sources. The latest Times Literary Supplement article is not novel, it is a rehash of another Times Literary Supplement, now more than 40 years old, see Harap, Louis, ‘Notes and Communications: On Arendt’s Eichmann and Jewish Identity’, 1965. Comments from Louis Harap, Morris U. Schappes (and a rejoinder by Norm Fruchter), Studies on the Left, Vol. 5, Number 4, Fall: 52-79.

Rosenbaum is not ignorant by accident, he has an agenda. As Mary McCarthy noted: with few exceptions favourable reviews had been produced by Gentiles and hostile ones by Jews. This attack on Arendt is a restatement of an old grievance by emotional enemies: she is reviled because she is not Jewish enough. For these critics, it seems impossible that one can transcend your cultural identity.

Arendt became a great philosopher exactly because she did not remain stuck in the provincial world of Jewish past, but sought to find the universal roots of evil as it exists among all people. Konrad Kellen, 1963, in ‘Reflections on “Eichmann in Jerusalem,”’ Midstream, Vol. 9 Number 3, September: 25-35 stated something that Rosenbaum should give some thought to: ‘Let us not lose our heads. Hannah Arendt is not the enemy. The enemy is elsewhere.’

Yeah, well who the hell is the enemy?

The vehement opposition to Arendt's work stemmed in part from her pointing out that some Jewish Councils might have been complicit in the Holocaust. Her detractors called her anti-Jewish and branded her an enemy. Perhaps Kellen wanted to put things in perspective by begging the question. Military threats to Israel had come to light some months before, chief amongst them Egypt's recruiting of about 200 German scientists to work in Military Factory 333, see <link> . The people involved had previously worked on the Nazi V-1 and V-2 programs. Kellen's insight, later so useful in his job as a RAND analyst, may have made it seem quite obvious that a military build-up in neighbouring countries is done by a real enemy (as the war of 1967 confirmed) and in this case, ballistic missiles represented a far bigger threat than an essay by a controversial political theorist.