The Bloody Price of Freedom: Book Review

Just a few months after D-Day, as it became increasing clear that the Allied Forces would defeat the Nazis in World War II and bring an end to the Holocaust, a group of Arab dictators gathered in Cairo, Egypt to form the Arab League. Anticipating the potential impending realization of the Zionist dream to re-establish a Jewish state in the area then known as British Mandatory Palestine, the Arab League took a page from the Nazi playbook and launched a propaganda-laden boycott campaign seeking to isolate and stare out the Zionist entity that would eventually be known as the Jewish State of Israel.

The Bloody Price of Freedom starts out by tracking how this moment in history gave rise to Anti-Zionism, the surging form of anti-Jewish bigotry that pollutes academia, the media and international diplomacy today. The book examines how the Arab League brought its propaganda campaign to the United Nations, where it was successfully shaped into a foundation for prosecuting Israel at the largest international tribunals and in the court of public opinion.

Heideman’s manuscript then delves into the content of propaganda: the language that is used to wrongly malign and demonize Israel, the faulty premises upon which mountains of lies are built, and the accessible evidence that points readers towards understanding and being able to communicate to others the truth about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Among the topics covered are:

Readers are then shown many of the ways that the propaganda has manifested both into policies, decisions, boycotts, diplomacy and violence against Jews and against Israel, but also against other groups and causes that have been impacted by the flawed applications of flawed precedents. The book then wraps up with concrete proposals for addressing the antisemitism and other societal harms that have flowed from the propaganda campaign, as well as a glimmer of hope for the future, as a growing segment of the Arab League’s membership is starting to normalize relations with Israel by virtue of the recently signed Abraham Accords.

I am proud to have been one of Richard’s research assistants contributing to the preparation of this manuscript. We aimed to provide readers with a clear and straightforward understanding of the indisputable facts about Israel, and the hard data and evidence that supports the narrative. As we often wonder what could have been done differently to prevent the persecutions of the past, this book aims to provide an accessible roadmap for all people towards preventing the persecutions of the future.