Announcing the 2010 Book Prize Winners

From Empathy to Denial: Arab Responses to the Holocaust, Meir Litvak and Esther Webman's impressively researched chronicle of Arab attitudes toward the Holocaust, has won the prestigious Gold Prize -- including a cash award of $30,000 -- in The Washington Institute's 2010 Book Prize competition. This sweeping account, based largely on Arab public commentary and other Arabic-language sources, covers six decades of postwar history and documents how, after the establishment of the State of Israel, Arab attitudes toward the Holocaust influenced -- and were shaped by -- broader anti-Zionist sentiment.

The Washington Institute Book Prize, now in its third year, was established to highlight new nonfiction books on the Middle East and is among the world's most lucrative literary awards.

The Institute awarded the 2010 Silver Prize ($15,000) to Lebanese journalist and public intellectual Michael Young, opinion editor of the Beirut-based Daily Star, for his compelling personal narrative The Ghosts of Martyrs Square: An Eyewitness Account of Lebanon’s Life Struggle. The Bronze Prize ($5,000) recipient is historian Jeffrey Herf for Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, a vivid examination of the Nazi propaganda campaign aimed at Arabs and Muslims of the Middle East during World War II.

"This year's award winners include two outstanding examples of rising public interest in the long-overlooked history of the Holocaust's impact in the Middle East, including the complex relationship between the Holocaust and Arab-Israeli relations," noted Institute executive director Dr. Robert Satloff. "And we are particularly delighted to recognize the contribution made by Michael Young, whose powerful memoir brings to light the sordid politics that undermine the very idea that Lebanon represents."

Winners were chosen by a three-person jury: Washington Post editorial board member Jackson Diehl, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, and distinguished historian Walter Laqueur.

Winners of the 2010 Washington Institute Book Prize

Gold Prize: $30,000
From Empathy to Denial: Arab Responses to the Holocaust
Meir Litvak and Esther Webman (Columbia University Press)
Read more about From Empathy to Denial on the Columbia University Press website.

Prize Jury Commendation:
"From Empathy to Denial is the definitive exposé of a deeply held prejudice obscured by politics and partisanship. Through painstaking sifting of Arabic sources, the authors carefully measure the psychological barriers that block Arab comprehension of the Holocaust's significance for Israel, Jewry, and the world. In so doing, Meir Litvak and Esther Webman tell a neglected story behind the persistence of the Arab-Israeli conflict."

Silver Prize: $15,000
The Ghosts of Martyrs Square: An Eyewitness Account of Lebanon's Life Struggle
Michael Young (Simon & Schuster)
Read more about The Ghosts of Martyrs Square on the Simon & Schuster website.

Prize Jury Commendation:
"The Ghosts of Martyrs Square is a deeply informed history and gripping first-person memoir of the ongoing struggle for Lebanon, exacerbated by the fierce competition of outside forces for regional domination. In Michael Young, the tragically frustrated Cedar Revolution has found an honest, dispassionate chronicler whose precise and elegant prose slices through the fog of war that has not yet lifted."

Bronze Prize: $5,000
Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World
Jeffrey Herf (Yale University Press)
Read more about Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World on the Yale University Press website.

Prize Jury Commendation:
"Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World draws on newly discovered archival sources to reconstruct the campaign of hatred unleashed by Hitler's Germany in Arabic, for Arabs. Jeffrey Herf then boldly traces the lingering effects of this propaganda upon the ideologies of the present, especially the more militant strands of Islamism. The result is a meticulous reconstruction of how dangerous ideas have defied defeat through mutation."

About the Authors

Meir Litvak and Esther Webman
Meir Litvak is senior lecturer in the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University. Esther Webman is a research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies and the Steven Roth Institute for the study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University.

Michael Young
Michael Young is opinion page editor of the Daily Star newspaper in Beirut, Lebanon, where he writes a weekly column. Young previously edited Lebanon Report and the biannual Beirut Review, both publications of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies, where he was English publications editor until 2000. He also frequently contributes to publications in Lebanon, the United States, and Europe. He lives in Beirut.

Jeffrey Herf
Jeffrey Herf is a professor of history at the University of Maryland.