An award-winning expert on antisemitism this week condemned a publisher’s “deplorable” decision not to release his book in the UK in the face of a threat of libel action from Holocaust denier David Irving.
Professor Robert Wistrich, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, revealed his frustration during a debate at the London Jewish Cultural Centre on Monday.
He said Random House New York decided to withhold his 2010 book A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, after “Irving threatened to sue the publishers if a single copy was sold in the UK”.
In the book Prof Wistrich devotes two pages to Mr Irving’s career as a denier, and includes details of his failed libel suit against historian Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books.
