Manfred Gerstenfeld

Manfred Gerstenfeld was born in Vienna, grew up in Amsterdam where he obtained a master's degree in organic chemistry at Amsterdam University. He also studied economics at what is nowadays Erasmus university in Rotterdam. He has a high school teaching degree in Jewish studies from the Dutch Jewish seminary. In 1999 he obtained a Ph.D. in environmental studies at Amsterdam University. In 1964 he moved to Paris where he became Europe's first financial analyst specializing in the pharmaceutical industry. He moved to Israel in 1968. There he became the managing director of an economic consultancy firm partly owned by Israel's then-largest bank Bank leumi. He was an academic reserve officer in the Israeli Army (IDF). Gerstenfeld was a board member of one of Israel's largest companies, the Israel Corporation and several other Israeli companies.

Ha'aretz editor Anshel Pfeffer wrote in 2013 that "Manfred Gerstenfeld is without doubt the greatest authority on anti-Semitism today." Isi Leibler, the former chairman of the Governing Board of the World Jewish Congress, wrote in the Jerusalem Post in 2015: "Gerstenfeld would today...be considered the most qualified analyst of contemporary anti-Semitism with a focus on anti-Israelism." Gerstenfeld was an editor of The Jewish Political Studies Review, co-publisher of the Jerusalem Letter/Viewpoints, Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism and Changing Jewish Communities and a member of the council of the Foundation for Research of Dutch Jewry, of which he was formerly the vice-chairman. He was chairman of the Board of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a Jerusalem based think tank, from 2000 until 2012, where he headed the Institute for Jewish Global Affairs. He is the 2012 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism. In 2015, he received the International Leadership Award from the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Gerstenfeld is controversial in Norway, after claiming that "Norway is a nation of anti-semites" and that "Norwegians are a barbaric and unintelligent people", and accusing King Harald, Crown Prince Haakon, former Foreign Minister and now Labour leader Jonas Gahr Støre and former Prime Minister and now NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg of being "anti-semites". Gerstenfeld has published books about his views on Norway and written several newspaper articles that have been controversial. Norway's largest newspaper and main newspaper of record, the conservative daily Aftenposten, has described Gerstenfeld in an editorial as a far-right extremist and fanatic. Imre Hercz, a Norwegian doctor and well-known member of Norway's Jewish community, has condemned Gerstenfeld's "propaganda war against Norway". According to expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Hilde Henriksen Waage, Gerstenfeld is a central figure in a smear campaign against Norway on the Israeli far-right. Odd-Bjørn Fure, Norway's main anti-semitism expert and founding director of the Center for Studies of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities, has said that Gerstenfeld "is not worth arguing against. I prefer to deal with serious people. We do not take this person seriously."

Books

• Revaluing Italy with Lorenzo Necci (Italian) (1992)
• Environment and Confusion: An Introduction to a Messy Subject (1993)
• The State as a Business: Do-It-Yourself Political Forecasting (Italian) (1994)
• Israel’s New Future Interviews (1994)
• Judaism, Environmentalism and the Environment (1998)
• The Environment in the Jewish Tradition: A Sustainable World (Hebrew) (2002)
• Europe’s Crumbling Myths: The Post-Holocaust Origins of Today’s Anti-Semitism (Foreword by Emil L. Fackenheim) (2003)
• The New Clothes of European Anti-Semitism (French)(2004), co-edited with Shmuel Trigano
• American Jewry's Challenge: Conversations Confronting the Twenty-first Century(Foreword by Jonathan Sarna) (2004)
• Israel and Europe: An Expanding Abyss? (2005)
• European-Israeli Relations: Between Confusion and Change? (2006)
• Israel at the Polls 2006 with Shmuel Sandler and Jonathan Rynhold (2008)
• Academics against Israel and the Jews. (Foreword by Natan Sharansky) (2007)
• Behind the Humanitarian Mask: The Nordic Countries, Israel, and the Jews (Foreword by Gert Weisskirchen)(2008)
• The Abuse of Holocaust Memory: Distortions and Responses (Foreword by Abrham H. Foxman) (2009)
• Anti-Semitism in Norway: Behind the Humanitarian Mask (Foreword by Finn Jarle Saele) (Norwegian) (2010)
• American Jewry's Comfort Level: Present and Future with Steven Bayme (Foreword by David A. Harris) (2010)
• Israel at the Polls 2009 with Shmuel Sandler and Hillel Frisch (2010)
• Het Verval. Joden in een stuurloos Nederland (The Decay. Jews in a Rudderless Netherlands) (Dutch) (2010)
• Judging the Netherlands:the Renewed Holocaust Restitution Process 1997-2000 (Foreword by Stuart E. EizenstatStuart E. Eizenstat) (2011)
• Demonizing Israel and the Jews. (Foreword by Rabbi Marvin Hier) (2013)
• Postwar Jewish Displacement and Rebirth (with: Françoise S. Ouzan) (2014)
• The war of a million cuts (foreword by Jose Maria Aznar) (2015)
• Israel at the Polls 2013: Continuity and Change in Israeli Political Culture. (with Eithan Orkibi) (2015)
• Israel at the Polls 2015: A moment of transformative stabilty. (with Eithan Orkibi) (2017)

Articles

• The Gaza War and the New Outburst of Anti-Semitism
• Symbolic and Other Roles of Jews in Dutch Society
• Ahmadinejad Calls for Israel's Elimination and Declares War on the West: A Case Study of Incitement to Genocide
• The Mahathir Affair: A Case Study In Mainstream Islamic Anti-Semitism
• Srebrenica: The Dutch Sabra and Shatilla
• The Mohammed-Cartoon Controversy, Israel, and the Jews: A Case Study
• European Politics: Double Standards Toward Israel
• The Twenty-first-century Total War Against Israel and the Jews Part One and Part Two
• Various articles on Jewish Environmental Perspectives.
• Continuing to Distort the Holocaust: 2009-2011*The Abuse of Holocaust Memory in 2011-2012.
• Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israelism in Western Schools
• Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israelism in Dutch Schools
• The Gaza Flotilla: Facts and Official Reactions

Book reviews by Manfred Gerstenfeld

• Joop den Uyl 1919-1987: Dromer en doordouwer (Joop den Uyl 1919-1987: Dreamer and Pusher) by Anet Bleich
• Never Again, Yet Again by Stephen D. Smith
• The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative on Israeli Leadership, by Yehuda Avner
• Hugo Logtenberg and Marcel Wiegman, Job Cohen – Burgemeester van Nederland