Peretz (Friedrich) Bernstein

The Dutch Zionist leader and Israeli politician Peretz Bernstein emigrated to Israel in 1935, where he was a prominent figure in the General Zionist and later Liberal parties. A member of the Knesset from its inception until 1965, he served as minister of commerce and industry in 1948–1949 and from 1952 to 1955. His pioneering study of antisemitism, first published in German in 1926, challenged the liberal assimilationist notion that education and the diffusion of knowledge would banish antisemitism. It also rejected the claim that the “negative” traits of insufficiently acculturated Jews in the diaspora encouraged antisemitism.