It is a commonplace to assert the similarity between these two hateful ideologies. But there is more than mere similarity at work; there is also a family resemblance based, at least in part, on a historical, genetic connection. In his new book, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, Jeffrey Herf describes in painstaking detail Nazi Germany’s effort to win the sympathy of Muslims in the Middle East. Herf uses thousands of pages of verbatim English translations of the Nazi broadcasts to build his portrait of how the Nazis appealed to Muslim tradition. They didn’t invent Muslim anti-Semitism, but they focused it and exploited it, and their rhetoric echoes today. The book comes from Yale University Press — which, it would be a severe understatement to say, did not distinguish itself in the recent controversy about its book on the Danish cartoons. Kudos to Yale for getting it right this time, and publishing the work of a serious scholar on the genealogy of today’s most serious anti-Semitic threat.