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Avi Shlaim

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Avi Shlaim
אבי שליים‎
أفي شلايم‎
Shlaim in 2015
Born (1945-10-31) 31 October 1945 (age 79)
Baghdad, Kingdom of Iraq
Citizenship
  • Israel
  • United Kingdom
Spouse
Gwyneth Daniel
​
(m. 1973)​
[1]
Children1
AwardsBritish Academy Medal (2017)
Academic background
Education
ThesisThe United States and the Berlin Blockade, 1948–1949: A Study in Crisis Decision Making (1980)
Academic work
DisciplineHistorian
School or traditionIsrael's "New Historians"
Institutions

Avi Shlaim FBA (born 31 October 1945) is an Israeli and British historian of Iraqi Jewish descent. He is one of Israel's "New Historians", a group of Israeli scholars who put forward critical interpretations of the history of Zionism and Israel.[1][2][3]

Biography

Shlaim was born to wealthy Jewish parents in Baghdad in the Kingdom of Iraq.[4]

In the 1930s, the situation of the Jews in Iraq deteriorated, with the rise of nationalisms in Arab countries, and the concomitant growth of Jewish nationalism in the form of Zionism. Persecution of Jews was exacerbated after the defeat of the Arab armies in 1948, and Israel's independence. In 1951, during Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, Shlaim's family, along with most of Iraq's Jews, registered to emigrate to Israel and forfeit their Iraqi citizenship. The family lost all of their property and emigrated to Israel.[4]

Shlaim grew up in Ramat Gan. He left Israel for England at the age of 16 to study at a Jewish school.[4][5] He returned to Israel in 1964 to serve in the Israel Defense Forces, then moved back to England in 1966 to read history at Jesus College, Cambridge. He obtained his BA degree in 1969.[6] He obtained an MSc (Econ.) in International Relations in 1970 from the London School of Economics and a PhD from the University of Reading.[7] He was a lecturer and reader in politics in the University of Reading from 1970 to 1987.[8]

He married the great-granddaughter of David Lloyd George, who was the British prime minister at the time of the Balfour Declaration. He has lived in the United Kingdom since 1966, and holds dual British and Israeli nationality.[9]

Academic career

Shlaim taught international relations at Reading University, specialising in European issues. His academic interest in the history of Israel began in 1982, when Israeli government archives about the 1948 Arab–Israeli War were opened, an interest that deepened when he became a fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, in 1987.[4] He was Alastair Buchan Reader in international relations at Oxford from 1987 to 1996 and director of graduate studies in that subject in 1993–1995 and 1998–2001. He held a British Academy research readership in 1995–97 and a research professorship in 2003–2006.[8]

Shlaim served as an outside examiner on the doctoral thesis of Ilan Pappé. Shlaim's approach to the study of history is informed by his belief that "the historian's most fundamental task is not to chronicle but to evaluate... to subject the claims of all the protagonists to rigorous scrutiny and reject all those claims, however deeply cherished, that do not stand up."[10]

Views and opinions

Shlaim is a regular contributor to The Guardian newspaper, and signed an open letter to that paper in January 2009 condemning Israel's role in the Gaza War.[11]

Writing in the Spectator, Shlaim called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a "proponent of the doctrine of permanent conflict," describing his policies as an attempt to preclude a peaceful resolution to the conflict with Palestinians. Furthermore, he described Israeli foreign policy as one that supported stability of Arab regimes over nascent democratic movements during the Arab Spring.[12]

Shlaim is a member of the UK Labour Party.[13] In August 2015, he was a signatory to a letter criticising The Jewish Chronicle's reporting of Jeremy Corbyn's association with alleged antisemites.[14]

In Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew, Shlaim unveils "undeniable proof of Zionist involvement in the terrorist attacks" which prompted a mass exodus of Jews from Iraq between 1950 and 1951. The historian believed that most of the bombings against Jews in Iraq were the work of Mossad. He believed Mossad took these actions to quicken the transfer of 110,000 Jews in Iraq to the then-newly created state of Israel.[15] [16]

Criticism

The Israeli historians Joseph Heller and Yehoshua Porath have claimed that Shlaim "misleads his readers with arguments that Israel had missed the opportunity for peace while the Arabs are strictly peace seekers".[17][18]

According to Yoav Gelber, Shlaim's claim that there was a deliberate and pre-meditated anti-Palestinian "collusion" between the Jewish Agency and King Abdullah of Jordan, is unequivocally refuted by the documentary evidence on the development of contacts between Israel and Jordan before, during and after the 1948 war.[19] Marc Lynch however wrote that "the voluminous evidence in [Gelber's] book does not allow so conclusive a verdict".[20]

Israeli historian Benny Morris, while praising Shlaim's historical works such as Collusion Across the Jordan and The Iron Wall, has criticized Shlaim's contemporary commentary. In a negative review of Israel and Palestine, he described it as having an anti-Israel and pro-Arab bias, asserting that Shlaim distorted records to give a one-sided portrayal of history.[21] Morris also wrote a negative review of Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew.[22]

Awards and recognition

In 2006, Shlaim was elected Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.[8][23]

On 27 September 2017, Shlaim was awarded the British Academy Medal "for lifetime achievement".[24]

Avi Shlaim was the winner of the 2024 PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for his memoir "Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew (Oneworld)".[25]

Bibliography

  • Shlaim, Avi (1988). Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0231068383. OL 2402608M. (Winner of the 1988 Political Studies Association's W. J. M. Mackenzie Book Prize.)
  • Shlaim, Avi (1990). The Politics of Partition: King Abdullah, the Zionists, and Palestine, 1921–1951. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0198294597. OL 82757M.
  • Shlaim, Avi (1995). War and Peace in the Middle East: A Concise History. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0140245646. OL 921594M.
  • Shlaim, Avi; Sayigh, Yezid, eds. (1997). The Cold War and the Middle East. Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0198290995. OL 991628M.
  • Shlaim, Avi (1999). The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0713994100. OL 7451659M.
  • Shlaim, Avi (2007). Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace. Vintage. ISBN 978-1400078288. OL 24083636M.
  • Shlaim, Avi (2009). Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations. Verso. ISBN 978-1844673667. OL 23913926M.
  • Shlaim, Avi (2023). Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew. Oneworld Publications. ISBN 978-0861544639. OL 39565778M.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Shlaim, Prof. Avi". Who's Who. A & C Black. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U164293. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ Ethan Bronner (14 November 1999). "Israel: The Revised Edition: Two historians offer re-examinations of the Zionist–Arab conflict". The New York Times. Retrieved 23 March 2014. Review of The Iron Wall by Avi Shlaim and Righteous Victims by Benny Morris, with links to the first chapters of each.
  3. ^ Morris, Benny. "The New Historiography" in Morris, Benny. (ed) Making Israel. 1987, pp. 11–28.
  4. ^ a b c d Rapaport, Meron (11 August 2005). "No peaceful solution". Haaretz Friday Supplement.
  5. ^ Shlaim, Avi (7 January 2009). "How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 March 2014.
  6. ^ Profile: Avi Shlaim University of Oxford
  7. ^ "Governing Body Fellows". Archived from the original on 15 January 2018. Retrieved 25 April 2008.
  8. ^ a b c Professor Avi Shlaim Archived 27 May 2007 at the Wayback Machine, University of Oxford.
  9. ^ Shlaim, Avi: "And for the last forty years, I have lived in Britain, and I teach at Oxford" in "It Takes an Enormous Amount of Courage to Speak the Truth When No One Else is Out There" — World-Renowned Holocaust, Israel Scholars Defend DePaul Professor Norman Finkelstein as He Fights for Tenur. Shlaim's interview; democracynow.org, 9 May 2007, accessed 23 March 2014.
  10. ^ Shlaim, Avi. "The debate about 1948" in International Journal of Middle East Studies. 1995, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 287–304.
  11. ^ "Growing outrage at the killings in Gaza". The Guardian. 16 January 2009. Retrieved 23 March 2014.. Letter to the editor signed by over 300 academics, writers, and others.
  12. ^ Shlaim, Avi. "An Israeli spring? Rejecting the prospect of greater democracy in the Arab world could put the Jewish state at risk", Spectator, 25 Feb 2012.
  13. ^ "Censorship battle and an antisemitic charge cause anger". The Guardian. 15 October 2017. Retrieved 1 July 2018.
  14. ^ Dysch, Marcus (18 August 2015). "Anti-Israel activists attack JC for challenging Jeremy Corbyn". The Jewish Chronicle. Retrieved 7 April 2017.
  15. ^ "Avi Shlaim says he has 'proof of Zionist involvement' in 1950s attack on Iraqi Jews". Middle East News Agency. 17 June 2023.
  16. ^ "A shocking claim about the Baghdad bombings of 1950 and 1951". spectator. 17 June 2023.
  17. ^ Heller, Joseph; Porat, Yehoshua (18 August 2005). "The wonders of the new history". Haaretz. Retrieved 23 March 2014.
  18. ^ Joseph Heller (2000). The Birth of Israel, 1945–1949: Ben-Gurion and His Critics. University Press of Florida. p. 306. ISBN 0813017327.
  19. ^ Yoav Gelber (July 2009). "The Israeli-Arab War of 1948 : The Collusion That Never Was". jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Shlaim's conjecture of a deliberate and pre-meditated anti-Palestinian "collusion" does not stand up to a critical examination. The documentary evidence on the development of contacts between Israel and Jordan before, during and after the war unequivocally refutes Shlaim's conclusions. If there was any collusion against the Palestinians in 1948, it was not concocted by Israel and Abdullah but rather, by Britain and Transjordan. The outcomes reveal that the British acquiescence to a Transjordanian takeover of Arab Palestine was merely a choice by default rather than a plot.
  20. ^ Lynch. Marc (2005). "Israeli-Jordanian Dialogue, 1948-1953: Cooperation, Conspiracy, or Collusion? by Yoav Gelber". Middle East Journal. 59 (2): 329–330. JSTOR 4330143.
  21. ^ Morris, Benny (28 November 2009). "Derisionist History". The New Republic. ISSN 0028-6583. Retrieved 18 June 2023.
  22. ^ Morris, Benny (26 September 2023). "Avi Shlaim's Fantasy Land". Tablet. Archived from the original on 26 October 2023.
  23. ^ "Professor Avi Shlaim". The British Academy. Retrieved 5 October 2017.
  24. ^ "From Wikipedia to Roman coins: British Academy recognises excellence in the humanities and social sciences". The British Academy. Retrieved 5 October 2017.
  25. ^ https://www.thebookseller.com/news/avi-shlaim-wins-pen-hessell-tiltman-prize-2024-for-his-deeply-moving-memoir? The Bookseller:News:November 2024:Avi Shlaim wins PEN Hessell Tiltman Prize
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