Arab-Israeli Conflict part 1
(42 min.) To listen offline, download the mp3 file (right click and save target as)
I’ve been teaching History of the Modern Middle East for many years and researching the issues involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict. This month I taught a course on the Arab-Israeli conflict for CommUniversity. I am making audio recordings of this four-part series available here.
Part 1 is 42 minutes. Here are the main themes:
- Contrary to widely-held opinion, the Arab-Israeli conflict is not age-old. Though both sides butress their claims with narratives from their holy books, the origins are modern. In fact, Jews were treated much better under Islamic rule than in Christian Europe.
- The roots of the conflict lie in nationalisms. Both Arab nationalism and Zionism developed prior to World War I, but there was no particular conflict until World War I, which is where the troubles begin.
- Zionism is unique in comparison to other nationalisms. Awareness of these unique factors is useful for understanding the State of Israel. Persistent anti-semitism was a prerequisite for the development of Zionism.
Please let me know what you think.
Dr. Art Pitz
The Professor’s House
Reader Comments
Dear professor Pitz,
Is it possible to read your ideas on paper in stead of having to listen to them?
Thanking you in advance for your time and help.
Yours sincerely,
Dear professor Pitz, i think your written summary on this site was quite eloquent. However, i do miss a few things in your audio course and there were a few things on which i do not agree with you. First of all… The Mizrachim (Jews living in Arab lands) in general did not care for a Jewish state. Israel was a European Zionist idea, as most scholars will agree with me, a lot of Mizrachim only came to Israel after the tensions in their homelands with their “Arab neighbours” became too high. One of the major contributors to these tensions was indeed the formulation and the realization of the foundation of the state Israel, but also the effort of both Zionism and eventually Arab Nationalism to make the term Judaism inherent to Zionism. This only happened around 1930-1948. Another factor was the change of secular Arab nationalism into Arab nationalism with a religious edge. Before Zionism and Judaism became inherent to one another and before Arab “religious” nationalism, Jews and their Arab neighbours lived relatively peacefully side by side. In fact; Mizrachi Jews generally considered themselves -and they were considered by their non-Jewish neighbours- Egyptians, or Iraqi’s or Yemenites, etc. There was no longing for a Jewish State whatsoever, the idea that this was the case is something even today the Israeli government and Zionists like to advertise, among other things to enhance the position of Mizrachi Jews in the Zionist narrative. Hence i also do not understand why you came up with the biblical narrative, in your introduction. I found this a bit too un-academic/subjective. I like the part where you tell a bit more about how it got to be decided that Hebrew would be the ‘native’ language of the Jewish State. What I miss is for example the importance of for example the White Papers and the Balfour Declaration to the foundation of the state Israel, to Arab nationalism and to the Arab- Israeli conflict. You mentioned here and there something about the composition of the Arab peoples; christians, jews, muslims of all sorts and sizes.. Perhaps it would also be a nice idea to tell a bit about the influence of all the different religions (also within Islam) and the different tribes to Arab nationalism and -if you will- anti- zionism/anti- semitism. One last advise would be to structure the course a bit better. You briefly touched an awful lot of subjects, maybe you can narrow them down a bit and dive a bit deeper into your materials?