The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is complex. In the aftermath of the brutal Hamas attack on Israeli communities and in light of the ongoing war in Israel/Palestine, students and faculty have been asking for resources to help them understand the history of this conflict. Below are recent webinars and panels addressing the current war as well as talks and books that provide deeper historical context.
Webinars and podcasts addressing the current moment:
October 8th Panel at 92ndY with Itamar Rabinovich, Richard Haass, Lihi Ben Shitrit, and Jodi Rudoren
October 9th Lecture with Ambassador Prof. Daniel Kurtzer, The Outbreak of War in Israel: A Geopolitical Update
October 12 Panel at Princeton, moderated by Razia Iqbal, featuring Daniel Kurtzer, Salam Fayyad, and Mona Yacoubian
October 12th Teach-in: War in Israel, Reflections from Brandeis Faculty, with Eva Bellin, Yuval Evri, Shai Feldman, Abdel Monem Said Aly, Jonathan D. Sarna, moderated by Alexander Kaye
October 15th Conversation at Columbia University, “Israel at War: Live from Tel Aviv,” with Avi Shilon, moderated by Rebecca Kobrin
October 30th Conversation at Dartmouth College, “Hope Interrupted in Israel/Palestine,” with Mira Sucharov and Omar Dajani
A podcast interview from the Shalom Hartman Institute titled “Resilience and Ingenuity in Crisis” with Effie Shoham-Steiner, who was a Fordham-NYPL Fellow in 2022-2023, and who is involved in the Shomrim al Ha-Bait Ha-Meshutaf
A podcast from the Luskin Center at UCLA “Understanding the Israel-Gaza Conflict: Causes, Conduct, and Consequences.”
Articles addressing the current moment:
In the aftermath of the Hamas massacre, Magda Teter published an article titled “Have We Scholars of Anti-Semitism Failed to Facilitate Empathy for Its Victims? What we can learn from scholars of anti-Black racism” on Public Seminar, and, via JTA, a longer version here.
In 2016-17, we hosted a series of events about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, highlighting groups working toward peace in our “In Dialogue” series. Among them was an event, titled “The Roadmap for A Shared Society, or How Jews and Arabs Can Live and Prosper Together,” with Yaniv Sagee and Mohammad Darawshe from Givat Haviva. Mohammad Darawshe’s cousin, Awad, was murdered by Hamas on October 7, 2023. Here is a recent New York Times article about him and those who have been working towards peace, “Peace, a Forgotten Word, Renews its Claim in the Holy Land.” Givat Haviva held a briefing by Michal Sella on October 12 about the current situation.
Rabbinic voices reflecting on the Hamas attack:
Rabbi Angela Buchdal’s sermon at Central Synagogue in Manhattan, “Israel at War: In the Beginning There Was The Word” (October 13).
Rabbi Sharon Brous at Ikar in Los Angeles, “We’ve Lost So Much. Let’s Not Lose Our Damn Minds” (October 14).
Rabbi Rachel Timoner at Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, “Shabbat B’reishit 5784 – Response to the Tragedy in Israel” (October 14).
Webinars related to the history of the conflict, of Israel, and of Zionism
In 2017-2018, David Myers (UCLA) and Hussein Ibish (Arab Gulf States Institute) spoke at Fordham’s Center for Jewish Studies in a series titled “A Different Take on Israel/Palestine: Shared Histories, Divergent Pathways.” The series was held before we began recording our events. We will be hosting them for a four-part lecture series, starting December 6, How Did We Get Here? A Deep Dive into the History of Israel and Palestine, Part I: Arabs and Jews: 1881-1948, REGISTER
In the meantime, the two scholars recorded a 2-hr mini-course and held a similar three-part series at the University of Scranton, available here:
- “Shared Paths, Divergent Courses: Zionism and Palestinian Nationalism” (2-hr mini-course)
- University of Scranton: Shared Paths, Divergent Courses: The Israel-Palestine Conflict, 1949-1979.
- University of Scranton: Shared Past, Divergent Courses: Zionism and Palestinian Nationalism: The Israel-Palestinian Conflict, 1979-Present
- University of Scranton: The History of Israel-Palestine: Peering into the Future
Derek Penslar (Harvard) spoke at Fordham on “Zionism: An Emotional State,” relating the history of Zionism through the lens of emotions and arguing that Zionism is a matrix of emotional states–bundles of feeling whose elements vary in volume, intensity, and durability across space and time–love, solidarity, fear, and hate.
Hollis Granoff Landauer spoke about “Kibbutz Haggadot in Mandatory Palestine.”
Amnon Reichman and Orit Avishai discussed the constitutional crisis in Israel in recent months.
Podcasts from the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University
- Counter/Argument: A Middle East Podcast — “Not All Palestinians Think the Same” with Khalil Shikaki
- “Can Arab-Israeli Peace be Expanded Despite an Intensifying Palestinian-Israeli Conflict?” with Shai Feldman, Abdel Monem Said Aly, and Khalil Shikaki
Books:
- Abdel Monem Said Aly, Shai Feldman, and Khalil Shikaki, Arabs and Israelis: Conflict and Peacemaking in the Middle East (Bloomsbury, 2022)
- Jonathan Gribetz, Defining Neighbors: Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist-Arab Encounter (Princeton, 2014)
- Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2002 (Vintage, 2001)
- Derek Penslar, Zionism: An Emotional State (Rutgers, 2023)
- Anita Shapira, Israel: A History (Brandeis University Press, 2014)
- Abdelwahab Meddeb and Benjamin Stora, eds., A History of Jewish-Muslim Relations: From the Origins to the Present Day (Princeton University Press, 2013)