Avi Shlaim

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Avi Shlaim

Avraham "Avi" Shlaim (born October 31, 1945 in Baghdad , Iraq ) is a British - Israeli historian and professor emeritus of international relations of Jewish-Iraqi origin.

Life

Avi Shlaim was born in Baghdad and grew up in Ramat Gan , Israel, from 1950 after his wealthy Jewish-Arab family emigrated to the state that had been founded two years earlier.

At the age of 16 he went to London, where his uncle lived, on the initiative of his mother, and attended a private Jewish school there. Before the Israeli nationality, he had already had British citizenship.

In 1964 he returned to Israel to do his military service there until 1966.

From 1966 to 1969 studied Shlaim at Jesus College of Cambridge University History (Degree: Bachelor of Arts ) and acquired 1969/70 at the London School of Economics the M.Sc. in international relations . After receiving a doctorate from Reading University , he taught political science there from 1970 to 1987 with a focus on the European Union . In 1987 he moved to the St Antony's College of Oxford University , where he remained until his retirement worked as a Professor of International Relations of 2006. In 2006 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy .

His main research interest was initially the European integration process.

His interest in the recent history of Israel was aroused in particular by Ilan Pappes' dissertation , which he read as a reviewer at Oxford University.

His academic and journalistic texts on the Israeli-Arab conflict published in Great Britain finally made him known to a wider public - between 2000 and 2005, around 45,000 editions of his book Behind the Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World were sold. This was his first book to be published in Israel in a Hebrew translation in 2005.

He publishes in various magazines, especially in The Guardian . There he published an open letter in January 2009 condemning Israel's role in the Gaza war . In one of his articles for the Spectator , he called Benjamin Netanyahu a "proponent of the doctrine of permanent conflict"; He described his policy as an attempt to rule out peaceful conflict resolution.

Positions

Shlaim is counted among the New Israeli Historians who, although with different emphases, but like him using original documents from previously inaccessible state archives, question important established principles of official historiography and sometimes refute them.

In 1999 and 2014, in The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, he presented his view that Jabotinsky's article The Iron Wall , which has become the “Bible of the Revisionists ”, is mostly misunderstood by opponents of Zionism as well as by representatives of revisionism himself. Jabotinsky's remarks on the “iron wall” should be understood in relation to the situation at the time. A detailed understanding of the article shows that the long-term goal for Jabotinsky was the political autonomy of the Arabs within a Jewish state. In the texts, he understood the Palestinian Arabs as a nation and accordingly recognized their claim to some national rights, albeit limited ones , not just individual rights.

Shlaim is of the opinion that this thinking, even if it was initially rejected by David Ben-Gurion and his colleagues, was soon adopted by him and all Zionist leaders, including the Labor Group, and became the guiding principle against those willing to negotiate Politicians like Moshe Sharett had been enforced. With the exception of Rabin, all politicians had only implemented the first part of Jabotinsky’s strategy, the formation and defense of the wall, but the peace offers from the Arab side had been ignored in the interests of an expansionist policy. In the new edition of 2014, Shlaim draws the conclusion that the IDF ( Israeli Defense Forces ) have "turned into the police force of a brutal colonial power".

Avi Shlaim called for sanctions against Israel during a visit to Norway, because 40 percent of Israeli foreign trade is with the EU and not the US. He stated that the only hope for a future between Israel and the Palestinians is for Europe to play a crucial role. Economic sanctions are a means.

reception

Diana Pinto found that Shlaim's work, like that of other new Israeli historians, had a much greater resonance abroad than in domestic Israeli political debates.

Publications

as an author
  • The United States and the Berlin Blockade 1948–1949. A study in crisis decision-making . University Press, Berkeley, Carlif. 1989, ISBN 0-520-06619-7 (International crisis behavior series; 2).
  • The Politics of Partition. King Abdullah, the Zionists and Palestine 1921-1951; a concise history . University Press, Oxford 1990, ISBN 0-19-285223-X (former title: Collusion across the Jordan ).
  • War and Peace in the Middle East . Penguin Books, New York 1995, ISBN 0-14-024564-2 .
  • The Iron Wall. Israel and the Arab World . Norton Press, New York 2001, ISBN 0-393-32112-6 .
  • Israel and Palestine. Reappraisals, revisions, refutations . Verso Books, London 2009, ISBN 978-1-84467-366-7 .
  • Lion of Jordan. The life of King Hussein in war and peace . Alfred Knopf, New York 2008, ISBN 978-1-4000-4305-7 .
as editor

Web links

Commons : Avi Shlaim  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Avi Shlaim: In Ishmael's House, in: Financial Times of August 30, 2010, accessed on August 3, 2014 (English)
  2. ↑ a b c Meron Rapoport: No peaceful solution, in: Haaretz from August 11, 2005, accessed on August 3, 2014 (English)
  3. ^ Governing Body Fellows. St Antony's College, accessed September 25, 2009 .
  4. ^ Curriculum Vitae (Avi Shlaim). St Antony's College, accessed September 25, 2009 .
  5. ↑ Avi Shlaim, short biography on the Oxford University website, accessed on August 3, 2014 (English)
  6. ^ Growing outrage at the killings in Gaza. In: The Guardian. January 16, 2009, accessed March 23, 2014 . . Letter to the editor signed by over 300 academics, writers, and others.
  7. ↑ Shlaim, Avi. "An Israeli spring? Rejecting the prospect of greater democracy in the Arab world could put the Jewish state at risk." Spectator Feb 25, 2012
  8. ^ The Iron Wall. In: www.nytimes.com. Retrieved January 6, 2017 .
  9. ^ Avi Shlaim: The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (Updated and Expanded) . WW Norton & Company, 2014, ISBN 978-0-393-35101-9 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  10. ^ Avi Shlaim: The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World . Penguin UK, 2015, ISBN 978-0-14-197678-5 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  11. ↑ Line Fransson: Innfør sanksjoner mot Israel . In: Dagbladet . October 27, 2005 (Norwegian, dagbladet.no [accessed September 24, 2010]). Innfør sanksjoner mot Israel ( Memento of the original from April 23, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dagbladet.no
  12. ↑ Diana Pinto: Israel has moved , e-book without page numbers, note No. 5 to the chapter Between memory and memory chip , Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 9783633730582
personal data
SURNAME Shlaim, Avi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Shlaim, Avraham
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-Israeli historian and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH October 31, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH Baghdad , Iraq