Jan. 17, 2019 - Prof. Efraim Karsh lecture "Back to Basic: Rethinking the Arab-Israeli Conflict"

Professor John Kirton, Director of the International Relations Program, Trinity College, University of Toronto,
invites you to a special lecture by distinguished
Professor Efraim Karsh on

January 17, 2019
6:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.
Seeley Hall, Trinity College
6 Hoskin Ave. Toronto, ON

Professor Efraim Karsh has described the topic of his lecture as follows: "Contrary to conventional wisdom, there is nothing inevitable about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, as evidenced by the largely peaceful Arab-Jewish relations during the Mandate era (1920-1948). Had Palestinian Arab leaders heeded the yearning of their constituents for coexistence with their Jewish neighbours rather than embark on a relentless campaign to obliterate the Jewish national revival, there would have been no 1948 war and no dislocation. Had they not impeded the development of Palestinian civil society and rejected all offers of statehood in subsequent decades, all the way to the present, the Palestinians would have long had their independent state.

"This reality was fully recognized as early as 1948 by millions of contemporary Arabs, Jews and foreign observers of the Middle East. As Palestinian refugees at the time told a British fact-finding mission to Gaza, 'they have no quarrel with the Jews -- they have lived with the Jew all their lives and are perfectly ready to go back and live with them again.' Sadly, these historical facts have been erased from public memory by decades of propaganda and revisionist history."

Biography

Efraim Karsh is director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies; professor emeritus of Middle East and Mediterranean studies at King’s College London; professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University; and a principal research fellow (and former director) of the Middle East Forum (Philadelphia), where he also edits the scholarly journal Middle East Quarterly. A regular contributor to the international media, Professor Karsh is the author of more than 120 scholarly articles and 16 books, including The Tail Wags the Dog: International Politics and the Middle East (Bloomsbury), Palestine Betrayed (Yale), Islamic Imperialism: A History (Yale), Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East 1798-1923 (Harvard), The Gulf Conflict 1990-1991 (Princeton), Saddam Hussein: A Political Biography (Free Press) and Fabricating Israeli History: The “New Historians” (Routledge).

This event is sponsored by the International Relations Program, The Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies, The International Relations Student Society, The Milton and Shoshana Shier Family and the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History