There is no single history of the development of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there are always two narratives. The most prominent example is the event Palestinians mourn as their Nakba – their catastrophic dispersion in 1948 – and which Israelis and Jews around the world celebrate as Israel’s victorious War of Independence. Two conferences of Israeli and Palestinian historians and a book, Shared Histories, have examined these differing perceptions. Three prominent pa...

Israel’s odyssey over the last sixty years has been a remarkable cocktail of resilience, innovation and agony. Many Israelis agreed with David Grossman when he bemoaned Israel’s current path. ‘Look what befell the young, bold, passionate country we had here, and how, as if it had undergone a quickened ageing process, Israel lurched from infancy and youth to a perpetual state of gripe, weakness and sourness.’ No longer admired by the international community, there is still, however, a...

Zionist historiography, written in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, was essentially mobilized, official historiography, which typically portrayed the war as a straight conflict between the sons of light and the sons of darkness, in which the Jews were always blameless and wise and the Arabs, evil and mindless. The opening of major Israeli archives in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as the opening of vast amounts of state papers in the US and UK, and the UN archives, made possible a more object...

Why has the European Left become so antagonistic towards Israel? Is such antagonism in opposition to the policies of successive Israeli governments? Or, is it due to a resurgence of anti-Semitism? The answer is far more complex. In his new book, ‘Israel and the European Left: Between Solidarity and Delegitimisation’, Shindler argues that the new generation of the European Left was more influenced by the decolonization movement than by wartime experiences, which led it to favour the...

The Israeli Right first came to power nearly four decades ago. Its election was described then as ‘an earthquake’ and its reverberations endure. In The Rise of the Israeli Right, Professor Colin Shindler poses important questions – How did the Right rise to power? What are its origins? – tracing its development from the birth of Zionism to modern times. Professor Derek Penslar chairs.

In his collection of essays Colin Shindler presents his very personal take on Israel, based on over 50 years of writing on the subject for The New York Times, The Jerusalem Post and the Guardian. This vivid and engaging ‘history’ speaks of Shindler’s deep understanding of the problems of the region.