Robin Moss
A History of Israel’s Conflict(s): 1936-1949

Since before its founding, and right up to today, Israel has been defined by conflict. In this series, we try to tell the story of Israel’s multiple fights against its multiple enemies — “conflicts within a conflict” — in as fair-minded and non-tendentious a way as possible. Everything about the conflict is contested, even down to the very name! (Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Israeli-Arab conflict? Conflict in the Middle East? Israel’s conflict against the terrorists?) So we will tread carefully, try to engage with multiple perspectives, and hope to end up with more knowledge and a greater depth of understanding of this most divisive of conflicts.

The 1936 Arab revolt saw the British despair over the future of the Mandate in Palestine. The solution they proposed—a complicated precursor to the “two-state solution”—has overshadowed the conflict ever since. As the Jewish people suffered the shattering blow of the Shoah, the fighting between Jews and Arabs took on a mythic, almost existential quality. For Jews, this led to Atzmaut (independence), the founding of the first sovereign Jewish state in millennia. For the Arabs, it was Nakba (catastrophe) that awaited them.

This lecture is presented in association with Etgar, a Jewish and Israel education programme in the UK. etgar.co.uk.