The Arab-Israeli Conflict – A Six Week Course Taught by Arie Zmora
Historian and Har Zion member Dr. Arie Zmora will teach a literature-based course entitled “The Arab-Israeli Conflict.” Starting on June 14, this 6-session course will meet weekly for 90 minutes on these Sundays: June 14, 21 & 28 and July 5, 19 & 26. Classes will be 10:30am to 12pm at the Temple. The cost for the entire series will be $120, which Dr. Zmora is donating to the Har Zion preschool and religious school. Dr. Zmora is an expert in Israeli history and politics. The subject matter is very relevant today, and he is an excellent teacher.
Here is his description of the course.
The Arab-Israeli Conflict
Arie Zmora, PhD
The Mechanics of the Course
The course is based around readings for each session that will introduce contrasting Israeli and Palestinian points of view – making for lively debate. Dr. Arie Zmora will lead all sessions and include additional information and perspectives to further promote discussion.
The weekly meetings are independent units. So, if you miss a session that is OK because the following meeting will deal with a different topic that does not affect the discussion and understanding of the reading material. Those who are interested will be provided with further in-depth reading material on the relevant subject matter.
Cost: The participants are expected to pay $120.00 by check, or online, to Har Zion, the funds of which will be dedicated exclusively to pre-school and religious school programs at Har Zion. A registration link is below.
Course Description: The Arab-Israeli Conflict Through Literature Since 1917 with an addendum on the rise of Hamas as a dominant force since the 1990s
The October 7, 2023 Massacre exposed a broad level of hate towards Israel, Zionism, and the Jewish People led both by religious Muslim extremists as well as bigots on the extreme political right. Alarmingly, this unholy alliance joined hands in hate with left wing partners, so-called progressives, many affiliated with prestigious elite universities. These latter claimed that Israel is the creation of the corrupt colonial and imperialist West. Israel, in this twisted and false scenario, has been compared to Apartheid South Africa in it commitment to uprooting the native Muslim people of Palestine. Echoing this false narrative, the BDS Movement was created to pressure corporate America and universities to boycott Israel, with its ultimate goal, the destruction of the State of Israel.
This course aims to debunk this false fictional narrative and offer a nuanced historical analysis of the Arab-Israeli Conflict since 1917, the year of the Balfour Declaration, up to the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948. Our program will start by tracing the historical roots of the Jewish people to the land of Israel and use the Tanakh, along with archeological and historical data, to show that Jews have been the indigenous people of the land of Israel for over two thousand years. We will expose the origins of the term “Palestine,” ironically linked to the Jewish people living on that land.
The course will focus on the complex and nuanced ways that Israeli Jews, Arab Israelis, Palestinian writers and poets, as well as scholars outside the region, have addressed the Middle East Conflict. By the nature of their discipline, writers of fiction and poets offer a broader spectrum of images and scenarios to portray the human condition than professional scholars do. In this course we have chosen writers and poets whose narratives bring into focus dramatic encounters among Jews and Arabs on both side of the political divide.
The compelling writings of Israeli and Arab literary and political figures will expose the participants to multiple perspectives of the conflict, its nuances and dilemmas. In order to better understand the political controversies of the different communities we will also read polemical essays on the topics at the center of the public debate addressed by Israeli, Arab, and American scholars.
Just to further pique your curiosity, here are some lesser known facts about the Arab-Israeli Conflict:
*David Ben Gurion, Prime Minster and Founding Father of Israel, was a patriotic supporter of the Ottoman Empire in the early years of World War I and flirted with Communism in the early 1920s. He paid a visit to the Soviet Union in 1923 wishing to meet Lenin.
* In 1941, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin El Husseini, was instrumental in a short lived pro-Nazi coup in Iraq and helped to develop a blueprint for concentration camps for the Iraqi Jewish community. More recent scholarship has exposed the complicity of the Mufti in recruiting Muslims to the Waffen SS helping in the liquidation of European and North African Jewry as part of the Final Solution of the Nazi Regime.
*Throughout the period under discussion, Jewish political leaders initiated multiple ideas to resolve the Conflict through peaceful means, which were always turned down by the Arab leadership. The Arab leaders never came with any proposal towards a peaceful resolution of the Conflict short of a total surrender.
*While most of the Israeli population fought and took heavy losses in the War of Independence of 1948, the majority of the Arab population in Mandatory Palestine did not take part in that war. Missing in action were the large Muslim communities of Nablus and Hebron.
*All the Arab leaders who fought against Israel in 1948 were either killed or pushed out of power within a few years after the establishment of Israel.