Georges Bensoussan: Die Ursprünge des arabisch-israelischen Konflikts (1870–1950)

In the organizer's words:

In his search for the social origins of the then still Arab-Israeli conflict, Georges Bensoussan goes back to the time before the first aliyah. His historical study was published in France in 2023. He examines a historical period that stretches from 1870 to the end of the War of Independence and Israel's first ceasefire agreements with its Arab neighbors in 1949. He shows that even before the immigration of Eastern European Zionists, the old Yishuv formed the core of a national movement inspired by Europe. While the path towards a modern society with corresponding institutions and organizations emerged early on for the Jews there, the vast majority of the Arab population were inhibited in their social development by clan-based rule bound by tradition and religion. According to Bensoussan, two culturally and socially distinct societies would soon be facing each other to the point of open hostility. Bensoussan argues that the dynamics of the Arab-Israeli conflict can only be understood with an idea of social progress - much better than the usual explanatory models such as nationalism, imperialism and colonialism.

Translator Alex Carstiucpresents the book's theses and gives an overview of its reception.

Georges Bensoussan, born in 1952 in Ahfir, comes from a long-established Jewish family in Morocco who had to emigrate to France. He is editor-in-chief of the magazine Revue d'histoire de la Shoah and is responsible for the publications of the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris. He has made a name for himself internationally as a historian with numerous works on the history of the Shoah, Zionism and Jews in the Arab world. So far, only the volume Die Juden der arabischen Welt. The Forbidden Question (2019).

Alex Carstiuc is a historian, editor and co-translator of Léon Poliakov's memoirs. He translated Annette Wieviorka's work 1945: When the Americans Discovered the Camps (Edition Tiamat Fall 2021). With Jonas Empen translation of Georges Bensoussan: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (1870 - 1950).

An event by associazione delle talpe in cooperation with the Rosa Luxemburg Initiative - The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Bremen, Partnership for Democracy Bremen, Monom Foundation, Kukoon Cultural Center and Kulturnetz e.V. as part of the Action Weeks against Anti-Semitism Bremen.