FULLY BOOKED Avi Shlaim in conversation with Shlomo Sand

Talk Thursday 12th November, 2009

Few modern conflicts are as attached to history as that of Israel and Palestine.  Avi Shlaim, professor of international relations at Oxford will be in conversation with Shlomo Sand, professor of contemporary history at Tel Aviv University, at the Frontline Club for a seminal evening of discussion.
Avi Shlaim’s new book, Israel and Palestine focuses on the causes and consequences of the Israeli-Palestine conflict, while Shlomo Sand’s international best-seller The Invention of the Jewish People unravels the mythologised history of the Jewish people to find that the Israelites were never exiled from the promised land, and therefore have no right to return.  The book concludes that the present-day Palestinian Arabs are the true heirs of the biblical Jews.
This is a once-only opportunity to hear these two eminent historians discussing their individual perspectives on the history – past and present – of Israel, and how their separate routes of academic enquiry have arrived at the same place: a two-state solution to end the fighting.

With: Jacqueline Rose, Professor of English at Queen Mary University of London. Her books include Sexuality in the Field of Vision, the novel Albertine, On Not Being Able to Sleep and The Question of Zion. She contributes regularly to the London Review of Books, and wrote and presented the Channel 4 documentary, Dangerous Liaison – Israel and America.