A Quick Course on the History of the Arab/Israeli Conflict
Part 1: The Basics
I tried to address this topic in a single essay, but I quickly realized that wouldn’t be possible for several reasons. First, because it is so divisive, provoking strong feelings and opinions on both sides. It’s also complicated, with a 3,000-year history in which there are multiple accounts for almost every major event and about which every important fact is disputed. And if all that weren’t enough, it’s a history that is rapidly reinventing itself at this very moment, and in doing so is reshaping and revising its own past.
No, a single essay wouldn’t do.
After looking at the material I was assembling, I realized that I should break it into two parts by: (1) recounting the history as objectively as possible, and then (2) reporting on the current war. And I decided to do it by presenting the information in the form of video essays and turning it into a course for my recently invented “Quick & Easy Video University.”
By doing it this way, as a series of lessons rather than essays, I felt that I would be less inclined to polemicize and would be more objective in presenting all the facts. So those who “took” the course would be able to arrive at their own understanding and conclusions.
But as I poked around the Internet looking for trustworthy video accounts, I realized the project would be more challenging than I thought.
Not only was virtually all the material slanted one way or the other, so were the search engines. In researching some facts and issues, I was obliged to settle for videos that were biased but good. And as you will see, my solution to that problem was to include in the description of the video my impression of whether it was slanted one way or the other, and by doing so at least alert you to that spin.
A second challenge was the immensity of the subject matter itself. The most obvious issue was the span of history I had to cover – more than 3,000 years, much of which was recorded spottily at best.
Another issue was the confusion I encountered, as names and dates and even locations were often unclear or in contradiction from different sources.
And finally, there was the undeniable fact that I was hardly an expert on this history. So I couldn’t fully trust the decisions I was making about which facts and stories -were trustworthy and which were not.
I did the best I could to make sense of everything I had learned about the history of this conflict – and today, I bring you the first part of the course.
Lesson One. A History in Maps
Watch Time: 11 min.
I chose this video as Lesson One for three reasons: The graphic prompts and use of maps makes for easy comprehension… given its brevity, it is quite comprehensive… and it is one of the most objective accounts of the history that I found.
Watch it here.
Lesson Two. It’s Complicated
Watch Time: 12 min.
“This conflict is often cast as a long-term beef going back thousands of years, rooted in a clash between religions, but that’s not quite true,” says historian John Green in this video from Crash Course. “Actually, it’s immensely complicated, and just about everyone in the world has an opinion about it.”
Watch it here.
Lesson Three. Three Thousand Years in the Making
Watch Time: 6 min.
This video from The History Channel does a good job of covering the major points, although it has a discernable pro-Palestine bias.
Watch it here.
Lesson Four. A Full History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Watch Time: 13 min.
From The History Hub, another summary from the long view.
Watch it here.
Lesson Five. How Israel and Palestine Became Enemies
Watch Time: 12 min.
Palki Sharma presents the history of the conflict from an anti-Jewish, anti-British, and anti-Semitic perspective.
Watch it here.
Lesson Six. A Jewish Historian Explains His View
Watch Time: 8 min.
Simcha Jacobovici, a three-time Emmy-winning filmmaker, must have a pro-Israel bias, but I couldn’t find anything he says here that is factually wrong.
Watch it here.
Lesson Seven. The History of the Israeli-Arab Conflict
Watch Time: 5 min.
This reasonably objective video from IntroBooks Education traces such key events as the rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism, the Balfour Declaration, the UN’s partition plan, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the Six-Day War, the Camp David Accords, the Intifadas, the Oslo Accords, and 21st century challenges.
Watch it here.
The above seven short videos comprise what I’d like to call the undergraduate program on the history of the conflict. Now here are three additional videos that are considerably longer. You might think of them as the graduate program.
Lesson Eight. How Britain Started the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Watch Time: 52 min.
This video comes from The History Channel, and although it presents itself as objective, it seems to me that it has a restrained but recognizable anti-Israeli bias, along with an equal bias against the role of the British.
Here is how the channel describes it: “The bitter struggle between Arab and Jew for control of the Holy Land has caused untold suffering in the Middle East for generations. It is often claimed that the crisis originated with Jewish emigration to Palestine and the foundation of the state of Israel. Yet the roots of the conflict are to be found much earlier – in British double-dealing during the First World War. This is a story of intrigue among rival empires; of misguided strategies; and of how conflicting promises to Arab and Jew created a legacy of bloodshed which determines the fate of the Middle East to this day.”
Watch it here.
Lesson Nine. Origins of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict Part I: to 1949
Watch Time: 30 min.
Dr. Henry Abramson, a specialist in Jewish history and thought, does a good, relatively unbiased, job of covering the history from early days to 1949. (He has a follow-up video picking it up in 1949 and moving to the present day.)
Watch it here.
Lesson Ten. Ben Shapiro Gives a History Lesson
Watch Time: 40 min.
From biblical times to today, Shapiro takes us through time to explore the long history of Israel and explain the many conflicts along the way. He is ardently pro-Israel, but he’s also fantastically smart.
Watch it here.
