Comments on: The myths of Avi Shlaim: Benny Morris demolishes an icon of the anti-Israeli Left

By: bataween

bataween — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 23:54:08 +0000

Thanks for highlighting a masterful dissection of Shlaim by Benny Morris. Towards the end Morris admits to being perplexed by Shlaim’s personal lack of empathy with Zionism and asks for an explanation. (All the more of a mystery that the Shlaim family arrived as refugees from Iraq.)
The explanation can be found in this comment once left on Harry’s Place by an old schoolfriend of Shlaim’s:
http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2007/10/inside-mind-of-avi-shlaim-update.html
Shlaim’s father never recovered from his uprooting from Iraq, and always held Israel to blame. Shlaim suffers from a mix of acute’dhimmi’ and Stockholm Syndrome. He craves acceptance as an Oxonian gentleman academic – hence his fashionable anti-colonialist, anti-Zionism.

By: zkharya

zkharya — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:08:34 +0000

The article is excellent. One sentence stands out, for me:

“Shlaim often refers to himself as an Israeli, though Wikipedia’s designation of him as a “British historian” is more accurate: born in Baghdad in 1945 and educated as a historian in Britain, Shlaim has lived in the United Kingdom since 1966.”

Very true.

By: Maw

Maw — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:35:21 +0000

Thanks for the link Robin for that was truly a great read.

By: zkharya

zkharya — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:46:03 +0000

Thanks for this, Robin. This is long overdue.

By: Gábor Fränkl

Gábor Fränkl — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:54:40 +0000

This should be a great reading. But I am sure it would perhaps be as much or even more important (and urgent) for a reputable academic or scholar to take on Shlomo Sand’s maliicious and devious Jewish people-denying book. I am sure Benny Morris or someone else could well be capable to discredit his thesis as well.

By: Patrizia Isabelle Duda

Patrizia Isabelle Duda — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:00:47 +0000

Avi Shlaim is still being taken seriously??

Just judging by the lamenting in and the bad quality of his latest book (which is quite evident to every thinking person, not just those in favour of Israel), I would have thought that he is rather a ‘non-issue’ by now.