X Close

The Research Blog—Hebrew and Jewish Studies

Home

Just another Blogs.ucl.ac.uk site

Menu

The Limits of Refusal: Israel, Lebanon, and the Shadow of 1982—by Seth Anziska

By uclhwis, on 5 February 2016

Abstract: In revisiting an incident of refusal over the Mediterranean during Israel’s 1982 Lebanon War, my paper will piece together archives, interviews and memories between Jaffa and Beirut to explore how both Israeli and Lebanese society grapple with the legacy of extreme political violence. Drawing on a collaboration with the former Israeli air force pilot Hagai Tamir and the Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari for the 2013 Venice Biennale, my presentation investigates the possibility and limitations of historical research across national borders in the post-1948 Middle East.

Bio: Seth Anziska is a Lecturer in Jewish-Muslim relations at UCL. His research and teaching interests include Israeli and Palestinian society and culture, modern Middle Eastern history, and contemporary Arab and Jewish politics. He received his PhD in International and Global History from Columbia University (2015) and his M. Phil. in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from St. Antony’s College, Oxford (2008). Seth is currently working on a book manuscript, provisionally entitled, “Camp David’s Shadow: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinian Question.” It examines the emergence of the 1978 Camp David Accords and the consequences of international diplomacy in circumscribing Palestinian self-determination. Recent publications include “The Consequences of Conflict Management in Israel/Palestine,” co-written with Tareq Baconi (NOREF Report: January 2016); and “Autonomy as State Prevention: The Palestinian Question after Camp David, 1978-1982,” Humanity, Special Issue on Transformative Occupation in the Middle East [forthcoming].

Further Reading: Seth Anziska “The Slow Repair of a Historical Rupture.” Ibraaz, Critical Forum on Visual Culture in the Middle East and North Africa, July 2013 (http://www.ibraaz.org/interviews/89); Sune Haugbolle, War and Memory in Lebanon (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Asher Kaufmann, “Forgetting the Lebanon War? On Silence, Denial, and the Selective Remembrance of the “First” Lebanon War, in Efrat Ben-Ze’ev, Ruth Ginio and Jay Winter (eds.), Shadows of War: A Social History of Silence in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Ze’ev Schiff and Ehud Yaari, Israel’s Lebanon War  (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1986); Akram Zaatrari, An Imagined Conversation with an Israeli Filmmaker Named Avi Mograbi (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012); Eyal Zisser, “The 1982 “Peace for Galilee War: Looking Back in Anger—Between an Option of a War and a War of No Option,” in Mordechai Bar-On (ed.), A Never-Ending Conflict: A Guide to Israeli Military History (Westport: Praeger, 2004).