A video panel on teaching about the conflict between Israel and Palestine was organized by the American Historical Association. The AHA promotes history education, the professional work of historians, and the essential role of historical thinking in public life. This panel was part of the AHA’s “History Behind the Headlines” series. Each session features four historians providing historical context for current events and suggesting how historical thinking can provide different angles on the world around us. They focus on the 5 C’s of historical thinking: context, change over time, causality, complexity, and contingency.
This conversation the Israel-Hamas War is intended to help teachers, at the K–12 and college levels, develop strategies to teach about Palestine and Israeli conflicts and many of the sensitive historical topics it entails in an atmosphere as charged as the present. For some, it might seem this history is a minefield worth avoiding, but thoughtful and engaged teachers have been teaching such difficult topics in a civil and empathetic way for decades. The panel of historians with relevant expertise discussed classroom strategies and how current events have influenced their approach to teaching, as well as how understanding history and engaging seriously with people who inhabited the past can help our students to better understand current events. All of the historians stress the importance of examining primary source documents and empathizing with all of the victims of this conflict.
Moderator James Ryan is director of research and the Middle East program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and an expert on Turkish and Middle Eastern Affairs. Omar Bartov is the Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide studies at Brown University. Michelle Campos is associate professor of Jewish Studies and history at Penn State University. Her work contributes to the history of Palestine and Israel the history of late Ottoman Empire and the making of the modern Middle East and Sephardic Jewish studies. Ussama Makdisi is Professor of History and Chancellor's chair at the University of California Berkeley. He was previously professor of history and the Arab-American Educational Foundation chair of Arab Studies at Rice University. Katharina Matro teaches sociology, U.S. Hhstory, World history, and Middle Eastern history at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Maryland.
The following are excerpts from recent articles on the Israel-Hamas War written by James Ryan, Omar Bartov, and Ussama Makdisi.
James Ryan (Policy Commons, October 13, 2023): “On October 7, members of the military wing of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad launched a surprise attack on civilian and military targets in southern Israel. The scope and scale of the attack was shocking and brutal in equal measure–more than 1,400 Israeli civilians were murdered in often grotesque fashion, and more than 150 were taken hostage, a handful of them American citizens. The attack represents the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust.”
Omar Bartov (New York Times, November 10, 2023): “As a historian of genocide, I believe that there is no proof that genocide is currently taking place in Gaza, although it is very likely that war crimes, and even crimes against humanity, are happening. That means two important things: First, we need to define what it is that we are seeing, and second, we have the chance to stop the situation before it gets worse. We know from history that it is crucial to warn of the potential for genocide before it occurs, rather than belatedly condemn it after it has taken place. I think we still have that time . . . It is clear that the daily violence being unleashed on Gaza is both unbearable and untenable. Since the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas — itself a war crime and a crime against humanity — Israel’s military air and ground assault on Gaza has killed more than 10,500 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, a number that includes thousands of children. That’s well over five times as many people as the more than 1,400 people in Israel murdered by Hamas. In justifying the assault, Israeli leaders and generals have made terrifying pronouncements that indicate a genocidal intent.”
Ussama Makdisi (Middle East Eye, October 27, 2023): “The western love of Zionism has always depended on erasing Palestinian history and humanity. Across the western world, the official and media horror at this month’s unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel, which killed an estimated 1,300 soldiers and civilians, has been accompanied by overwhelming support for Israel’s ongoing brutality towards Gaza, which thus far has killed and wounded over 22,000 Palestinians, overwhelmingly civilians. The latest instalment of philo-Zionism has exposed more clearly than ever a ruthless double standard that underlies the West’s attachment to Israel: While Jewish Israeli life and the state are virtually sacrosanct in the contemporary West, Muslim and Christian Palestinian life is fundamentally devalued.”