New Brandeis Textbook Offers Even-Handed Look at Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Image by getty images
A textbook on the Arab-Israeli conflict co-authored by a Palestinian, an Israeli and an Egyptian has been published.
The project was a seven-year undertaking by the founding scholars of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University.
“Arabs and Israelis: Conflict and Peacemaking in the Middle East” is a collaboration of Shai Feldman, Abdel Monem Said Aly and Khalil Shikaki based on a course the trio has taught as a team at the suburban Boston university since 2006.
The course and the textbook are based on the center’s mission to engage in a balanced and dispassionate approach to what it describes as the most resilient of all international conflicts. The authors are widely published scholars who hold multiple academic appointments in the United States and the Middle East.
“We hope that this book will allow the teaching of the Arab-Israeli conflict to be more sophisticated than it is now,” said Feldman, who has directed the Crown Center since it was established in 2005.
The book helps students to become more sensitive to the competing narratives of the three perspectives — an important dimension of the conflict, he told JTA — and provides critical background for intelligence analysts.
Each of the 13 chapters, structured to match a college semester, includes a section with uncontested facts, another that exposes the disagreements and competing narratives, and a final section of analysis, Feldman explained at a Nov. 22 panel discussion at Brandeis celebrating the book’s release.
Agreeing on the facts was among the most challenging aspects of writing the book, according to Shikaki, who noted that the task was made easier by the fact that the three have worked together for decades and are friends.
“The book demonstrates that collaboration doesn’t require a uniformity of views, but rather the openness to listen to different perspectives,” said Steve Goldstein, the university’s provost, who introduced the panel. “This is a prerequisite for peacemaking.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
