1 00:00:00,840 --> 00:00:06,990 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Eugene Rogan, and as Director of the Middle East Centre, 2 00:00:07,530 --> 00:00:18,450 it is my tremendous pleasure to welcome you to the, wait for it, 45th George Antonius Memorial Lecture. 3 00:00:20,240 --> 00:00:27,290 Since the first Antonius given in 1976 by the great Islamic historian George Makdisi, 4 00:00:27,800 --> 00:00:33,500 this lecture has served as the culminating event for the Middle East Centre's academic year. 5 00:00:34,850 --> 00:00:38,150 An opportunity to gather the broader Middle East Centre family. 6 00:00:39,390 --> 00:00:42,540 I'm delighted to see so many of our current students here. 7 00:00:44,420 --> 00:00:51,500 And so many of their predecessors our alumni, veterans of many past Antonius lectures. 8 00:00:52,610 --> 00:01:00,260 We're honoured to have so many of the Centre's amazing Advisory Board members who are here for a meeting before today's lecture. 9 00:01:00,680 --> 00:01:05,810 We are so grateful to you for the support and the vote of confidence that you show us. 10 00:01:06,960 --> 00:01:14,790 It's great to welcome colleagues from across St Antony's College, not just from the Middle East Centre and across the great University of Oxford. 11 00:01:14,790 --> 00:01:23,370 Wonderful to welcome so many colleagues who contribute to our collective work in promoting knowledge and understanding of the Middle East in the University. 12 00:01:24,660 --> 00:01:27,750 And welcome to the community of the City of Oxford. 13 00:01:28,590 --> 00:01:35,910 And to those of you who will come from further afield, from London and from its suburbs, which as far as I can tell, extend as far as Paris.[Audience laughter] 14 00:01:38,280 --> 00:01:47,700 Over the years, we have heard from some of the greatest scholars, thinkers and great artists from across our region and from across the world. 15 00:01:48,630 --> 00:01:51,480 Magdi Wahba and Mahmud Manzalaoui, 16 00:01:51,480 --> 00:02:04,890 Ibrahim Abu Lughod and Edward Said, Anthony Parsons and Ghassan Tueini, Zaha Hadid and Rima Khalaf Hunaidi, Noam Chomsky and Robert Fisk. 17 00:02:04,920 --> 00:02:12,270 There's 45 names to go through. I'll stop there.[Audience laughter] We have with us tonight several past Antonius speakers. 18 00:02:12,390 --> 00:02:21,510 I'm so glad to welcome Marilyn Booth and Joseph Sassoon, who gave their lectures in 2009 for Marilyn and 2013 for Joseph. 19 00:02:23,200 --> 00:02:26,320 We've had some illustrious cancellations over the years. 20 00:02:26,830 --> 00:02:34,810 Jeremy Bowen was called away in 2011 to cover that region-wide conflagration better known as the Arab Uprising. 21 00:02:35,890 --> 00:02:43,780 And we lost the opportunity here from [name not recognised] whose 2020 lecture was overtaken by the COVID-19 pandemic. 22 00:02:45,790 --> 00:02:53,720 Tonight's Antonius is particularly special. For it's being given by one of the Emeritus Fellows of the Middle East Centre. 23 00:02:55,280 --> 00:03:02,920 There is a long tradition of Centre Fellows coming back to give the Antonius, started by our founding Fellow, 24 00:03:03,380 --> 00:03:10,460 Albert Hourani who was actually the second Antonius lecturer. He spoke in 1977, a couple of years before he retired. 25 00:03:12,760 --> 00:03:18,460 Mustafa Badawi gave gave my first Antonius when I was a new faculty member here in 1992. 26 00:03:19,830 --> 00:03:26,310 Since then, we have seen Roger Owen return from Harvard to give the 1998 Lecture. 27 00:03:27,570 --> 00:03:30,990 And Derek Hopwood, the 2001 Antonius. 28 00:03:31,830 --> 00:03:39,870 But it's been over two decades since we had the honour of welcoming one of the Centre's own to the podium to give the Antonius. 29 00:03:42,610 --> 00:03:47,330 Of all my colleagues past and present, I particularly like chairing Avi 30 00:03:47,790 --> 00:03:56,450 Shlaim. I'm never entirely in control of the proceedings and I've never sure quite what will happen next. 31 00:03:57,110 --> 00:04:02,590 I hope you're catching the frisson. [Audience laughter] 32 00:04:02,630 --> 00:04:06,680 Avi Shlaim moved to Oxford from Reading to take up the Alistair Buchanan readership 33 00:04:07,250 --> 00:04:08,750 in 1987, 34 00:04:09,200 --> 00:04:18,470 when he was on the cusp of gaining global recognition as one of the handful of Israeli new historians following the publication of his monumental study, 35 00:04:18,710 --> 00:04:28,530 "Collusion Across the Jordan". It would be no exaggeration to say that "Collusion" propelled Professor Shlaim from relative obscurity. 36 00:04:29,430 --> 00:04:35,340 I'd like a show of hands for those of you who might have read his earlier work, such as "The EEC, 37 00:04:35,820 --> 00:04:43,980 for those of you too young to remember that the European Economic Community, now "The EEC and the Mediterranean Countries" in 1976. 38 00:04:45,530 --> 00:04:48,890 "British Foreign Secretaries since 1945", 39 00:04:51,290 --> 00:04:59,150 or "The United States and the Berlin Blockade", which came out in 1978, well you can see even at that point with a book a year, he was already prolific. 40 00:04:59,270 --> 00:05:09,320 But propelled from relative obscurity to become one of the most prominent British public intellectuals at work on Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict. 41 00:05:10,790 --> 00:05:19,159 Since the publication of "Collusion", Professor Shlaim has published a string of influential books ranging from works of synthesis, 42 00:05:19,160 --> 00:05:32,330 like his 1995 "War and Peace in the Middle East", edited works like "The War for Palestine, Rewriting the History of 1948" and "The 1967 Arab-Israeli War", 43 00:05:33,480 --> 00:05:38,040 and the research based works that have truly established his enduring contribution, 44 00:05:38,310 --> 00:05:45,930 "The Iron Wall, Israel and the Arab World" first issued in 2000 and later expanded and reissued in 2014, 45 00:05:46,890 --> 00:05:52,550 and "The Lion of Jordan King Hussein's Life in War and Peace", which came out in 2007. 46 00:05:54,030 --> 00:06:00,030 Tonight, we celebrate the publication of a new book by Avi Shlaim. Part autobiography, 47 00:06:01,050 --> 00:06:06,210 part family history, part essay on the contested identity of the Arab Jew. 48 00:06:08,210 --> 00:06:13,010 As it says on the front cover, "Three Worlds" is the best book that I've read all year. [Audience laughter] 49 00:06:15,540 --> 00:06:19,440 And like you I am impatient to hear from Professor Shlaim, Fellow of the British Academy, 50 00:06:20,550 --> 00:06:24,710 to tell us more. His title tonight: "Zionism, 51 00:06:25,190 --> 00:06:32,540 and the Jews of Iraq, A personal Perspective". Would you please join me in giving a great George Anthonius welcome to Avi Shlaim. [Audience clapping] 52 00:06:49,890 --> 00:06:54,660 Thank you, Professor Rogan for this very courteous introduction. 53 00:06:56,460 --> 00:07:07,550 The last time I spoke at the Middle East Centre and you introduced me, you were much more curt, you said "The speaker today is Professor Shlaim, 54 00:07:07,860 --> 00:07:13,620 so put on your seat belts and prepare for the ride". [Audience laughter] 55 00:07:15,540 --> 00:07:20,790 It's true. Today you are not going to need any seat belts. 56 00:07:22,290 --> 00:07:26,100 Now today is a very special occasion for two reasons. 57 00:07:27,050 --> 00:07:34,670 One is already mentioned by Eugene: It's the annual and prestigious George Antonius Lecture. 58 00:07:35,460 --> 00:07:41,210 It's a great honour and a privilege to be invited by the Fellows of the Middle East Centre to give this year's 59 00:07:41,570 --> 00:07:43,070 George Antonius Lecture. 60 00:07:44,300 --> 00:07:57,380 I'm a great admirer of George Antonius. His 1938 book, "The Arab Awakenings" generated an ongoing debate over the origins of Arab nationalism, 61 00:07:57,920 --> 00:08:07,100 the significance of the Arab Revolt of 1916, the British machinations during and after World War One. 62 00:08:08,940 --> 00:08:16,320 For me. the book was an eye opener about Britain's record as the holder of the mandate for Palestine. 63 00:08:17,310 --> 00:08:26,130 All my own archival research only confirmed and reinforced George Antonius's critique of British policy in Palestine. 64 00:08:27,420 --> 00:08:31,110 My work could be read as footnotes to "The Arab Awakening". 65 00:08:34,090 --> 00:08:45,700 For me, the history of the British mandate in Palestine is the history of how Britain stole Palestine from the Palestinians and gave it to the Zionists. 66 00:08:46,980 --> 00:09:01,310 Maybe you do need your seat belts afterall. [Audience laughter] Anyway I'm grateful for the opportunity to pay homage to a great champion of justice for the Palestinians. 67 00:09:02,280 --> 00:09:07,830 Secondly, this is a family occasion. My own immediate family and the 68 00:09:08,560 --> 00:09:13,580 broader Middle East Centre family. My wife 69 00:09:13,580 --> 00:09:24,590 Gwyn, who is sitting in the front row is both my harshest critic and the most constructive and supportive of partners. 70 00:09:25,700 --> 00:09:33,740 She helped me in countless ways during the four or five years that it took me to complete this modest memoir. 71 00:09:35,890 --> 00:09:38,920 I'm also grateful to our daughter Tamar, 72 00:09:39,950 --> 00:09:51,110 who is a publisher by profession for her thoughtful suggestions, for her practical help, for the long conversations we had during the writing of this book. 73 00:09:53,560 --> 00:10:05,420 It was her idea to produce a podcast that helped both of us to understand better our Iraqi-Jewish-Israeli-British identity. 74 00:10:06,800 --> 00:10:14,490 As I write in the book, my father after we moved to Israel, was completely silent. Tamar's father never stops talking. [Audience laughter] 75 00:10:22,240 --> 00:10:25,810 Our story, to borrow a pretentious phrase, 76 00:10:26,140 --> 00:10:29,500 from my friend, Ella Shohat 77 00:10:31,360 --> 00:10:41,060 the cultural critic is the story of, quote, "changing the mystic landscapes and the emotional cartography of displacement" 78 00:10:42,040 --> 00:10:47,810 "changing the mystic landscapes and the emotional cartography of displacement". 79 00:10:49,370 --> 00:10:56,450 An episode involving Tamar illustrates the changing linguistic landscapes of our lands. 80 00:10:57,170 --> 00:11:05,360 One day I went to collect Tamar from kindergarten and I overheard her say to a little girl 81 00:11:05,360 --> 00:11:14,030 kan yaman kan [Arabic], which means "Once upon a time" in Arabic, and the little girl said to her "That's fascinating". [Audience laughter] 82 00:11:17,160 --> 00:11:35,610 Second there is the wider Middle East Centre family. First and foremost there is Eugene Rogan, my benign boss, my colleague and my friend. 83 00:11:37,110 --> 00:11:41,070 We started reading and commenting on each other's work 84 00:11:41,400 --> 00:11:49,260 when he was writing "The Arabs, A History", which has since then become a classic 85 00:11:49,860 --> 00:11:53,400 and I was working on my biography of King Hussein of Jordan. 86 00:11:57,800 --> 00:12:02,330 Eugene and I share a birthday, the 31st of October. 87 00:12:02,630 --> 00:12:08,270 We are both Halloween babies. [Audience laughter] And I am 15 years older than Eugene 88 00:12:09,170 --> 00:12:16,680 but he is much wiser than I am, and he has given me a lot of really good advice along the years. 89 00:12:17,550 --> 00:12:27,990 Not least in connection with this particular book. Then there are others in the Middle East Centre. There is the Middle East Centre librarian MariaLuisa 90 00:12:27,990 --> 00:12:31,470 Langella, a very remarkable woman. 91 00:12:32,920 --> 00:12:37,820 She's Italian, she knows Hebrew and Arabic. 92 00:12:37,840 --> 00:12:44,740 Then she wrote a Ph.D. thesis in French, on the literature of Iraqi Jews. 93 00:12:46,780 --> 00:12:59,620 She and the other librarian, Haifa Jajjawi, my fellow Iraqi dealt with my many requests promptly, efficiently and with good cheer. So did 94 00:12:59,650 --> 00:13:05,680 Caroline Davis and so did Debbie Usher, the Archivist. 95 00:13:07,460 --> 00:13:12,950 Professor Neil Ketchley, professor of politics at the Middle East Centre designed the maps. 96 00:13:15,040 --> 00:13:22,150 My deep appreciation goes to the whole of the team in Oneworld. 97 00:13:22,900 --> 00:13:29,800 an excellent publishing house. And to Novin Doostdar 98 00:13:31,030 --> 00:13:38,400 and Juliet Mabey, the dynamic duo who own and run this excellent publishing house. 99 00:13:40,350 --> 00:13:43,319 My very special thanks go to 100 00:13:43,320 --> 00:14:01,590 my editor Sam Carter. Sam, is Rida here? She is. Sam Carter the editor and and his assistant Rida Vaquas. They edited the manuscript from start to finish. 101 00:14:05,090 --> 00:14:13,730 Not once, not twice but three times. They improved me imeasurably in content and style. 102 00:14:15,600 --> 00:14:26,390 But they had different priorities. Sam was only interested in the central character and he wanted a short, concise text. 103 00:14:27,020 --> 00:14:36,800 And he said that any episode which isn't relevant directly to the central character should be left out. And if I had followed his advice 104 00:14:37,160 --> 00:14:46,880 the book would be about a quarter of its length [Audience laughter]. And Rida was not very interested in the central character. 105 00:14:47,210 --> 00:14:52,130 But she was most interested and well-informed about the political backdrop. 106 00:14:52,790 --> 00:15:01,670 So she was always asking me to elaborate on obscure things like the Iraqi Communist Party [Audience laughter] and I was very happy to oblige. 107 00:15:04,740 --> 00:15:08,100 You'll be relieved to know that this is the end, 108 00:15:10,320 --> 00:15:21,149 this concludes what I like to call the end of the jumble sale, the speech at the end of the jumble sale. 109 00:15:21,150 --> 00:15:26,520 This is when the headmaster thanks all those involved in organising the jumble sale. [Audience laughter] 110 00:15:29,100 --> 00:15:33,710 I now want to say a few words about the book itself. 111 00:15:35,200 --> 00:15:40,060 The three worlds of the title are Baghdad, where I lived up to the age of five. 112 00:15:41,310 --> 00:15:49,379 Ramat Gan in Israel, where I lived from the age where I went to school from the age of 5 to 15 and London, 113 00:15:49,380 --> 00:15:53,250 where I went to school from the age of 16 to 18. 114 00:15:55,660 --> 00:15:59,780 The book only goes up to the age of 18, but we then epilogue. 115 00:16:00,980 --> 00:16:06,670 And Gwyn, who read the manuscript chapter by chapter as I was writing 116 00:16:06,680 --> 00:16:13,880 it told me one day when she read Chapter Five, "I'm on chapter five and you haven't been born yet". [Audience laughter] 117 00:16:26,620 --> 00:16:30,370 I hesitated before embarking on this project. 118 00:16:31,420 --> 00:16:38,740 I was, I didn't know how to write about myself, it was easy to write about other people, about King Hussein for example. 119 00:16:39,250 --> 00:16:47,080 But one day I read a wonderful book by Orit Bashkin, an the Israeli historian in Chicago. 120 00:16:47,530 --> 00:16:53,080 The book is called "New Babylonians: A History of the Jews in Modern Iraq". 121 00:16:53,620 --> 00:16:58,690 It's a very informative and a very empathetic to the Jews of Iraq, 122 00:16:59,140 --> 00:17:08,290 and it gave me the idea of not just telling my story, but putting my story in the wider context of family history, 123 00:17:08,740 --> 00:17:17,379 and putting the family history in the wider context of the Jewish community in Iraq and going even further 124 00:17:17,380 --> 00:17:24,970 afield to reflect about Iraqi history and British colonialism in Iraq after the First World War. 125 00:17:30,910 --> 00:17:38,110 Another source of inspiration was Ella Shohat, an Iraqi Israeli who is now an imminent 126 00:17:38,620 --> 00:17:52,180 professor at NYU. She published a book, a collection of essays under the title "On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements. 127 00:17:54,190 --> 00:17:57,970 The book is about the pivotal concept of the Arab Jew. 128 00:17:59,590 --> 00:18:10,680 She also drew parallels between the experience of the Palestinians of displacement from Palestine and the displacement of the Jews from Iraq. 129 00:18:11,620 --> 00:18:15,550 The notion of an Arab-Jew is very controversial in Israel. 130 00:18:17,920 --> 00:18:21,819 Israelis don't like the term. You can be French-Jew, an Italian-Jew, 131 00:18:21,820 --> 00:18:30,130 a Romanian-Jew, any kind of Jew. You can even be German-Jew despite the association with the Holocaust. 132 00:18:30,970 --> 00:18:36,250 But if you say I'm an Arab-Jew, people immediately react against it. 133 00:18:36,490 --> 00:18:40,590 They say that's a contradiction in terms, that's an impossibility, 134 00:18:40,590 --> 00:18:51,500 it's an ontological impossibility, either you are Jewish, in which case you cannot be an Arab or you are an Arab, in which case you cannot be a Jew. 135 00:18:53,360 --> 00:18:59,570 But I beg to differ. I know of no better description of my initial identity than that of an Arab-Jew. 136 00:19:03,790 --> 00:19:07,060 This brings me to the notion of identity. 137 00:19:07,870 --> 00:19:13,600 My academic discipline in this university is international relations. 138 00:19:14,320 --> 00:19:18,790 International relations doesn't deal with individual identity. 139 00:19:21,600 --> 00:19:26,339 And I very naively used to think we are given one identity 140 00:19:26,340 --> 00:19:36,780 and off we go. That's all there is to it. But when I started writing this book, I realised that identity is a much more complex and fluid 141 00:19:38,200 --> 00:19:43,470 phenomenon and moreoever we don't become on our own, our identity. 142 00:19:44,310 --> 00:19:48,060 Other forces outside in society shape our identity. 143 00:19:49,640 --> 00:19:52,740 And in my case, and are not necessarily benign, 144 00:19:53,250 --> 00:20:03,330 in my case it was Zionism which tried to erase my Arab identity and provenance, and it turns on me 145 00:20:03,540 --> 00:20:09,390 a new identity as a new Israeli, which I never ever felt comfortable. 146 00:20:11,730 --> 00:20:16,110 I used to be ashamed of being an Iraqi. 147 00:20:16,800 --> 00:20:28,270 In fact, I had an inferiority complex which refined my entire relationship with Israeli society. Today 148 00:20:28,690 --> 00:20:31,770 I'm very proud to be an Iraqi, 149 00:20:32,870 --> 00:20:36,320 I am very proud of my Iraqi and Arab origins. 150 00:20:38,080 --> 00:20:46,330 As a student of the Arab-Israeli conflict, I also see the advantage of having lived in an Arab society, in an Arab country. 151 00:20:47,430 --> 00:20:50,820 It's a name only to transcend national stereotypes. 152 00:20:52,190 --> 00:21:04,370 It enabled me to see Arabs not just as the enemy, but as a people, as a sensitive, a sensitive and proud people. 153 00:21:07,480 --> 00:21:15,120 For my family, Muslim-Jewish coexistence was not an abstract idea. 154 00:21:15,780 --> 00:21:24,130 We experienced it. We touched it. My mother Mas'uda Obadiah or Saida for short 155 00:21:25,510 --> 00:21:31,480 is the main source of the information for our life in Iraq and the hero of the memoir. 156 00:21:32,890 --> 00:21:36,960 Over the four or five years that I took to write this book 157 00:21:37,590 --> 00:21:47,730 I kept interviewing her relentlessly and taking detailed notes, and I incorporated a lot of the things that she told me into the narrative. 158 00:21:49,910 --> 00:21:53,440 She used to wax lyrical about the wonderful 159 00:21:53,450 --> 00:21:58,370 Muslim friends that we had in Baghdad. One day I said to her 160 00:21:58,940 --> 00:22:04,560 "Did you have any Zionist friends?" And she looked at me as if it was a very strange question. 161 00:22:04,670 --> 00:22:08,490 She said to me, "No, Zionism is an Ashkenazi thing, 162 00:22:09,050 --> 00:22:20,820 it's nothing to do with us". The whole point of this book is to use my family history to illustrate a much bigger 163 00:22:20,820 --> 00:22:27,810 story, the story of the Jewish community in Baghdad in the first half of the 20th century, 164 00:22:28,500 --> 00:22:32,160 the exodus, or rather the uprooting 165 00:22:32,450 --> 00:22:36,240 of this community after the 1948 war. 166 00:22:38,520 --> 00:22:50,640 Individual experience over the exodus varied, but for the community as a whole, the experience was like that of a tree being pulled up by the roots. 167 00:22:56,630 --> 00:23:03,920 The book seeks to recover and to animate the vibrant Jewish civilisation of the Near East, 168 00:23:04,550 --> 00:23:12,620 a civilisation that was blown away by, in the 20th century, by the cold winds of nationalism. 169 00:23:16,000 --> 00:23:22,330 I try to achieve this by telling a family story rather than by through academic research. 170 00:23:23,770 --> 00:23:27,160 We were an upper middle class family. 171 00:23:27,880 --> 00:23:34,510 My father, Yusef, was a very successful merchant with a high social status. 172 00:23:35,170 --> 00:23:46,500 My mother Saida went to the Alliance School, Alliance Isralite Universelle. After the age of 17 173 00:23:46,510 --> 00:23:52,830 when she was forced to marry my father, who was a lot older than her. 174 00:23:54,810 --> 00:24:00,660 She received a very good education. The teaching language, 175 00:24:01,050 --> 00:24:07,180 the medium of teaching was French, but they also taught in English, Arabic and Hebrew. 176 00:24:08,250 --> 00:24:13,770 My mother died two years ago, aged 96, in Ramadan. 177 00:24:14,460 --> 00:24:20,600 If anyone dared suggest that she was dementing she would declaim Archimedes Law in French. [Audience laughter] 178 00:24:20,620 --> 00:24:31,260 She remembered a visit by King Faisal I to her school accompanied by the Chief Rabbi. 179 00:24:33,320 --> 00:24:39,620 Faisal I embraced the Jews in his efforts to build a new nation, 180 00:24:39,980 --> 00:24:50,000 one Iraqi nation, and the Jews made a contribution, made a contribution at every level in the building of modern Iraq. 181 00:24:51,860 --> 00:24:55,460 Both of my parents had deep roots in Iraq and they loved the country. 182 00:24:56,930 --> 00:25:00,140 We were well integrated into Iraqi society. 183 00:25:01,480 --> 00:25:09,309 Of all the Jewish communities in the Middle East, the Iraqi one was the most prosperous, 184 00:25:09,310 --> 00:25:14,280 the most successful, and the best integrated into the local society. 185 00:25:17,280 --> 00:25:20,430 The book revolves around the contented life 186 00:25:20,850 --> 00:25:27,190 that we led in Baghdad alongside Muslims and Christians, 187 00:25:28,400 --> 00:25:35,690 the anguish and pain of displacement, the problems of adjusting to a new life in the Promised Land, 188 00:25:36,650 --> 00:25:46,610 my poor performance at school in Israel, in my parents decision to send me to school in England, in the three mostly unhappy 189 00:25:46,610 --> 00:25:56,180 years that I spent in school in London, which for me was a second exile in the changing linguistic landscape. 190 00:26:00,110 --> 00:26:03,190 In Baghdad we were Arab Jews, 191 00:26:04,280 --> 00:26:16,280 we spoke Arabic and only Arabic at home. Our social customs and lifestyle were Arab, our cuisine was exquisitely middle eastern, 192 00:26:17,270 --> 00:26:23,270 my parents' music was a very attractive blend of Jewish and Arabic music. 193 00:26:24,770 --> 00:26:29,090 We were Iraqis because religion happened to be Judaism. 194 00:26:30,450 --> 00:26:46,170 We were a minority. One minority among many, one minority likely as it is like the Chaldean Catholics, Assyrians, Armenians, Circassians, Turkomans and so on. 195 00:26:48,340 --> 00:26:54,880 Iraq was a land of pluralism, of religious tolerance and coexistence. 196 00:26:56,720 --> 00:27:03,860 Baghdad was known as the City of Peace. It was also sometimes called the Jewish city. 197 00:27:05,020 --> 00:27:16,060 During the First World War, a third of the population of Iraq was Jewish, and during the Jewish high holidays, the shops and the markets closed. 198 00:27:19,660 --> 00:27:24,220 We have much more in common linguistically and culturally 199 00:27:27,770 --> 00:27:34,790 with our Iraqi compatriots than we had with our European co-religionists. 200 00:27:37,820 --> 00:27:41,290 We did not feel the slightest affinity with 201 00:27:41,390 --> 00:27:45,850 Zionism or Israel. Our migration to Zion was 202 00:27:46,470 --> 00:27:55,900 one of necessity not one of choice or ideological reference. 203 00:27:57,240 --> 00:28:01,980 We were forcibly conscripted into the Zionist project. 204 00:28:03,480 --> 00:28:07,590 Aliyah is a term that is used for migration to Israel. 205 00:28:07,590 --> 00:28:15,660 and it means "assent". In our case it was not Aliyah, the move to Israel involved Yerida, which is "descent". 206 00:28:20,470 --> 00:28:28,800 Not only did we lose our wealth, our property, our pocessions, but also our strong sense of identity 207 00:28:29,210 --> 00:28:36,210 as proud Iraqi Jews belong to a journey to the margins of Israeli society. 208 00:28:37,670 --> 00:28:44,450 Both of my grandmothers came with us to Israel. For them, it was deeply traumatic, the move 209 00:28:46,320 --> 00:28:50,910 and they spoke with great nostalgia about the old country. 210 00:28:51,930 --> 00:28:57,210 They spoke about Iraqi as jana mal allah, the Garden of Eden. 211 00:28:59,890 --> 00:29:13,150 Psalm 137 talks about the Jewish exile in Babylon two-and-a-half millenia ago and it goes "By the rivers of Babylon 212 00:29:13,540 --> 00:29:17,200 there we sat and there we wept as we remembered Zion. 213 00:29:18,520 --> 00:29:27,750 For my grandmothers, it was the other way around, by the rivers of Zion there we sat and there we wept when we remembered Babylon. 214 00:29:29,540 --> 00:29:36,680 My family's story is thus the corrective to the Zionist master narrative of the history of the Middle East. 215 00:29:38,150 --> 00:29:44,820 This narrative posits endemic and pervasive Muslim and Arab anti-Semitism. 216 00:29:46,330 --> 00:29:55,840 Migration to Israel is attributed to the persecution and prejudice that the Jews are said to have encountered in their country of origin. 217 00:29:57,280 --> 00:30:08,300 One example of this Zionist narrative is Martin Gilbert the Jewish British historian and biographer of Churchill. 218 00:30:09,850 --> 00:30:18,490 His last book was called "In the House of", "In Ishmael's House, A History of the Jews in Muslim Lands". 219 00:30:19,330 --> 00:30:29,930 The book is ambitious. It covers 1400 years from the rise of Islam to the present, until the [inaudible]. 220 00:30:30,910 --> 00:30:42,320 But it is little more than a catalogue of Muslim hatred, hostility and violence against Jews. The lens of the book is purposely 221 00:30:42,330 --> 00:30:51,970 eurocentric. Anti-Semitism is said to be the fundamental underlying force which shaped Muslim-Jewish relations. 222 00:30:53,220 --> 00:30:56,770 By filing one horror story after another 223 00:30:57,080 --> 00:31:00,980 Gilbert painted a completely misleading picture. 224 00:31:01,950 --> 00:31:08,370 It was psychologically hardwired to see anti-Semitism everywhere. 225 00:31:09,610 --> 00:31:15,520 The result is a distorted, is a distortion of the history of Muslim-Jewish relations 226 00:31:16,030 --> 00:31:20,940 to serve a Zionist political agenda. To recap 227 00:31:22,110 --> 00:31:36,200 the Zionist narrative, the Jews, Arabs and Jews is congenitally incapable of working together in peace and doomed to permanent discord 228 00:31:36,220 --> 00:31:51,390 and conflict. Zionism is based entirely on the experience of the Jews of Fhrer. It's a movement by European Jews for European Jews. 229 00:31:51,930 --> 00:31:58,770 It's outlook is completely eurocentric. In Europe the Jews were "the other". 230 00:31:59,010 --> 00:32:03,960 The other and therefore Europe had 231 00:32:05,200 --> 00:32:11,650 the "Jewish Question" in inverted commas. Anti-Semitism was a European maladie 232 00:32:13,010 --> 00:32:22,400 and from there it spread to the Middle East. Interestingly, there was no anti-Semitic literature in Arabic, 233 00:32:23,240 --> 00:32:32,270 so anti-Semitic literature had to be translated from European languages [inaudible word], including Hitler's Mein Kampf. 234 00:32:34,920 --> 00:32:41,570 Iraq did not have "the Jewish Question". In Iraq the Jews did not live in ghettos, nor 235 00:32:42,360 --> 00:32:49,470 did they experience the violent repression, persecution and genocide that marred European history. 236 00:32:51,140 --> 00:32:58,650 It was not without reason that Mark Mazower, called his history of Europe in the 20th century, 237 00:32:59,040 --> 00:33:02,380 "Dark Continent". It took 238 00:33:03,130 --> 00:33:09,690 Europe much longer than the Arab world, to accept the Jews as equal co-citizens. 239 00:33:11,170 --> 00:33:21,860 In Iraq, to be sure there were stresses and strains but the overall picture was one of cosmopolitanism, peaceful coexistence and fruitful interaction. 240 00:33:23,930 --> 00:33:34,330 The American Jewish historian, Salo Baron coined the phrase "the lachrymose version of Jewish history". 241 00:33:35,080 --> 00:33:44,670 This is Jewish history as a never ending cycle of hatred, hostility, persecution, culminating in the Holocaust. 242 00:33:46,940 --> 00:33:57,580 I am prepared for arguments sake to accept that the lachrymose version of Jewish history applies to Europe. 243 00:33:58,450 --> 00:34:12,400 But I strongly deny that this version of Jewish history applies, or is relevant to the history of the Arab world, of Arab Jews. 244 00:34:12,940 --> 00:34:22,990 There is one episode which is always quoted in support of the Zionist narrative, in support of the claim 245 00:34:23,950 --> 00:34:31,930 of pervasive anti-Semitism, and that is the farhud, the pogrom against the Jews in Iraq, 246 00:34:32,350 --> 00:34:47,330 on the 1st and 2nd of June 1941 when 165 Jews were killed, there were attacks on Jewish houses, Jewish women were raped. 247 00:34:47,350 --> 00:34:53,530 There was a lot of looting of Jewish shops. This was a horrendous pogrom. 248 00:34:55,180 --> 00:35:04,480 But it wasn't representative or typical. It was a one-off pogrom because of very special circumstances. 249 00:35:05,260 --> 00:35:10,900 And I believe that the person largely responsible for the farhud 250 00:35:12,100 --> 00:35:15,820 were not anti-Semites but it was the British ambassador Sir Kinahan Cornwallis. 251 00:35:16,400 --> 00:35:20,890 And I give the reasons for this view in the book. 252 00:35:23,060 --> 00:35:29,660 And my parents hated Sir Kinahan Cornwallis, but they couldn't pronounce his name. [Audience laughter] 253 00:35:30,390 --> 00:35:48,540 So they called him kalb ibn al-kalb [Audience laughter]. About a month before the farhud, Rashid Ali 254 00:35:48,540 --> 00:35:55,620 Rashi Ali Al-Gaylani led the nationalist revolt against the British and expelled the British from the country. 255 00:35:55,840 --> 00:36:05,940 And he was prime minister for a month. During that period, during that month there was no anti-Semitism, there was no persecution of the Jews. 256 00:36:07,040 --> 00:36:16,670 Yesterday there was a book launch for this book in London, and I met a very old Jew. 257 00:36:18,080 --> 00:36:29,870 David Sassoon. He said to me, he was in the farhud and he said there was no persecution of the Jews, and that Rashid Ali was anti-British. 258 00:36:29,940 --> 00:36:36,140 He wasn't pro-Nazi. And my mother confirmed this. 259 00:36:36,950 --> 00:36:43,190 She was 16 years old when she took, she and her brothers took refuge in the American Embassy, 260 00:36:43,610 --> 00:36:54,750 because the British Embassy was not safe. And she had a very leisurely month in the British, in the American Embassy. 261 00:36:55,780 --> 00:37:08,120 But later on in Israel she was defined as a Holocaust survivor. This was reading back from the Holocaust to this pogrom. 262 00:37:08,810 --> 00:37:18,230 And this pogram was treated, the farhud as part of the Nazi plan for the final solution. 263 00:37:19,010 --> 00:37:27,140 So my mother was very pragmatic, used to receive 6000 shekels a year, that's about 1,000 264 00:37:27,720 --> 00:37:40,520 and she had discount of 70% on her council tax and the Jewish custom has it that you don't sell the house of the dead for 11 months. 265 00:37:41,360 --> 00:37:53,330 And when after, after my mother died my sisters and I had to pay the full wack, 100% of the council tax because we were not Holocaust survivors. 266 00:37:56,000 --> 00:38:07,730 My mother told me stories about the farhud and I relate them because most of the accounts are by men, and it was good to have a female gender, a female account of the farhud. 267 00:38:08,510 --> 00:38:22,190 One of the stories was about the Great War peasant, an Iraqi peasant who came for the loot and he 268 00:38:22,430 --> 00:38:32,030 stole from a Jewish store a big radio and he took it to his shack where there was no electricity and he banged on the radio and didn't sing. 269 00:38:32,030 --> 00:38:36,739 So he banged hard on it and he said, "Come on, sing. You sing for the Jews. 270 00:38:36,740 --> 00:38:48,380 Why don't you sing for us". [Audience laughter] My family did not leave Iraq because of a clash of cultures or religious intolerance. 271 00:38:48,890 --> 00:38:56,440 The driver for our displacement was political, not religious or cultural. We were 272 00:38:56,480 --> 00:39:03,860 caught in the crossfire between two secular national movements. Arab nationalism and Jewish nationalism 273 00:39:04,190 --> 00:39:14,070 or Zionism. There is a difference between nationalism and patriotism. For nationalism you need an enemy. 274 00:39:15,050 --> 00:39:19,190 Nationalism is a divisive force. As Marilyn Monroe 275 00:39:19,190 --> 00:39:26,990 wrote in her scrapbook, the trouble with, the trouble with nationalism is that it stops us thinking. 276 00:39:29,930 --> 00:39:37,340 We also suffer the consequences of the systematic Zionist takeover of Palestine. 277 00:39:39,100 --> 00:39:48,150 And the displacement of the Palestinians. In 1948, the Iraqi army participated in a war for Palestine. 278 00:39:48,910 --> 00:39:55,480 After the Arab defeat, there was a backlash against the Jews throughout the Middle East. 279 00:39:57,270 --> 00:40:01,170 Zionism was one of the main reasons for this backlash. 280 00:40:02,380 --> 00:40:10,870 Zionism gave the Jews the territorial base for the first time in two and a half millennia. 281 00:40:13,610 --> 00:40:19,990 It made it possible, for the enemies of the Jews to identify them with the hated Zionist enemy, 282 00:40:20,480 --> 00:40:26,050 the call for the expulsion. What had been a pillar of 283 00:40:26,920 --> 00:40:32,380 Iraqi society was increasingly treated as a fifth column. 284 00:40:34,230 --> 00:40:42,000 Historically, the Zionist movement was not interested in the Jews of the East. They were regarded as inferior 285 00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:51,190 human material. But the Holocaust changed it by removing the main reservoir of people for the future 286 00:40:51,540 --> 00:41:01,710 Jewish state. After the birth of Israel, that became the top priority. The population was only 600,000 Jews. 287 00:41:03,050 --> 00:41:17,030 Six, 600,000 Jews. 6000 Jews had been killed in the war. That's 1% of the Jews, of the Jewish population. 288 00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:24,420 For the first time, the Jews of the East became the vital element in the 289 00:41:24,430 --> 00:41:30,670 Zionist project for building the Jewish state in Palestine. Zionism 290 00:41:32,680 --> 00:41:40,740 was, the second most successful PR success story of the 20th century. 291 00:41:42,090 --> 00:41:52,800 After the Beetles. [Audience laughter] Zionism was a diplomatically sophisticated movement, but ruthless and expansionist at the same time. 292 00:41:53,370 --> 00:41:56,460 Its ultimate aim was an independent Jewish state 293 00:41:57,220 --> 00:42:03,630 to have as much of the territory of Palestine as possible with as few Arabs as possible inside its walls. 294 00:42:03,930 --> 00:42:15,730 The IHRA working definition for anti-Semitism says that it is anti-Semitic to describe the State of Israel as a racist project. 295 00:42:16,690 --> 00:42:28,370 I don't know how else to describe the State of Israel. Zionism moved in stages to realise its ultimate aim. 296 00:42:29,360 --> 00:42:43,160 Stage one was the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948. Then stage two was bringing Jews from all four corners of the Earth to take their place. 297 00:42:45,640 --> 00:42:53,390 Including the inferior Jews of the [inaudible word]. This brings me to chapter seven of my book. 298 00:42:54,140 --> 00:43:07,280 Baghdad Bombshell. This is the most explosive chapter in the book and the one that is likely to draw most criticism and pushback from Zionist quarters. 299 00:43:08,940 --> 00:43:14,880 The background is popular hostility to the Jews, an official persecution 300 00:43:15,270 --> 00:43:21,480 with the aftermath of the war for Palestine. As a result of persecution 301 00:43:21,820 --> 00:43:33,630 there was a trickle of illegal Jewish, there was illegal migration by Jews across the border to Iran, and from there to Israel. 302 00:43:34,590 --> 00:43:41,640 In March 1950, the Iraqi government past a law, the Denaturalisation Law that said 303 00:43:42,450 --> 00:43:51,360 any Jew who wants to leave the country has a year to register and then they can leave. A year 304 00:43:51,390 --> 00:43:58,920 later another, a second law was passed by the government of Nuri Al-Said and this said that any Jew who had 305 00:43:59,940 --> 00:44:16,920 legal Iraqi citizenship forfeited all his rights as a citizen and all the property of the Jews and bank accounts were frozen. In 1950 there were around 130,000 Jews in Iraq. 306 00:44:17,970 --> 00:44:24,480 By the end of 1952, only about 10,000 remained. All the rest ended up in Israel. 307 00:44:26,060 --> 00:44:32,090 Five bombs on Jewish sites helped to precipitate the mass exodus. 308 00:44:32,900 --> 00:44:35,420 There were persistent rumours among Iraqis of 309 00:44:35,540 --> 00:44:44,570 my family and relatives of all the Iraqis in Israel that Israel had a hand in these bombs that fuelled their resentment of 310 00:44:45,960 --> 00:44:55,730 the State appeasment. I was very interested in this story. I wanted to get to the bottom of it. In 1981, 82 311 00:44:55,730 --> 00:45:02,980 I spent one sabbatical year in Jerusalem and I spent the whole year in Israel State Archives. 312 00:45:04,470 --> 00:45:14,070 And one day I ordered the two files that said Iraq 1950 and I was told they are closed. And so this was 1982 and 313 00:45:14,730 --> 00:45:23,460 Israel has a third year rule copied from Britain. So I said to the Archivist, "It's fine to release these files". 314 00:45:23,760 --> 00:45:34,600 So he said, "I'll check". And he came back to me and he said they can't be released because there are some Mossad documents in the files and I thought "Ah-ha" [Audience laughter] 315 00:45:36,900 --> 00:45:42,690 And I said, "Well, why don't you remove the Mossad documents and leave the Foreign Ministry documents?" 316 00:45:42,860 --> 00:45:48,270 He said, "I'll check" and the next day he came back and he said, "No, we can't open these files at all." 317 00:45:49,590 --> 00:45:57,770 So I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I couldn't say that they were hiding something. I'm a historian, 318 00:45:57,780 --> 00:46:05,820 so I had to find evidence, hard evidence and many, many years later, I came across this evidence. 319 00:46:06,930 --> 00:46:11,370 I was visiting my mother in Ramadan, and I met a very elderly Jew called 320 00:46:11,610 --> 00:46:16,380 Yaacov Karkoukli who had been in the Zionist underground. 321 00:46:17,670 --> 00:46:28,980 And he told me about the things that they got up, the forging of documents, the paid off bribes and also he told me that one of his colleagues, 322 00:46:31,200 --> 00:46:42,090 Yusef Basri, was responsible for three of the bombs, three out of the five. And he told me that 323 00:46:43,000 --> 00:46:49,790 his controller was a Mossad officer called Max Binnet who was based in Tehran. 324 00:46:50,380 --> 00:46:57,430 These were the days of the Shah where there was a close covert relationship between Iran and Israel. 325 00:46:57,430 --> 00:47:05,680 So the controller gave Karkouk-, er gave Basri the mouse, 326 00:47:06,300 --> 00:47:10,890 the information, the instructions and most importantly the TNT. 327 00:47:14,010 --> 00:47:17,230 Basri was tried, convicted and hanged. 328 00:47:17,250 --> 00:47:21,930 His last words were "Long live the State of Israel". 329 00:47:23,850 --> 00:47:28,889 I said to Karkoukli, "Everything you tell me fits in with what I know, but I need evidence". 330 00:47:28,890 --> 00:47:41,030 So Karkoukli reproduced a one page police report about the interrogation, about the fielties of the Zionist underground, which main [inaudible word] 331 00:47:42,280 --> 00:47:50,260 But it was a plain piece of paper was no lettheard, with no date, with no name. 332 00:47:50,590 --> 00:48:02,420 So I couldn't call it a smoking gun. But I took the investigation a bit further. There is an Iraqi journalist called 333 00:48:02,660 --> 00:48:11,570 Shamil Abdul Qadir and he wrote a book in Arabic which hasn't been translated on the Zionist underground in Iraq and the 334 00:48:12,110 --> 00:48:16,430 Emmigration of the Jews to Israel 1951. 335 00:48:17,490 --> 00:48:29,760 And by very lucky coincidence Haifa Jajjawi the Librarian happened to be friends with Abdul Qadir 336 00:48:30,830 --> 00:48:41,390 and she mediated between us and he confirmed that my police report is genuine and that it's part of a much larger, 337 00:48:41,430 --> 00:48:54,030 larger file, 258 pages file on the interrogation of the Zionist underground's activities and bombs in Baghdad. 338 00:48:55,010 --> 00:49:08,600 So I no longer have any doubt. Israel was involved in the bombing of Jewish sites in Baghdad which precipitated the exodus. 339 00:49:09,290 --> 00:49:14,210 It is not part of my argument that this was the main reason for the exodus. 340 00:49:14,450 --> 00:49:18,720 But it's one factor that needs to be taken into account. 341 00:49:22,150 --> 00:49:25,910 I was going to go on and say this is not a one-off thing but 342 00:49:26,180 --> 00:49:38,569 it's a pattern of false flag operation and another one was the Lavon Affair in 1954 in Cairo, the same Mossad officer, Max Binnet 343 00:49:38,570 --> 00:49:48,100 was the, was in charge of the spy ring, which was rounded up, and he committed suicide in prison. 344 00:49:51,200 --> 00:50:05,980 I now come to the Epilogue of the book. The Epilogue is mostly about my time in the IDF between 1964 and 66 345 00:50:08,120 --> 00:50:12,220 which was the high point of my identification with the Zionist project. 346 00:50:13,820 --> 00:50:23,950 I served loyally and proudly in the idea because in my time it was true to its name, it was the Israel Defence Force. 347 00:50:24,880 --> 00:50:34,940 But after I left, a year after I left to become a History student of Cambridge 348 00:50:36,080 --> 00:50:44,390 everything changed, and it's not because I had left the IDF [Audience laughter], but because of the June 1967 war. 349 00:50:45,470 --> 00:50:52,460 The idea that my little army was transformed into the brutal police force of 350 00:50:52,820 --> 00:51:01,100 the brutal colonial [inaudible word] was the beginning of my disenchantment with the State of Israel. 351 00:51:03,470 --> 00:51:14,990 My memoir is a revisionist track, an alternative history, a challenge to the Zionist narrative about the Jews of the Arab lands. 352 00:51:16,380 --> 00:51:25,830 Which also suggests that the history of Muslim-Jewish relations in Iraq has been distorted, a diservice to the Zionist agenda. 353 00:51:27,830 --> 00:51:41,390 My experience, that of my family, the whole Jewish community in Iraq suggests that there is nothing inevitable or preordained about Arab-Jewish antagonism. 354 00:51:43,160 --> 00:51:46,680 The old world of Iraq, the jana mal allah of my grandmothers 355 00:51:46,730 --> 00:51:53,990 cannot be rebuilt but remembering the past 356 00:51:55,060 --> 00:51:58,480 can help us envisage a better future. 357 00:52:01,860 --> 00:52:11,520 Zionism has all but destroyed the identity of the Arab Jew but it has left enough of a remnant to warrant 358 00:52:11,670 --> 00:52:17,010 a little optimism about the future. One thing is certain, 359 00:52:18,310 --> 00:52:31,630 without reviving or reimagining the kind of religious tolerance and civilised dialogue between Jews and Arabs that prevail in Iraq before the emergence of 360 00:52:31,960 --> 00:52:37,210 the State of Israel, will not go 361 00:52:37,220 --> 00:52:41,060 we will not be able to go past the present ramparts. 362 00:52:41,160 --> 00:53:00,970 Thank you, thank you for listening. [Audience applause] 363 00:53:04,270 --> 00:53:08,320 Avi, you've shared with us not just insights into a new book. 364 00:53:09,640 --> 00:53:15,280 But you've taken this opportunity to share insights into your own personal life and identity questions, 365 00:53:15,790 --> 00:53:20,530 which made this lecture tonight a more intimate portrait of you 366 00:53:21,250 --> 00:53:29,620 than we, your colleagues, your students, your friends have really had the chance to hear before. 367 00:53:31,420 --> 00:53:45,440 And it's hard for us to imagine the younger you. [Audience laughter] That was not meant to be a punchline. The younger you was struggling 368 00:53:47,010 --> 00:53:49,260 with these conflicting identities, 369 00:53:50,010 --> 00:53:57,930 having to deal with multiple uprootings at the same time that you're dealing with all the challenges of adolescence, as it were. 370 00:53:59,130 --> 00:54:08,730 That in a sense, each world as you were uprooted to move to the next, you'd always be remembered as the identity you left behind. 371 00:54:09,360 --> 00:54:13,380 That in Israel you were an Iraqi, that in Britain you are an Israeli. 372 00:54:14,070 --> 00:54:21,730 That in some way getting in was something that was just out of reach in each of the world that you found yourself going to. 373 00:54:23,410 --> 00:54:33,260 It's very hard for us to imagine the failing schoolboy you were as you went through those difficult transitions, 374 00:54:33,380 --> 00:54:38,240 I understand why that one would have a hard time adapting to many different school curriculums. 375 00:54:38,900 --> 00:54:45,470 But the school boy that your Israeli masters were about to give up on saying that you had no academic 376 00:54:45,560 --> 00:54:55,910 intellectual potential is so far from the image we have of you as the Oxford professor, the brilliant author, and the leading public intellectual of Britain. 377 00:54:57,800 --> 00:55:00,830 So there are things that we learn in reading your book. 378 00:55:01,860 --> 00:55:11,430 Which just don't fit with the friend and mentor that we have known in you and that, you are opening us up to a part of yourself which is not easy. 379 00:55:11,910 --> 00:55:18,120 It is dealt with in great honesty. I don't feel that there's any whitewashing that goes on here. 380 00:55:19,070 --> 00:55:25,510 And in the process, you tell us things about a history and society of the 20th century in Iraq, 381 00:55:25,580 --> 00:55:29,940 in Israel and in Britain that really helped to inform our understanding and discussion. 382 00:55:29,960 --> 00:55:35,930 I think your book very rightly takes its place alongside those who inspired you, by Orit Bashkin and by Ella Shohat. 383 00:55:36,440 --> 00:55:46,880 This is a book that will make a lasting contribution to the discussion around the reappropriation of identity as being Jewish and Arab, 384 00:55:47,370 --> 00:55:52,070 and so in that there is a lasting contribution here that I think will affect millions of readers. 385 00:55:53,490 --> 00:55:58,110 And, you know, things that would surprise all of us as you look through the book. 386 00:55:58,560 --> 00:56:09,660 You've got to see what a dish Avi was, I mean the picture of you with your grandmother in uniform will make anyone swoon, let alone the young Baghdadi prince aged 387 00:56:09,660 --> 00:56:16,330 what? one, two, three sitting there dressed in a bow tie and his finery to just melt any grandmother's heart. 388 00:56:16,350 --> 00:56:22,950 So there was definitely aspects of you there in the most positive sense that I wouldn't have recognised either in Avi. What a dish. [Audience laughter] 389 00:56:25,710 --> 00:56:29,850 Now, I think that I probably raised your expectations unduly. 390 00:56:30,750 --> 00:56:34,130 You will have found that in our exchanges tonight 391 00:56:34,720 --> 00:56:38,310 that Professor Shlaim and I have not shown you any particular fireworks. 392 00:56:39,570 --> 00:56:43,370 That's because those usually take place in the question and answer session, right? 393 00:56:43,530 --> 00:56:47,399 And I could tell you stories about Avi chairing me, where he found 394 00:56:47,400 --> 00:56:52,290 the questions were far more to his liking and began to answer on my behalf. [Audience laughter] 395 00:56:54,210 --> 00:57:05,970 as I found myself asking the audience if there are any further questions that Professor Shlaim [Audience laughter] and other such high jinks that are not going to be part of tonight's version, 396 00:57:05,970 --> 00:57:10,880 because as is the tradition with the Antonius rather than open the floor to your questions 397 00:57:11,850 --> 00:57:18,270 we will all break through here to go and share a drink together and corner our speaker to 398 00:57:18,270 --> 00:57:23,420 try and put the questions directly to him face to face over a glass of something bubbly. 399 00:57:23,430 --> 00:57:30,960 Before we do so, there will be a few of you who managed to secure a copy of the book before they all sold out, 400 00:57:31,500 --> 00:57:40,610 so what I'd like to ask of you, is that I'm going to just quickly show Avi to the table outside the lecture theatre, stay in your seats for just one second so I can get him safely 401 00:57:40,650 --> 00:57:44,520 ensconced there, and then let you mawl him from the other side of the table. 402 00:57:44,730 --> 00:57:48,930 Avi, I'll bring you back to sparkling wine to see you through the ordeal of signing all these books. 403 00:57:49,680 --> 00:57:57,590 But before I take Avi Shlaim away I just think you will agree with me that he has set an ungodly challenge for our 46th 404 00:57:57,720 --> 00:58:02,610 Antonius lecturer. Please give the warmest respect to Avi Shlaim. [Audience applause] 405 00:58:02,870 --> 00:58:03,030 Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.