YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

Historian Jeffrey Herf will lead a panel exploring responses to Hamas’ October 7th massacres and to the state of Israel’s subsequent military response. Meir Litvak will discuss his scholarship on the Islamization of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Norman Goda will examine rules of war, civilian casualties, and accusations of genocide; Karin Stögner will discuss theories of race and intersectionality and anti-Zionism, and the gendered aspects of the violence of October 7; and David Hirsh will examine the nature of leftist anti-Zionism that achieved predominance for some years in the British Labor Party.

In 1947, a two-thirds majority of the members of the United Nations voted to establish an Arab and a Jewish state on what had been British Mandate Palestine. This webinar explores the causes and nature of the war of 1948 and how it is perceived as either anti-colonial or colonial, anti-racist or racist, depending on one's perspective. Join historians Benny Morris and Jeffrey Herf as they discuss these issues and their contemporary implications.

During and after World War II and the Holocaust, the collaboration of leading Palestinian nationalists with the Nazi regime was a major issue in the press and politics. Historians have examined the details and nature of this collaboration and the ideas of Islamists that led them to support Hitler. In this conversation, historians Matthias Küntzel and Jeffrey Herf will discuss the origins of Hamas, the history of Islamic antisemitism, and its causal significance in the war of 1947-1948.