Nur Masalha
Nur-eldeen Masalha is a Palestinian writer and academic.
He is Palestinian Historian and formerly Professor of Religion and Politics and Director of the Centre for Religion and History and the Holy Land Research Project at St. Mary's University. He was also Programme Director of the MA in Religion, Politics and Conflict Resolution at St Mary's University.
He is currently Member of the Centre for Palestine Studies, London Middle East Institute, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is also currently Member of the Centre for the Philosophy of History, St. Mary's University.
He was Professorial Research Associate, Department of History, SOAS, 2009-2015. He was also a member of the Kuwait Programme, Department of Government, London School of Economics.
He is also the Editor of Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies, published by Edinburgh University Press, and the author of many books on Palestine-Israel, including Theologies of Liberation in Palestine-Israel: Indigenous, Contextual, and Postcolonial Perspectives, The Zionist Bible: Biblical Precedent, Colonialism and the Erasure of Memory, The Palestine Nakba: Decolonising History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory, The Bible and Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archaeology and Post-Colonialism in Palestine-Israel, Catastrophe Remembered, A Land Without a People, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948, Imperial Israel and the Palestinians: The Politics of Expansion and The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem.
Masalha has also served as an honorary fellow in the Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, Durham University; Research Associate in the Department of Law at the School of Oriental and African Studies; and has taught at Birzeit University in Ramallah, West Bank.
Masalha is also the historian commentator in the award–winning, documentary film “La Terre Parle Arabe” , directed by Maryse Gargour, which tells the story of the background and build-up to the expulsion and flight of the Palestinian Arabs in 1948 from the newly created State of Israel.
Education
Masalha studied as an undergraduate and a postgraduate at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He obtained a PhD in politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies (formerly Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal)
Masalha is co-founder and Editor of Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies formerly Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal, a fully refereed journal published by Edinburgh University Press. A Spanish-language edition, Estudios de Tierra Santa: Una Revista Multidisciplinaria', is published by Editorial Canaán, Buenos Aires, and Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.The journal was co-founded with Michael Prior in 2002. Members of the Editorial Board and International Advisory Board included the late Edward W. Said, Hisham Sharabi and Samih Farsoun. Current members include Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe, Yaser Suleiman, Stephanie Cronin, Tim Niblock, Dan Rabinowitz, Naseer Aruri, As’ad Ghanem, Naim Ateek, Donald Wagner, Ismael Abu-Saad, Oren Yiftachel, William Dalrymple, Salim Tamari, Rosemary Radford Ruether and Thomas L. Thompson.
Critique of Benny Morris
Alongside Norman Finkelstein, Masalha has been critical of Benny Morris's first publication on the 1948 Palestinian exodus: The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem . Masalha argues that Morris’s conclusions have a pro-Israeli bias, in that:- Morris did not fully acknowledge that his work rests largely on selectively released Israeli documentation, while the most sensitive documents remain closed to researchers.
- Morris treated the evidence in the Israeli documents in an uncritical way, and did not take into account that they are, at times, apologetics.
- Morris minimized the number of expulsions: Finkelstein asserts that in the table in which Morris summarizes causes of abandonment, village by village, many cases of "military assault on settlement " should have been "expulsions ".
- Morris’s conclusions were skewed with respect to the evidence he himself presents, and when the conclusions are harsh for the Israelis he tended to give them a less incriminating spin.
In a reply to Finkelstein and Masalha, Morris answers he "saw enough material, military and civilian, to obtain an accurate picture of what happened," that Finkelstein and Masalha draw their conclusions with a pro-Palestinian bias, and that with regard to the distinction between military assault and expulsion they should accept that he uses a "more narrow and severe" definition of expulsions. Morris holds to his central conclusion that there was no transfer policy.
Academic qualifications
Posts held
Books in English, Spanish and Arabic
- Theologies of Liberation in Palestine-Israel: Indigenous, Contextual, and Postcolonial Perspectives..248pp.
- The Zionist Bible: Biblical Precedent, Colonialism and the Erasure of Memory,295pp.
- The Palestine Nakba: Decolonising History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory, 288pp.
- , La Biblia leída con los ojos de los Cananeos: : Recordano an Edward W. Said, 241 pp.
- La Biblia y el sionismo: Invención de una tradición y discurso poscolonial,440pp.
- La Expulsión De Los Palestinos: El concepto de "transferencia" en el pensamiento político sionista, 1882-1948 ; La Expulsión De Los Palestinos, 265pp.
- The Bible and Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archaeology and Post-colonialism in Palestine-Israel
- Catastrophe Remembered: Palestine, Israel and the Internal Refugees: Essays in Memory of Edward W. Said
- Politicas De La Negación: Israel Y Los Refugiados Palestininos , 350 pp.
- The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem
- Israeel wa-Siyasat al-Nafi , 320 pp.
- Teorias De La Expansion Territorial , 321 pp.
- Israeel al-Kubra wal-Filistiniyyun: Siyasat al-Tawasu' , 399 pp.
- Imperial Israel and the Palestinians: The Politics of Expansion
- A land without a people
- Ard Akthar wa-Arab Akal , 331 pp.
- The Palestinians in Israel: Is Israel the State of All its Citizens and Absentees? The
- Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought
- Tard al-Flistiniyyun , 293 pp.
Articles and Chapters in Books
- 'On Recent Hebrew and Israeli Sources for the Palestinian Exodus, 1947-1949', Journal of Palestine Studies, pp. 121–137.
- 'Israeli Revisionist Historiography of the Birth of Israel and its Palestinian Exodus', Scandinavian Journal of Development Alternatives, pp. 71–97.
- 'Faysal's Pan-Arabism, 1921-1933', Middle Eastern Studies, pp. 679–693.
- 'Debate on the 1948 Exodus: A Critique of Benny Morris', Journal of Palestine Studies, pp. 90–97.
- 'Operation Hafarferet and the Massacre of Kafr Qassem, October 1956', The Arab Review, pp. 15–21.
- 'Sovereignty over Jerusalem: The Status of the City under International Law', Middle East International, 6 January 1995, pp. 17–18.
- 'Who Rules Jerusalem?' Index on Censorship, pp. 163–166.
- 'The 1956-57 Occupation of the Gaza Strip: Israeli Plans to Resettle the Palestinian Refugees', British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 23, No.1, pp. 55–68.
- 'A Different Peace', Index on Censorship, pp. 18–21.
- Yosef Weitz and Operation Yohanan, 1949-1953, Occasional Paper no.55, Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, University of Durham, August 1996, 31 pp.
- '1967: Why Did the Palestinians Leave?' Shaml, pp. 2–5.
- 'Transfer', in Philip Mattar, Encyclopedia of the Palestinians, pp. 401–404.
- 'The 1967 Palestinian Exodus', in Ghada Karmi and Eugene Cotran, The Palestinian Exodus, 1948-1998, pp. 63–109.
- 'A Galilee Without Christians?' in Anthony O'Mahony, Palestinian Christians: Religion, Politics and Society in the Holy Land, pp. 190–222.
- 'The Historical Roots of the Palestinian Refugee Question', in Naseer Aruri, The Palestinian Refugees: The Right of Return, pp. 36–67.
- Ariel Sharon: A Political Profile, Occasional Paper.
- 'The PLO, Resolution 194 and the 'right of return': Evolving Palestinian attitudes towards the refugee question from the 1948 Nakba to the Camp David summit of July 2002', Eugene Cotran, Yearbook of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law 7, pp. 127–155.
- 'Reinventing Maimonides: From Universalist Philosopher to Religious Fundamentalist ', Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal, Vol.1, No.1, pp. 85–117.
- 'Le Concept De 'Transfer' Dans La Doctrine Et Dans La Pratique Du Mouvement Sioniste', in Farouk Mardam-Bey and Elias Sanbar, LE DROIT AU RETOUR: LE PROBLEME DES REFUGIES PALESTINIENS, pp. 15–59.
- 'Israel and the Palestinian Refugees', La Vanguardia,.
- 'The Palestinian Nakba', Global Dialogue, Vol.4, No.3, pp. 77–91.
- 'La responsabilita morale di Israele verso rifugiati palestinesti', Afriche e Orienti, Vol. 4, No.3, pp. 106–109.
- 'From Propaganda to Scholarship: Dr Joseph Schechtman and the Origins of the Israeli Polemics on the Palestinian Refugees', Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal, Vol.2, No.2, pp. 188–197.
- 'La importancia historica de la comunidad palestinin en libano', Vanguardia Dossier, No. 8, pp. 55–60.
- 'Sectarianism and the Rejection of Tawteen: Lebanon and the Palestinian Refugees', in Eugene Cotran and Martin Lau, Yearbook of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law, pp. 110–130.
- ''Dissolvere' il problema dei rifugiati palestinesi: Proposte israeliene di 'reinsediamento' ', in Jamil Hilal and Ilan Pappe, Parlare co il Nemico: Narrazioni Palestinesi e Israeliane a Confronto ,, pp. 169–215.
- 'Edward W. Said and Rethinking the Question of Palestine', The Arab World Geographer, Vol. l7, pp. 4–21.
- 'Jewish Fundamentalism and the 'Sacred Geography' of Jerusalem in Comparative Perspective : Implications for Inter-faith Relations', Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal, Vol.3, No.1, pp. 29–67.
- 'Prólogo: Leyendo la Biblia con los ojos de los cananeos, En homenaje al professor Michael Prior', in Michael Prior, La Biblia y el colonialismo: Una critica moral , pp.xi-xxiv.
- 'A Comparative Study of Jewish, Christian and Islamic Fundamentalist Perspectives on Jerusalem: Implications for Inter-faith Relations', Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal, Vol.5, No.1, pp. 97–112.
- ‘Die Nakba, Die Katasrophe von 1948’, INAMO 54, pp. 4–7.
- ‘Remembering the Palestinian Nakba: Commemoration, Oral History and Narratives of Memory', Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal, Vol.7, No.2, pp.123-156.
- 'Jérusalem, la ferveur et la guerre: Le Droit international,’ Qantara, No. 73, pp. 40–42.
- 'Di/solving the Palestinian Refugee Problem: Israeli Resettlement Plans in the First Decade of the State’, in Ilan Pappe and Jamīl Hilal Across the Wall: Narratives of Israeli-Palestinian History, pp. 107–155.
- 'Reading the Bible with the Eyes of the Canaanites: Neo-Zionism, Political Theology and the Land Traditions of the Bible ', Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal, Vol. 8, No.1, pp. 55–108.
- 'Collective Memory, Indigenous Resistance and the Struggle for Return: Palestinians inside Israel Six Decades after the Nakba’, Jadal,.
- 'New History, Post-Zionism and Neo-Colonialism: A Critique of the Israeli “New Historians”’, Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal, Vol. 10, No.1, pp. 1-53.
- 'Edward W. Said: El sionismo y la visión democrática laica’, in Saad Chedid and Nur Masalha La Biblia leída con los ojos de los cananeos: Recordando an Edward W. Said, pp. 135–184.
- 'Liberating Methodologies and Nakba Studies: Palestinian History and Memory from below as Sites of Lifelong Learning', Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal, Vol. 13, No. 1. pp. 25–69.
- 'Settler-Colonialism, Memoricide and Indigenous Toponymic Memory: The Appropriation of Palestinian Place Names by the Israeli State', Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies, Vol. 14 Issue 1, Pp. 3-57.
- 'The Concept of Palestine: The Conception of Palestine from the Late Bronze Age to the Modern Period', Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies, Vol. 15, Issue 2, pp. 143–202.