Georges Bensoussan

In this new history, French author Georges Bensoussan retells the story of what life was like for Jews in the Arab world since 1850. During the early years of this time, it was widely believed that Jewish life in Arab lands was peaceful. Jews were protected by law and suffered much less violence, persecution, and inequality. Bensoussan takes on this myth and looks back over the history of Jewish-Arab relations in Arab countries. He finds that there is little truth to the myth and forwards a nuanced history of interrelationship that is not only diverse, but deals with local differences in cultural, religious, and political practice. Bensoussan divides the work into sections that cover 1850 to the end of WWI, from 1919 to the eve of WWII and then from WWII to the establishment of Israel and the Arab Wars. A new afterword brings the history of Jewish and Arab relations into the present day. Bensoussan has determined that the history of Jews in Arab countries is a history of slowly disintegrating relationships, increasing tension, violence, and persecution.

Georges Bensoussan, historian, is a specialist in the cultural history of 19th- and 20th-century Europe, and particularly of the Jewish world. His research focuses on anti-SemitI'm and the relationship between memory and history. He is in charge of editorial content at the Shoah Memorial (Paris). He lives in Paris. Based on a vast amount of archive material, particularly from diplomatic and military sources, Georges Bensoussan shows that Jews in the Arab-Muslim world were subjected to segregation and servitude. Which explains why, in barely a generation, some 900,000 Jews left those areas. ? Thus the history of Jewish-Arab relations from the 19th century to the present day tends to refute the oft-defended theory of a happy and harmonious coexistence between Jews and Muslims in the Arab world. On the contrary, it is a history of domination and submission - but also one of esteem and even admiration - that is revealed in this book.

La riflessione sul tramonto di un'era, l'era del testimone della Shoah, ha conosciuto un notevole e per certi versi inatteso sviluppo, che ha posto fine a una stagione durata circa mezzo secolo. > Il volume nasce dall'esigenza di ridefinire i limiti delle narrazioni della deportazione e persecuzione razziale in un quadro comparativo europeo, con uno sguardo sui modi della rappresentazione oltreoceano e in Israele. Abbiamo tentato di aprire qualche finestra sui modi attraverso i quali la narrazione della Shoah e cambiata o sta cambiando, mossi dal desiderio di procedere per comparazioni fra diverse metodologie, ma anche fra diversi contesti nazionali. > Nel Dizionario dei luoghi comuni di Flaubert alla voce Ebraico corrisponde un lemma nel quale si riflette un pregiudizio ancora diffuso ai nostri giorni: E ebraico tutto quello che non si capisce. Auspichiamo che i contributi raccolti in questo volume aiutino a sconfiggere questo radicato luogo comune. >