"The Religious Dimensions of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict"
Sunday, March 30, 2025 @ 5:30PM EST
GISB 1112
"In 1922, the League of Nations endorsed Britain’s Balfour Declaration (1917) that proposed the establishment of “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. This proposal challenged a reality that had been in force since the Muslim conquest in the seventh century and the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine to Christianity three centuries earlier. It forced reconsiderations by all three main monotheisms and has shaped the politics of the Arab/Israeli conflict for more than a century. After considering the adjustments made by Jews and Christians to the revolution in the common Holy Land, this lecture will focus on Islam and challenges it faced in resetting its relationship to Jews from their theologically assigned status as dhimmis (a non-Muslim subject in an Islamic state) to potential equals and to a Jewish state as a legitimate possibility. This analysis will describe the historic Muslim relationship to both Jews and Christians and assess to what extent change has taken place and how it can be accomplished."
Ilan Troen is professor emeritus of both the Stoll Family Chair in Israel Studies (Brandeis, 2017), and the Lopin Chair of Modern History (Ben-Gurion University, 2007. He has served as founding director of the Israel Studies centers at both institutions and dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at Ben-Gurion University. He is past president of the Association for Israel Studies and received in 2023 its "Lifetime Achievement Award." In 2024, Professor Troen was a recipient of the Bernard Lewis Prize for his book, "Israel/Palestine in World Religions: Whose Promised Land?"
The College of Arts