# Avi Shlaim

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Avi Shlaim FBA (born 31 October 1945) is an Israeli and British historian of Iraqi Jewish descent. He is one of Israel's "New Historians", a group of Israeli scholars who put forward critical interpretations of the history of Zionism and Israel.

## Biography

Shlaim was born to wealthy Jewish parents in Baghdad in the Kingdom of Iraq.
In the 1930s, the situation of the Jews in Iraq deteriorated, with the rise of nationalisms in Arab countries, and the concomitant growth of Jewish nationalism in the form of Zionism. Persecution of Jews was exacerbated after the defeat of the Arab armies in 1948, and Israel's independence. In 1951, during Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, Shlaim's family, along with most of Iraq's Jews, registered to emigrate to Israel and forfeit their Iraqi citizenship. The family lost all of their property and emigrated to Israel.
Shlaim grew up in Ramat Gan. He left Israel for England at the age of 16 to study at a Jewish school. He returned to Israel in 1964 to serve in the Israel Defense Forces, then moved back to England in 1966 to read history at Jesus College, Cambridge. He obtained his BA degree in 1969. He obtained an MSc (Econ.) in International Relations in 1970 from the London School of Economics and a PhD from the University of Reading. He was a lecturer and reader in politics in the University of Reading from 1970 to 1987.
He married the great-granddaughter of David Lloyd George, who was the British prime minister at the time of the Balfour Declaration. He has lived in the United Kingdom since 1966, and holds dual British and Israeli nationality.

## Academic career

Shlaim taught international relations at Reading University, specialising in European issues. His academic interest in the history of Israel began in 1982, when Israeli government archives about the 1948 Arab–Israeli War were opened, an interest that deepened when he became a fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, in 1987. He was Alastair Buchan Reader in international relations at Oxford from 1987 to 1996 and director of graduate studies in that subject in 1993–1995 and 1998–2001. He held a British Academy research readership in 1995–97 and a research professorship in 2003–2006.
Shlaim served as an outside examiner on the doctoral thesis of Ilan Pappé. Shlaim's approach to the study of history is informed by his belief that "the historian's most fundamental task is not to chronicle but to evaluate... to subject the claims of all the protagonists to rigorous scrutiny and reject all those claims, however deeply cherished, that do not stand up."

## Views and opinions

Shlaim is a regular contributor to The Guardian newspaper, and signed an open letter to that paper in January 2009 condemning Israel's role in the Gaza War.
Writing in the Spectator, Shlaim called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a "proponent of the doctrine of permanent conflict," describing his policies as an attempt to preclude a peaceful resolution to the conflict with Palestinians. Furthermore, he described Israeli foreign policy as one that supported stability of Arab regimes over nascent democratic movements during the Arab Spring.
Shlaim is a member of the UK Labour Party. In August 2015, he was a signatory to a letter criticising The Jewish Chronicle's reporting of Jeremy Corbyn's association with alleged antisemites.
In Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew, Shlaim unveils "undeniable proof of Zionist involvement in the terrorist attacks" which prompted a mass exodus of Jews from Iraq between 1950 and 1951. The historian believed that most of the bombings against Jews in Iraq were the work of Mossad. He believed Mossad took these actions to quicken the transfer of 110,000 Jews in Iraq to the then-newly created state of Israel.

## Reception
### Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew (2023)

In a review for the Journal of Refugee Studies, Anne Irfan described this book as "a hybrid genre of policital-social history, family history, and personal memoir" and reminiscent of The Hundred Years' War on Palestine (2020) by Rashid Khalidi, as well as having "striking similarities" to Edward Said's memoir Out of Place (1999). Irfan argued that the parallels in the lives of Said and Shlaim reinforce "the latter's contention that these two groups are both victims of the Zionist movement". Additionally, she felt the book had "much to contribute to the field of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies" and offers "an instructive case study for thinking through the categories of migrant and refugee".

## Criticism

The Israeli historians Joseph Heller and Yehoshua Porath have claimed that Shlaim "misleads his readers with arguments that Israel had missed the opportunity for peace while the Arabs are strictly peace seekers".
According to Yoav Gelber, Shlaim's claim that there was a deliberate and pre-meditated anti-Palestinian "collusion" between the Jewish Agency and King Abdullah of Jordan, is unequivocally refuted by the documentary evidence on the development of contacts between Israel and Jordan before, during and after the 1948 war. Marc Lynch however wrote that "the voluminous evidence in [Gelber's] book does not allow so conclusive a verdict".
Israeli historian Benny Morris, while praising Shlaim's historical works such as Collusion Across the Jordan and The Iron Wall, has criticized Shlaim's contemporary commentary. In a negative review of Israel and Palestine, he described it as having an anti-Israel and pro-Arab bias, asserting that Shlaim distorted records to give a one-sided portrayal of history. Morris also wrote a negative review of Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew.

## Awards and recognition

In 2006, Shlaim was elected Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.
On 27 September 2017, Shlaim was awarded the British Academy Medal "for lifetime achievement".
Avi Shlaim was the winner of the 2024 PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for his memoir "Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew (Oneworld)".