Sunday, July 16, 2017

Avi Shlaim's apologia for Oslo accords

Avi Shlaim, a huge fan of King Husayn (and also of Rabin, of course), betrays more than a tinge of colonial racism in this line: "a modest experiment in Palestinian self-government".  So the Palestinians are not a mature people and thus it is required that they go through an experimental period of self-government? Also, notice that he believes that Palestinian "violence" was a "contributing factor" to the collapse of Oslo, but says not a word about Israeli terrorism.  And this is considered Zionist revisionism.  If this is Zionist historiographer revisionism please bring me back classical Zionist historiography: at least it makes no pretenses.  His only criticisms of Oslo is that bad faith of Netanyahu--one person in Israel.

PS The article is from 2013, and it was terrible then as it is terrible now.