BIRKBECK INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM
JANUARY 2025 EVENTS
Public lecture
Israel: What Went Wrong?
Speaker: Omer Bartov, Brown University
Date: 14 January 2025
Time: 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Location: In person – Birkbeck, University of London, Clore Lecture Theatre, Clore Management Centre, Torrington Square, London WC1E 7JL
Booking: Free event – book your place: https://bisa.bbk.ac.uk/event/israel-what-went-wrong/
Short synopsis: In this talk, Professor Omer Bartov will explore the transformation of Zionism from a movement of Jewish emancipation and liberation into a state ideology of ethno-nationalism, exclusion and violent domination of Palestinians.
Long synopsis: In this talk, Professor Omer Bartov will explore the transformation of Zionism from a movement of Jewish emancipation and liberation into a state ideology of ethno-nationalism, exclusion and violent domination of Palestinians. He traces the process whereby Israel—whose establishment received widespread international support in the aftermath of the Holocaust—now stands accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Most crucially, Professor Bartov examines how and why, less than eight decades after its founding in 1948—the year in which the UN Genocide Convention was adopted in response to Nazi crimes—the Jewish state has become engaged in a genocidal undertaking in Gaza. What are the implications of Israel’s near total impunity for the post-1945 regime of international law? And how do we understand the almost universal support for these policies by Israel’s Jewish citizens?
This talk is taken from Omer Bartov’s forthcoming book, tentatively titled “Israel: What Went Wrong?”
Omer Bartov is the Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University. He has written widely on war crimes, interethnic relations, and genocide. Recent books include: Genocide, The Holocaust and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023); Tales from the Borderlands: Making and Unmaking the Galician Past (Yale University Press, 2022); and Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz (Simon & Schuster, 2018) which won the National Jewish Book Award. Omer Bartov’s essays and commentaries on the current crisis in the Middle East have been featured in many national and international outlets.
Panel discussion
Facing antisemitism: the struggle for safety and solidarity
Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism in partnership with the Runnymede Trust
Confirmed participants: Shabna Begum, Runnymede Trust, David Feldman, Ben Gidley and Brendan McGeever, Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, University of London
Date: 20 January 2025
Time: 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Location: In person – Birkbeck, University of London, Clore Lecture Theatre, Clore Management Centre, Torrington Square, London WC1E 7JL
Booking link: Free event – book your place here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1117673323999?aff=oddtdtcreator
Short synopsis:
The publication of a new report commissioned by Runnymede Trust forms the basis of this panel discussion.
Long synopsis:
The publication of a new report, Facing antisemitism: the struggle for safety and solidarity, commissioned by the Runnymede Trust and written by Birkbeck academics, David Feldman, Ben Gidley and Brendan McGeever, forms the basis of this panel discussion. It marks thirty years since the Runnymede Trust’s landmark 1994 report on antisemitism, A Very Light Sleeper.
Particularly since the events of 7 October 2023 and the ongoing violence in Gaza, we have seen a rise in antisemitic incidents, a growing feeling of insecurity among many Jewish people, and a breakdown in consensus over how to conceive and combat antisemitism.
Facing antisemitism, which will be published on 20 January, argues that antisemitism is a stain on UK society, but current responses to tackling antisemitism are not working. The report calls for a new approach to both thinking about and combating antisemitism.
The panel discussion will be followed by a drinks reception.
Public lecture
The Making of Child Holocaust Survivors
Holocaust Memorial Day lecture in collaboration with the Institute of Historical Research
Speaker: Rebecca Clifford, Durham University
Date: 29 January 2025
Time: 6:30 to 8:00pm GMT
Location: In person – Birkbeck, University of London, Room B36, Torrington Square main entrance, WC1E 7HX
Booking link: https://bisa.bbk.ac.uk/event/the-making-of-child-holocaust-survivors/
Short synopsis:
Rebecca Clifford explores the individual and collective journeys of the youngest survivors of the Holocaust: from ‘lucky’ children who managed to live through genocide, to ‘child Holocaust survivors’ with a profound new understanding of their own pasts.
Long synopsis: The youngest survivors of the Holocaust had direct experience of persecution. Some survived in hiding, some were imprisoned in ghettoes or concentration camps, but all saw the profound loss of families, birth communities, native languages and cultures. Because they were so young, however, they often had few or no memories of their wartime experiences, and they struggled to feel they could call themselves survivors at all. In this talk, Professor Clifford explores their individual and collective journeys from ‘lucky’ children who managed to live through genocide, through to ‘child Holocaust survivors’ with a profound new understanding of their own pasts.
Rebecca Clifford is a Professor of European and Transnational History at Durham University. She is the author of two monographs on the Holocaust, the award-winning Survivors: Children’s Lives After the Holocaust (Yale, 2022) and Commemorating the Holocaust (Oxford, 2013), and co-author of Europe’s 1968: Voices of Revolt (Oxford, 2017). Survivors, her latest book, was winner of the Yad Vashem Book Prize and the Canadian Jewish Literary Awards Scholarship Prize, a finalist for the Cundill History Prize, and shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize, among other accolades.