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Blog28th August 2010Berkoff's adaption of the Old TestamentLast night I saw Steven Berkoff's adaption of four Old Testament biblical stories-with a twentieth century twist-at the New End Theatre in Hampstead. The stories Berfkoff chose to adapt were Adam and Eve, David and Goliath, Samson and Delilah, and Moses and the Pharaoh. I have to admit that my Palestinian friend and I were a little perturbed when we read that it was the recent war in Gaza that prompted Berkoff to make this play. Continue Reading...6th August 2010 My article published in Lebanon's Daily Star newspaperWhy the summer war of 2006 was unnecessaryBy Victor Kattan Friday, August 06, 2010 Israel’s relatively muted reaction to its border clash with Lebanese troops on Tuesday – in which an Israeli reserve battalion commander, two Lebanese soldiers and a civilian Lebanese journalist were killed – is rather intriguing. For it provides an indication that the summer war of 2006 need not have happened. Then, as now, other options were available to Israel, which could have responded differently had it wished to do so. Israel evidently did not need to escalate the situation by going to war against Lebanon four years ago as it need not do so now. Rather Israel’s bombardment and invasion of Lebanon in 2006 was a war of choice and of convenience. As the Winograd Committee set up by the government of Israel to investigate the causes of the war in 2006 admitted, “in making the decision to go to war, the government [of Israel] did not consider the whole range of options, including that of continuing the policy of ‘containment,’ or combining political and diplomatic moves with military strikes below the ‘escalation level,’ or military preparations without immediate military action.” The events which precipitated the conflict in 2006 – not too dissimilar to Tuesday’s events – amounted to a frontier dispute which usually falls outside the scope of self-defense under the UN Charter. Continue Reading... 5th August 2010 From Coexistence reviewed in The Journal of Peace Research"Victor Kattan’s work is indeed a remarkable tour de force. By combining the meticulous archival research of a historian with the well-presented, and equally meticulous, argument of a legal expert, he manages to shed new light on issues that many a researcher before him has studied in depth. By tracing some of the most fundamental issues regarding the Israeli– Palestinian conflict through its early formative phase, 1891– 1949, Kattan is able to defuse some of the oldest arguments, ascertain the validity of newer accusations and frame it all within the context of international law..."Review by Jørgen Jensehaugen in 47 Journal of Peace Research (2010), p. 515. Continue Reading... 9th July 2010 Edinburgh Book Festival 18 AugustI will be speaking on a panel with Allan Little, Gabriella Ambrosio, and Vered Cohen-Barzilay to talk about Gabriella's new book Before We Say Goodbye at the Edinbugh Festival on Wednesday 18th August at 7pm. For further details please see the poster. Continue Reading...30th June 2010 Book review: Victor Kattan's legal history of the colonization of Palestine by Mazen Masri, The Electronic Intifada, 19 June 2010Zionism, it was proclaimed in the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, "aims at the creation of a home for the Jewish people in Palestine to be secured by public law." The choice of the words "public law" was a compromise between the delegates representing different streams of political Zionism. As David Vital explained in The Origins of Zionism, one branch of Zionism wanted to explicitly refer to the "law of nations," while the other was willing to make do with "law" only (364-370).Law, or to be more precise, international law, has always been central to political Zionism. After all, international law reflects the aggregation of the agreements, opinions and interests of those who decide what the law is. There is little doubt that when the Zionist Congress met in 1897, the law was what the imperial powers decided was law. In order to create a new political entity, one needed the recognition of those powers, and the recognition of the law to gain legitimacy. Hence the centrality of law to the Israeli-Arab conflict. Yet at the same time, most of the Palestinian arguments and demands are based on international law. This leaves a lot of ambiguity about what the law is, its interpretation and how it interacts with other historical events and political realities. Victor Kattan's new book From Coexistence to Conquest attempts to clear up this ambiguity. Continue Reading... 3rd June 2010 My book mentioned in Daily Mail columnMy book gets a mention in a column by Andrew Alexander in The Daily Mail at p. 18 regarding the Israeli attack on the 'Mavi Marmara', the Turkish registered ship that sought to breach Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip. Continue Reading...1st May 2010 My talk at Georgetown UniversityYou can see my talk at Georgetown on the university webcast here. Continue Reading...23rd April 2010 From Coexistence to Conquest mentioned in Foreign AffairsForeign Affairs, the leading US publication on international relations published by the Council on Foreign Relations, mention my book in their May/June 2010 issue. L. Carl Brown writes that 'This veritable "Brandeis brief" of facts and law makes the case that in terms of international law, the Palestinians repeatedly got a raw deal in the period from the rise of Zionism to the creation of Israel. It is a convincing argument ...' Continue Reading...14th April 2010 Kattan on MIT WorldMIT World are distributing my video with Noam Chomsky. See what he says about my book here Continue Reading...8th April 2010 From Coexistence to Conquest on Press TV (Part 1)Watch Epilogue on Press TV with Derek Conway MP, Dr Daoud Abdullah, and solicitor John McHugo, talking about my book From Coexistence to Conquest on You Tube Continue Reading...Find this useful? Send & Share
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