Efraim Karsh
Author of Islamic Imperialism: A History
About the Author
Efraim Karsh is Professor and Head of the Mediterranean Studies Programme, King's College, University of London.
Works by Efraim Karsh
Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789-1923 (1999) 143 copies, 1 review
Fabricating Israeli History: The 'New Historians' (Israeli History, Politics and Society) (1997) 39 copies
Israel. the first hundred years / Volume I, Israel's transition from community to state (2000) 13 copies
The Cautious Bear: Soviet Military Engagement in Middle East Wars in the Post-1967 Era (Jcss Study, No 3) (1985) 3 copies
Israel : the first hundred years. Volume III, Israeli society and politics since 1948 : problems of collective identity (2013) 3 copies
Between War and Peace: Dilemmas of Israeli Security (Israeli History, Politics and Society) (1996) 2 copies
Iran-Iraq: la lunga guerra 1 copy
In Search of Identity: Jewish Aspects in Israeli Culture (Israeli History, Politics and Society) (1998) 1 copy
ערפאת : האיש ומלחמתו בישראל 1 copy
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1953
- Gender
- male
- Short biography
- Efraim Karsh is director of the Middle East Forum, editor of the Middle East Quarterly, and Professor of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King's College London.
Born and raised in Israel, Mr. Karsh earned his undergraduate degree in Arabic language and literature and modern Middle Eastern history from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and his graduate and doctoral degrees in international relations from Tel Aviv University. After acquiring his first academic degree, he served for seven years as an intelligence officer in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), where he attained the rank of major.
Prior to coming to King's in 1989, Mr. Karsh held various academic posts at Columbia University, the Sorbonne, the London School of Economics, Helsinki University, the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington D.C., and the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel-Aviv University. In 2003 he was the first Nahshon Visiting Professor in Israel Studies at Harvard.
Mr. Karsh has published extensively on the Middle East, strategic and military affairs, and European neutrality. He is the author of fifteen books, including Palestine Betrayed (Yale); Islamic Imperialism: A History (Yale); Empires of the Sand: the Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East 1798-1923 (Harvard); Fabricating Israeli History: The "New Historians" (Routledge); The Gulf Conflict 1990-1991 (Princeton); Saddam Hussein (Free Press); Arafat's War (Grove); and Neutrality and Small States (Routledge).
Mr. Karsh has appeared as a commentator on all the main British and American television networks and has contributed over 100 articles to leading newspapers and magazines, including Commentary, The Daily Telegraph, The International Herald Tribune, The London Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
He has served on many academic and professional boards; has acted as referee for numerous scholarly journals, publishers, and grant awarding organizations; has consulted the British Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as well as national and international economic companies/organizations; and has briefed several parliamentary committees. A recent CENTCOM directory of Centers of Excellence on the Middle East ranked Mr. Karsh as the fifth highly quoted academic among 20 top published authors on the Middle East, with his articles quoted three times as often as the best of the four non-American scholars on the list.
He is founding editor of the scholarly journal Israel Affairs, now in its sixteenth year, and founding general editor of a Routledge book series on Israeli History, Politics and Society.
http://www.meforum.org/staff/Efraim+K... - Birthplace
- Israel
- Map Location
- Israel
Members
Reviews
Interesting overview of a very long and hard war. Would have enjoyed more detail in some places but the briefness is to be expected given the publication. Some interesting first hand accounts and interviews were provided (particularly the Kurdish survivor and 2 different Iranian 'Boy Soldiers'). An interesting thought was raised in the form of Iraq's use of gas on both military and civilian targets, the West didnt seem to mind all that much when it benefited them and their aims. I suppose show more they viewed the use of gas as the lesser evil when compared to radical Islam. show less
The Tail Wags the Dog: International Politics and the Middle East by Efraim Karsh is a history of the Arab world since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Karash is founding director and emeritus professor of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King's College London. Since 2013, he serves as professor of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University (where he is also a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies). Furthermore, he is a principal research fellow (and show more former director) of the Middle East Forum, a Philadelphia-based think tank. He is regarded as a vocal critic of the New Historians, a group of Israeli scholars who have questioned the conventional history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Karsh opens with an interesting premise that would have made the world, or at least the Middle East, a different place entirely. No doubt the Ottoman Empire was, as Nicholas I described, the sick old man of Europe but its role was pivotal in the modern Middle East. The Ottoman Empire was under no pressure to join in World War I. France and England both made promises to the empire that they would not attack. The Ottoman Empire like France and England were all leaders of empires. This created a bond between the three. The Ottomans, however, chose to join the Germans which lead to its defeat and loss of its empire. German and Ottoman lands were put under mandate and divided up between England and France. The competition for power in the region lead to various Arab leaders and internal rivalries. Had the Ottomans stayed out of the war granted, some regional autonomy, things may have been very different. There was no Arab sense of nationalism region, that idea was created by the mandate system.
The Tail Wags the Dog: International Politics and the Middle East history up until recent events including the rise of the IS and the failure of the Arab Spring. He does make note of the United States’ pride Israel being the achievement of a liberal democracy in the Middle East and likewise notes that it was the US that installed the Shah’s totalitarian regime. Soviet intervention into the region is discussed in the form of aid and influence to the invasion of Afghanistan to create a buffer from radical Islam. Although the world powers played a role, Karsh claims the driving force was and is the Arabs themselves.
The Middle East Peace Treaty between Israel and Egypt is examined. Seen as a great event by the US it happened only months before the fall of the Shah and just over a year before the attack and hostage crisis in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The idea of peace was quickly overshadowed. The most telling event of the peace process was the exclusion of any Palestinian representation in the Camp David Summit. The US did not directly deal with the Palestinians until the Clinton presidency. Perhaps that is the key point to understanding the Middle East is that it is not about national identity. The problems in the Middle East are usually not between nations and national identities, with Iraq being the modern exception. It is contained in the Arab identity. Egypt wanted to unite the Arab world under the United Arab Republic and failed. IS, the Muslim Brotherhood, and others are Pan-Arab are movements do not recognize international borders. Their aim is to unite all Arabs and Islam. Again even entering into the present with the concept of Western nationalism is not a factor.
The Tail Wags the Dog: International Politics and the Middle East provides a history by a controversial author and historian. The writing is well documented and appears to use a great deal of source material. The history is very detailed and reads much like a graduate level textbook. There is certainly new information or at least new thinking of the complex history of the Middle East. I would be surprised if Karsh does not receive some criticism from the established academia. His work does appear to be factual, but like all histories there will be an interpretation of actions and motives. Personally, I gathered a great deal of information on the subject and perhaps new thinking on some subjects. History needs to be examined and reexamined to keep it honest. Controversy keeps history alive and intentionally or not this is what Karsh is facilitating.
show less
Karsh opens with an interesting premise that would have made the world, or at least the Middle East, a different place entirely. No doubt the Ottoman Empire was, as Nicholas I described, the sick old man of Europe but its role was pivotal in the modern Middle East. The Ottoman Empire was under no pressure to join in World War I. France and England both made promises to the empire that they would not attack. The Ottoman Empire like France and England were all leaders of empires. This created a bond between the three. The Ottomans, however, chose to join the Germans which lead to its defeat and loss of its empire. German and Ottoman lands were put under mandate and divided up between England and France. The competition for power in the region lead to various Arab leaders and internal rivalries. Had the Ottomans stayed out of the war granted, some regional autonomy, things may have been very different. There was no Arab sense of nationalism region, that idea was created by the mandate system.
The Tail Wags the Dog: International Politics and the Middle East history up until recent events including the rise of the IS and the failure of the Arab Spring. He does make note of the United States’ pride Israel being the achievement of a liberal democracy in the Middle East and likewise notes that it was the US that installed the Shah’s totalitarian regime. Soviet intervention into the region is discussed in the form of aid and influence to the invasion of Afghanistan to create a buffer from radical Islam. Although the world powers played a role, Karsh claims the driving force was and is the Arabs themselves.
The Middle East Peace Treaty between Israel and Egypt is examined. Seen as a great event by the US it happened only months before the fall of the Shah and just over a year before the attack and hostage crisis in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The idea of peace was quickly overshadowed. The most telling event of the peace process was the exclusion of any Palestinian representation in the Camp David Summit. The US did not directly deal with the Palestinians until the Clinton presidency. Perhaps that is the key point to understanding the Middle East is that it is not about national identity. The problems in the Middle East are usually not between nations and national identities, with Iraq being the modern exception. It is contained in the Arab identity. Egypt wanted to unite the Arab world under the United Arab Republic and failed. IS, the Muslim Brotherhood, and others are Pan-Arab are movements do not recognize international borders. Their aim is to unite all Arabs and Islam. Again even entering into the present with the concept of Western nationalism is not a factor.
The Tail Wags the Dog: International Politics and the Middle East provides a history by a controversial author and historian. The writing is well documented and appears to use a great deal of source material. The history is very detailed and reads much like a graduate level textbook. There is certainly new information or at least new thinking of the complex history of the Middle East. I would be surprised if Karsh does not receive some criticism from the established academia. His work does appear to be factual, but like all histories there will be an interpretation of actions and motives. Personally, I gathered a great deal of information on the subject and perhaps new thinking on some subjects. History needs to be examined and reexamined to keep it honest. Controversy keeps history alive and intentionally or not this is what Karsh is facilitating.
show less
If you want to know either the history of Islam in general, and especially if you want to know about Islamic theology, Islamic Imperialism is not the book you want. It's what its title describes--a history of empires and imperialist ideologies under the banner of Islam--and discussion of theology other Islam-related subjects is incidental and given only to support the thesis. You largely can't learn from this book what Muslims believe.
That said, it fully explains how for Muslims (especially show more Arab Muslims), dreams of regional and even world domination are inseparably tied to Islamic beliefs. The key is that unlike Christianity, Islam makes no distinction between sacred and secular government, and so notwithstanding that there is currently no Islamic caliphate (it ended with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I), Muslims believe that Islam must politically govern the entire temporal world.
Although quite short (under 250 pages) and concise in style, this book is written in a very academic (if concise) style. It expects the reader to already know basic details of Islamic political history (such as the difference between a "caliph" and a "sultan"), and it occasionally uses obscure terms without bothering to explain them. show less
That said, it fully explains how for Muslims (especially show more Arab Muslims), dreams of regional and even world domination are inseparably tied to Islamic beliefs. The key is that unlike Christianity, Islam makes no distinction between sacred and secular government, and so notwithstanding that there is currently no Islamic caliphate (it ended with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I), Muslims believe that Islam must politically govern the entire temporal world.
Although quite short (under 250 pages) and concise in style, this book is written in a very academic (if concise) style. It expects the reader to already know basic details of Islamic political history (such as the difference between a "caliph" and a "sultan"), and it occasionally uses obscure terms without bothering to explain them. show less
Interesting overview of a very long and hard war. Would have enjoyed more detail in some places but the briefness is to be expected given the publication. Some interesting first hand accounts and interviews were provided (particularly the Kurdish survivor and 2 different Iranian 'Boy Soldiers'). An interesting thought was raised in the form of Iraq's use of gas on both military and civilian targets, the West didnt seem to mind all that much when it benefited them and their aims. I suppose show more they viewed the use of gas as the lesser evil when compared to radical Islam. show less
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