Mark Levene

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Mark Levene is a historian and emeritus fellow at University of Southampton.

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Levene's work and research focuses on genocide, Jewish history and anthropogenic climate change. [1]

His book The Crisis of Genocide: The European Rimlands, 1912-1953 received the biennial Lemkin Award from the New York-based Institute for the Study of Genocide in 2015. [1]

In 2015, Dr. Peter Hilpold, a Professor at the University of Innsbruck reviewed the book. He stated that the book makes a valuable contribution, although the study's foundational assumptions are questioned. Levene does not use the same definition of genocide as found in the UN Genocide Convention. [2]

The Balfour Declaration - a case of mistaken identity

In this 1992 essay, Levene followed the people behind the Balfour declaration which during the First World War gave birth to the British Mandate of Palestine and to what later became the state of Israel.

According to him, historians were perplexed about the reasons behind the declaration, or they were simply getting it wrong. He wrote:

"Barbara Tuchman in all seriousness proposed that 'the English Bible was the most important single factor'."

Levene discovered that an anti-Zionist Jew, Lucien Wolf, had actually proposed the idea to the then clearly anti-semitic British Foreign ministry and that it was accepted precisely because of that, with the British believing that supporting the Zionists would bring "World Jewry" and especially the Jews in the United States to side with Britain and actively enter the war against Germany (and Turkey who ruled Palestine at the time). Later on, Wolf backed off, and when the declaration was realized, other considerations came into play. [3]

Works

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cambon letter</span> 1917 Zionist document

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You were good enough to present the project to which you are devoting your efforts, which has for its object the development of Jewish colonization in Palestine.You consider that, circumstances permitting, and the independence of the Holy Places being safeguarded on the other hand, it would be a deed of justice and of reparation to assist, by the protection of the Allied Powers, in the renaissance of the Jewish nationality in that Land from which the people of Israel were exiled so many centuries ago.
The French Government, which entered this present war to defend a people wrongfully attacked, and which continues the struggle to assure the victory of right over might, can but feel sympathy for your cause, the triumph of which is bound up with that of the Allies.

I am happy to give you herewith such assurance.

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References

  1. 1 2 "Mark Levene". conted.ox.ac.uk. University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education.
  2. Hilpold, P. (2014). "Mark Levene. The Crisis of Genocide. Volume I: Devastation. The European Rimlands 1912-1938. Volume II: Annihilation. The European Rimlands 1939-1953". European Journal of International Law. 25 (4): 1202–1204. doi:10.1093/ejil/chu080.
  3. Levene, Mark (1992). "The Balfour Declaration: A Case of Mistaken Identity". The English Historical Review . 107 (422 January): 54–77. doi:10.1093/ehr/CVII.CCCCXXII.54. JSTOR   575676.
  4. Carteny, Andrea (2009). "Genocide in the Age of the Nation State: Volume I: The Meaning of Genocide by Mark Levene". Nations and Nationalism. 15 (2): 362–363. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8129.2009.00408_1.x.
  5. David‐Fox, Michael (2016). "The Crisis of Genocide, Vol. 2: Annihilation: The European Rimlands 1939–1953 . By Mark Levene. (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. 535. $130.00.)". The Historian. 78 (1): 164–166. doi: 10.1111/hisn.12141 .
  6. Levene, Mark (1993). "Nationalism and Its Alternatives in the International Arena: The Jewish Question at Paris, 1919". Journal of Contemporary History. 28 (3): 511–531 via JSTOR.
  7. on the World Catalog