Nur ad-Din Masalha | |
|---|---|
نور الدين مصالحه | |
| Born | 4 January 1957 |
| Nationality | Palestinian |
| Other names | Nur Masalha |
| Occupation | Historian |
Nur ad-Din Masalha (Arabic: نور الدين مصالحه, romanized: Nūr ad-Dīn Maṣālḥa; born 4 January 1957) commonly known in English as Nur Masalha is a Palestinian writer, historian, and academic.[1][2]
He is a historian of Palestine and formerly professor of religion and politics and director of the Centre for Religion and History and the Holy Land Research Project at St. Mary's University. He was also programme director of the MA in religion, Politics and Conflict Resolution at St Mary's University (2005–2015).
He is currently member of the Centre for Palestine Studies and the London Middle East Institute, (both hosted at the School of Oriental and African Studies) as well as the University of London. He is also a member of the Centre for the Philosophy of History, St. Mary's University.
He was a professorial research associate, at the Department of History of SOAS (University of London), from 2009–2015. He was a member of the Kuwait Programme, Department of Government, London School of Economics (monograph, with Stephanie Cronin, on ‘The Islamic Republic of Iran and the GCC States: From Revolution to Realpolitik?).
He is the editor of Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies (formerly Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal), published by Edinburgh University Press, and the author of many books on Palestine-Israel, including Theologies of Liberation in Palestine-Israel: Indigenous, Contextual, and Postcolonial Perspectives (2014), Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History (2018), The Zionist Bible: Biblical Precedent, Colonialism and the Erasure of Memory (2013), The Palestine Nakba: Decolonising History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory (January 2012), The Bible and Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archaeology and Post-Colonialism in Palestine-Israel (2007), Catastrophe Remembered (2005), A Land Without a People (1997), Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882–1948 (1992), Imperial Israel and the Palestinians: The Politics of Expansion (2000) and The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem (2003).[3] Nur Masalha also sits on the editorial board of Janus Unbound: Journal of Critical Studies whose inaugural issue[4] on Palestine he describes as a "major achievement."[5]
Masalha has also served as an honorary fellow in the Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, Durham University; research associate in the Department of Law at the School of Oriental and African Studies; and has taught at Birzeit University in Ramallah, West Bank.
Masalha is also the historian commentator in the documentary film La Terre Parle Arabe [the Land Speaks Arabic] (2007), which tells the story of the background and build-up to the expulsion and flight of the Palestinian Arabs in 1948 from the newly created State of Israel.[citation needed]
Masalha studied as an undergraduate and a postgraduate at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel. He obtained a PhD in politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.[citation needed]
Masalha is co-founder and editor of Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies, formerly Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal, a fully refereed journal published by Edinburgh University Press. A Spanish-language edition, Estudios de Tierra Santa: Una Revista Multidisciplinaria, is published by Editorial Canaán.[6]
The journal was co-founded with Michael Prior in 2002. Members of the editorial board and International Advisory Board included the late Edward W. Said, Hisham Sharabi and Samih Farsoun. Current members include Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe, Dan Rabinowitz, Naim Ateek, Oren Yiftachel, William Dalrymple, Salim Tamari, and Thomas L. Thompson.[citation needed]
Alongside Norman Finkelstein, Masalha has been critical of Benny Morris's first publication on the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight: The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (1988). Masalha argues that Morris's conclusions have a pro-Israeli bias, in that:
Both Finkelstein and Masalha prefer the central conclusion that there was a transfer policy.[7][8][9]
In a reply to Finkelstein and Masalha, Morris answers he "saw enough material, military and civilian, to obtain an accurate picture of what happened," that Finkelstein and Masalha draw their conclusions with a pro-Palestinian bias, and that with regard to the distinction between military assault and expulsion they should accept that he uses a "more narrow and severe" definition of expulsions. Morris holds to his central conclusion that there was no transfer policy.[10]
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