Bialer, Uri 1944-

views updated

Bialer, Uri 1944-

PERSONAL:

Born March 24, 1944, in Israel. Education: Hebrew University, B.A., M.A.; London School of Economics, Ph.D., 1974.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Jerusalem, Israel. Office—Department of International Relations, Hebrew University, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem 91905, Israel. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Israeli Foreign Ministry, senior research officer, 1973-74; Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel, 1974—, became professor of international relations, holding Maurice B. Hexter Chair in International Relations—Middle Eastern Studies, chair of international relations department, 1990-93, dean of students, 1994-1998. Director of the Center for the Study of the Land of Israel at the Yad Ben-Zvi Institute. Visiting fellow at St. Antony's College, Oxford University, England, 1979-1980, British Academy, London, England, 1990, and Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1999-2000. Visiting professor at University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 1993-94. Leon Liberman visiting scholar in Modern Israel studies at the Australian Centre for the Study of Jewish Civilization, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, 2005-06.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

Armed Forces in Foreign Territories under the Terms of Peace Agreements: Historical Implications, Tel Aviv University (Tel Aviv, Israel), 1979.

The Shadow of the Bomber: The Fear of Air Attack and British Politics, 1932-1939, Royal Historical Society (London, England), 1980.

"Our Place in the World": Mapai and Israel's Foreign Policy Orientation, 1947-1952, Magnes Press (Jerusalem, Israel), 1981.

Between East and West: Israel's Foreign Policy Orientation, 1948-1956, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1990.

Oil and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948-63, St. Martin's Press in association with St. Anthony's College, Oxford (New York, NY), 1999.

Cross on the Star of David: The Christian World in Israel's Foreign Policy, 1948-1967, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

As a scholar and writer, Uri Bialer has focused on Israel's foreign and defense policies. His topics have included the role of oil, Israel's alliances with other nations, and the relationship of Christian communities to the Jewish state. He explores the latter topic in depth in Cross on the Star of David: The Christian World in Israel's Foreign Policy, 1948-1967.

The book covers Israel's diplomatic interactions with the Vatican—the seat of Roman Catholicism—and the missionary work by both Catholics and Protestants in Israel. Bialer notes that the Vatican opposed Israel's admission to the United Nations in 1949, a year after its creation. Vatican leaders also were upset by the location of Israel's national government in Jerusalem, a city holy to Christians and Muslims as well as Jews. In addition, the Vatican supported the joint control of Jerusalem by Israel and Jordan, which lasted until Israel annexed the Jordanian territory after the Six-Day War in 1967. Vatican relations with Israel, Bialer writes, were further complicated because the Holy See did not wish to antagonize nearby Arab nations by supporting Israel, as some of those countries, though largely Muslim, have numerous Christian residents. Israel, meanwhile, noted a lack of action by the Vatican in the face of the Holocaust, and also noted centuries of hostility from Christians toward Jews. The Vatican and Israel eventually took tentative diplomatic steps toward each other, with formal Vatican recognition of the Jewish state coming in 1985.

Despite its troubled history with the Catholic leadership, Israel has found mission work by Catholics to be more palatable than that of Protestant Christians, according to Bialer. Catholics operate under a mandate to set an example with their faith and not to actively attempt to convert Jews to Christianity, while Protestants have been more zealous. The situation has seemed paradoxical to some observers, with Zach Levey relating in his Middle East Journal review of Cross on the Star of David that "the Catholic Church threatened Israel's international standing while Protestants generally supported the Israeli position."

Levey and some other critics found Cross on the Star of David well-researched yet accessible. "Bialer writes in a lucid fashion and deploys with great skill a large scope of archival material," Levey commented. "The result is an account that is both authoritative and intriguing." Bialer's topic, Levey wrote, is "a highly salient component" of Israel's relations with the rest of the world. Paul Merkley, reviewing for Books & Culture, also praised Bialer's use of archives, including some that had become available only recently. The author "shows how serious historical research is done," Merkley wrote, adding that some diplomatic papers and other documents "make for colorful reading…. We are shown a great deal that is not pretty."

Eugene J. Fisher, writing in the Catholic Historical Review, thought Bialer had frequently misjudged the Vatican's position. The Vatican supported Israel's birth "tacitly if not publicly," Fisher remarked, further observing that Catholic countries' backing of this "would not have been possible if the Vatican had in any way actively opposed the creation of Israel as a Jewish state." Still, he deemed the book "required reading for all Vatican diplomats" and students of the Vatican's work, as it "faithfully and insightfully records" the Israeli point of view, with the Vatican's side waiting to be explored until archives from recent popes become available. Merkley, for his part, hoped Bialer would write about the period after 1967, when Israeli control of Jerusalem started, once the necessary archival records are released. Merkley concluded that as Cross on the Star of David stands, it "is the kind of history that grownups like, because it requires us to make our own judgments about motives and meaning."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, February, 2007, Tuvia Friling, review of Cross on the Star of David: The Christian World in Israel's Foreign Policy, 1948-1967, p. 315.

Books & Culture, January 1, 2007, Paul Merkley, "Was Israel a Mistake?," p. 36.

Business History Review, winter, 1999, Rodney Wilson, review of Oil and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948-63.

Catholic Historical Review, July, 2006, Eugene J. Fisher, review of Cross on the Star of David, p. 342.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, April, 1999, P. Clawson, review of Oil and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948-63, p. 1503.

English Historical Review, October, 1993, Ritchie Ovendale, review of Between East and West: Israel's Foreign Policy Orientation, 1948-1956, p. 1086.

History Today, October, 1982, review of The Shadow of the Bomber: The Fear of Air Attack and British Politics, 1932-1939, p. 52.

International Affairs, October, 1990, Efraim Karsh, review of Between East and West, p. 834; July, 1999, David Capitanchik, review of Oil and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948-63, p. 683.

International History Review, August, 1991, review of Between East and West, p. 632; March, 2000, Mary Ann Heiss, review of Oil and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948-63, p. 220.

International Journal of Middle East Studies, November, 1991, Gabriel Sheffer, review of Between East and West, p. 681; February, 2001, Mary Ann Tetreault, review of Oil and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948-63, p. 133.

Middle Eastern Studies, May, 2006, Jacob Abadi, review of Cross on the Star of David, p. 531.

Middle East Journal, spring, 2006, Zach Levey, review of Cross on the Star of David, p. 387.

Political Studies, March, 1991, Noam Livne, review of Between East and West, p. 177.

Reference & Research Book News, May, 1999, review of Oil and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948-63, p. 89.