Prof. Lorenzo Kamel
Lorenzo Kamel is a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Freiburg’s Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS), where he lectures on the history of the modern Middle East. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) and a non-resident Associate at Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES), where he served as a postdoc fellow for two years. He published six books on Middle Eastern and Mediterranean affairs, including “Imperial Perceptions of Palestine: British Influence and Power in Late Ottoman Times”, winner of the academic section of the Palestine Book Awards 2016
Items by Prof. Lorenzo Kamel
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- August 19, 2021 Prof. Lorenzo Kamel
The massacre of Jews in 1929 Hebron is a microcosm of the conflict
On 24 August 1929, Hebron, in what was then British Mandatory Palestine, witnessed the massacre of 67 Jews at the hands of local Arab-Palestinians. More than 450 Jewish lives were saved on that day by other Palestinian families who gave them refuge. The massacre is considered by Hillel Cohen as...
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- April 27, 2018 Prof. Lorenzo Kamel
Syria: The war and ‘us’
The first recorded use of smoke as a weapon of asphyxiation against civilians in the MENA region dates back to the mid-19th century, when French general Bugeaud adopted this “new method” against thousand of people in Algeria: “If they take refuge in their caves”, Bugeaud argued, “then smoke...
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- July 15, 2017 Prof. Lorenzo Kamel
The rising order of the Middle East
In the last few years a number of scholars have focused on the thesis of the end of the “Sykes-Picot order”, alluding to the secret deal between British diplomat Mark Sykes and his French counterpart François Georges-Picot in 1915-16. In truth, by the end of World War I the Sykes-Picot...
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- June 2, 2017 Prof. Lorenzo Kamel
Trump is fostering chaos in the Middle East
In his first “historical speech to the Islamic world” US President Donald Trump spoke about the “battle between good and evil”, noting that from Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen, “Iran funds, arms and trains terrorists, militias and other extremist groups that spread destruction and chaos across the region”. Chaos is indeed...
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- January 3, 2017 Prof. Lorenzo Kamel
Raqqa has little to do with the end of Daesh
The “fall” of Aleppo and the recent Berlin terror attack have triggered a wide number of articles mainly focused on Europe’s security and the future of the Syrian proxy war. Most of these publications contend that the terror threat to Europe won’t end until Raqqa – Daesh’s de facto capital...