Israel’s Forgotten Invasion: An International History of the 1982 Lebanon War

Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon was a formative moment in Middle Eastern and international history, reshaping Israeli and Lebanese politics, society, and culture; the fate of Palestinian self-determination; diaspora Jewish attachments to Zionism; and Western policy across the Arab world. Yet the war has been elided in public discourse and remains a black box of historical scholarship, the result of selective amnesia, political convenience, and the difficulty of access to primary sources across political divides. In recovering this past and documenting the experience of those who lived it, Israel’s Forgotten Invasion offers the first comprehensive international history of the war while developing a host of public facing engagements about its legacy and the afterlives of violence today. Combining extensive archival research in Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Europe, and the US and oral histories with military veterans and survivors, my project aims to gather an online repository of previously inaccessible sources and facilitate intergenerational discussions through popular dissemination and outreach. By fostering a discussion about the legacy of the war, I hope to enable robust memorialization and a political reckoning beyond the confines of national borders.