Prof. Donald Sassoon is a world-renowned Jewish historian and Emeritus Professor of Comparative European History at Queen Mary University of London. Born in Cairo into a Sephardic Jewish family, his multicultural upbringing has fostered a natural skepticism toward nationalism.
Prof. Sassoon is one of the most significant historians of socialism, with his magnum opus One Hundred Years of Socialism translated into over a dozen languages. His work The Culture of the Europeans demonstrates a profound grasp of European civilization’s complexities. He excels at analyzing the construction of power, class, and national narratives through the lens of the “longue durée.”
Sassoon’s stance is characterized by deep historical insight. He has signed numerous open letters calling for an immediate ceasefire and opposing the conflation of political critique with antisemitism.
He also wrote many insightful articles commenting on the Israeli-Palestinian situation. In one of them, he wrote: While this happens, as El Akkad points out, those who are killed in Gaza and the West Bank are often regarded by Israel and its supporters as terrorists—or at least as terrorist sympathisers—or just as victims of accidents, with all of this pre-emptively justified in the name of ‘fighting terrorists who are terrorists by default’. He notes the general outrage when the Russians unjustifiably jail a Western journalist and the different stance when Israel murders hundreds of Palestinian journalists.