Garden Court North’s protest rights team to host ‘Understanding Anti-Zionism’ webinar with Professor Avi Shlaim
26 June 2025
Professor Avi Shlaim (pictured) speaking on a motion about Israel and Palestine at Oxford Union in 2015. Credit: Oxford Union / YouTube.
On 7 July, 2025, at 18:00pm, various members of Garden Court North’s protest rights team will host an exclusive webinar on ‘Understanding Anti-Zionism’ alongside Professor Avi Shlaim, a world-leading scholar on Israel, Palestine and the Middle East.
Increasingly, protestors in the UK are prosecuted or targeted for the content of their speech, especially for expressions of anti-Zionism, often wrongfully conflated with antisemitism. This training session will equip legal practitioners to navigate and defend these cases, in collaboration with the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC).
ELSC will also discuss Palestine-related protest cases. Garden Court North’s Rosalind Burgin, Mira Hammad and Alexander McColl will also give attendees an overview of relevant caselaw and practical tips for navigating these cases.
Registration for the webinar is free and places are still available.
Professor Avi Shlaim
Few Israeli historians have held myths around anti-Zionism to account like Avi Shlaim, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford, St Antony’s College.
As one of the leading figures in the 1980s ‘New Historians’ movement, Professor Shlaim unpicked traditional Zionist narratives around Israel’s founding. His work on the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and Nakba, especially his seminal book The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, offers a critical analysis of Israeli actions leading up to the war and its aftermath.
Professor Shlaim’s nuanced and personal style of academic work draws on his experiences being born into an Arab-Jewish family in Baghdad, in 1945, and later moving to Israel, where Professor Shlaim served in the Israeli army during the mid-1960s.
Additional media
Financial Times – Historian Avi Shlaim: ‘I remain hopeful Israel will start to act rationally’
Novara Media – ‘We’re Witnessing the Last Gasp of Israeli Violence’: In Conversation With Avi Shlaim
