The Movie is Still a Good Pedagogical Tool

by Cliopatria

T. E. Lawrence (1888-1935) was a Zionist, says historian Sir Martin Gilbert in his forthcoming book Churchill and the Jews.

"While feted as an Arabist who supported independence of Arab states, Lawrence in fact regarded Arabs with a"sort of contempt", said Sir Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Churchill." Sir Martin is quoted under a puzzling headline Arabs' hero 'should be Lawrence of Judea' in the Telegraph.
Um, Arabs' hero? I am not aware of any popular fountain of support and admiration for T. E. Lawrence in the Arab world. 'Feted' in popular Western press, perhaps. 'Sort of Contempt'? If one actually reads Seven Pillars of Wisdom or Crusader Castle, there should be no surprises about how Lawrence viewed Arab and the Turkic people.

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Jonathan Dresner - 2/25/2007

I suppose I'd use it as an example of a few historical issues: orientalism, and the mix of expertise, contempt and admiration that comes with it; self-determination rhetoric and reality.

What else?

The movie itself actually always gave me the impression that Lawrence himself went through an interesting process which clearly ended up with him viewing the Arabs as primitives due to their effect on him. I never saw the film as hagiographic, at least not in that sense.

Alan Allport - 2/24/2007

I suspect the Telegraph's sin here is mainly due to the compositional problems of sub-editing - "Man who we in the West think of as the Arabs' Hero should be Lawrence of Judea" a little more accurate, but a lot less pithy.