Hillel Cohen-Bar (born in Jerusalem, 5 October 1961) is an Israeli scholar who studies and writes about Jewish-Arab relations in Palestine/Israel. He is an associated professor at the Department of Islam and Middle East Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the head of the Cherrick Center for the Study of Zionism and the State of Israel at that university.
Cohen is familiar with East Jerusalem, the topic of his book, Kikar Hashuk Reka (The Marketplace is Empty or: The Rise and Fall of Arab Jerusalem), because of the years he spent as a correspondent for East Jerusalem affairs for the Israeli weekly Kol Ha'ir. He published extensively on the Palestinian internal refugees and on the 1948 war. Two of his books deal with Palestinian collaborators and the Israeli security agencies using methodology that can be described as history-from-below. The Jerusalem Post calls his books "an accessible mixture of academic research and vivid journalistic reporting. Cohen manages to show empathy when relating human issues, but maintains a professional distance regarding events."[1] In his review of Cohen's book Army of Shadows, Benny Morris lauds the book as important and learned, and praises it for presenting an objective view of 'collaboration'".[2]
