Benny Morris (born 1948) is professor of History in the Middle East Studies department of
Ben-Gurion University of the NegevBen-Gurion University of the Negev was founded in 1969, in Beersheba, Israel.The university is mandated to promote development of the Negev region, inspired by the...
in the city of Be'er Sheva,
IsraelIsrael officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...
. He is a key member of a group of Israeli historians known as the '
New HistoriansThe New Historians are a loosely-defined group of Israeli historians who have challenged traditional Israeli assumptions about Israeli history, including Israel's role in the Palestinian Exodus in 1948 and Arab willingness to discuss peace with Israel...
', because they are rewriting the history of Israel since its creation in 1948. Morris focuses in particular on the reasons for the
flight or expulsion of PalestiniansThe 1948 Palestinian exodus , also known as al Nakba , meaning the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm", occurred when between 650,000 and 750,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes by Jewish or Israeli forces, during the creation of the state of Israel and the civil war...
from their towns and villages during that same year.
Morris's work has been praised and criticized by historians from all sides of the political debate on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflictThe Israeli–Palestinian conflict is an ongoing dispute between Israel and the Palestinians. It forms part of the wider Arab–Israeli conflict. The term is also used in reference to the earlier phases of the same conflict, between Zionist halutzim and the Arab population living in Palestine under...
. He is accused of holding a pro-Palestinian side, and by others of a pro-Israeli . Regarding himself as a
ZionistZionism is the international political movement that originally supported the reestablishment of a homeland for the Jewish People in Palestine. The area was the Jewish Biblical homeland, called the Land of Israel...
, he writes, "I embarked upon the research not out of ideological commitment or political interest. I simply wanted to know what happened."
Early life and education
Morris was born in
KibbutzA kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...
Ein HaHoreshEin HaHoresh is a kibbutz in central Israel under the jurisdiction of Hefer Valley Regional Council.It was founded on 10 April 1932 by Hashomer Hatzair members from Eastern Europe who reclaimed the land. In 1968 it had 570 inhabitants engaged in intensive farming in citrus plantations, and...
, the son of
JewThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
ish immigrants from
Great BritainGreat Britain is an island lying to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island. With a population of about 59.6 million people, it is the third most populated island on Earth. Great Britain is surrounded by over 1000 smaller...
. His father, Ya'akov Morris, was an Israeli
diplomatA diplomat is a person appointed by a state to conduct diplomacy with another state or international organisation. The main functions of diplomats revolve around the representation and protection of the interests and nationals of the sending state, as well as the promotion of information and...
, historian, and poet.. According to
The New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry published by Condé Nast Publications...
, Benny Morris "grew up in the heart of a left-wing pioneering atmosphere."
His parents left their
kibbutzA kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...
and moved to
JerusalemJerusalem is the capital of Israel and its largest city in both population and area, with a population of 747,600 residents over an area of if disputed East Jerusalem is included...
when Morris was one year old, so that Morris could spend more time with them: kibbutz life had entailed a degree of separation. In the wake of his father's diplomatic duties, the family spent four years in New York when Morris was nine, and another two years there when he was 15. He was raised bilingually: his parents spoke to him in English and he responded in Hebrew.
Morris went straight from high school to
national serviceNational service is a common name for mandatory or voluntary government service programs . National service was common in the 20th century, and many young people spent one or more years in such programs...
, serving as a paratrooper in the
Israel Defense ForcesThe Israel Defense Forces , commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym Tzahal , are Israel's military forces, comprising the ground forces, air force and navy. It is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces, and has no civilian jurisdiction within Israel...
during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. He was wounded in 1969 by an Egyptian shell at the
Suez CanalThe Suez Canal is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Opened on November 1869, it allows water transportation between Europe and Asia without navigating around Africa...
, and was released from the army four months later. He completed his undergraduate studies in history at the
Hebrew University of JerusalemThe Hebrew University of Jerusalem is Israel's oldest university....
and received a doctorate in Anglo-German relations from the
University of CambridgeThe University of Cambridge , located in the City of Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom, is the second oldest university in the English-speaking world and the fourth oldest in Europe...
.
Professional life and academic work
After graduation from the University of Cambridge he returned to Jerusalem and took a job as a correspondent with the
Jerusalem Post, and stayed there for 12 years. In 1982, he covered the
Lebanon WarThe 1982 Lebanon War , , called Operation Peace for Galilee by Israel, and later also known colloquially in Israel as the First Lebanon War, began on 6 June 1982, when the Israel Defense Forces invaded southern Lebanon...
, and also served as a reservist during it, taking part in the siege of
BeirutBeirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon with a population of over 2.1 million as of 2007. Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's coastline with the Mediterranean sea, it serves as the country's largest and main seaport and also forms the Beirut Metropolitan Area, which...
in a mortar unit. He served again in 1986 in the
occupied territoriesOccupied territory is territory under military occupation. Occupation is a term of art in international law; in accordance with Article 42 of the Laws and Customs of War on Land ; October 18, 1907, territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army...
, but in 1988, when he was called up to serve in the
West BankThe West Bank is a landlocked territory and is the eastern part of the Palestinian territories; on the west bank of the River Jordan in the Middle East. To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel, which maintains the security of this area. To the east,...
during the
First IntifadaThe First Intifada was a Palestinian Uprising against Israeli rule in the Palestinian Territories. The uprising began in the Jabalia refugee camp and quickly spread throughout Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem....
, he refused (
refusenikRefusal to serve in the Israeli military includes both refusal to obey specific orders and refusal to serve in the Israel Defense Forces in any capacity due to pacifistic or antimilitaristic views or disagreement with the policies of the Israeli government as implemented by the army, such as the...
). He was jailed for three weeks.
It was while working at the
Jerusalem Post in the 1980s that Morris began reading through Israeli government archives, at first looking at the history of the
PalmachThe Palmach was the regular fighting force of the Haganah, the unofficial army of the Yishuv during the period of the British Mandate of Palestine. The Palmach was established on May 15, 1941...
, then turning his attention to the origins of the Palestinian refugee problem. Mainstream Israeli
historiographyHistoriography is the history of history, the aspect of history and of semiotics that considers how knowledge of the past, either recent or distant, is obtained and transmitted...
at the time explained the 1948 Palestinian exodus from their towns and villages as having been driven by fear, or by instructions from Arab leaders. Morris found evidence that, in fact, there had been expulsions, which he made public in 1988 in '
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 '.
When he was released from jail, he coined the term "New Historians" to describe himself,
Avi ShlaimAvi Shlaim is an Iraqi-born British historian. He is a professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and a fellow of the British Academy.Shlaim is especially well-known as a historian of the Arab-Israeli conflict...
and
Ilan PappeIlan Pappé is professor of history at the University of Exeter in the UK, and co-director of the Exeter Center for Ethno-Political Studies. He was formerly a senior lecturer in political science at Haifa University , and chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian and Israeli Studies in Haifa...
. All three were attacked ferociously by the Israeli right: they were accused of being anti-Semites and Arab lovers, and were compared with
Holocaust deniersHolocaust denial is the claim that the genocide of Jews during World War II—usually referred to as the Holocaust—did not occur at all, or that it did not happen in the manner or to the extent historically recognized....
.
When
Conrad BlackConrad Moffat Black, Baron Black of Crossharbour, PC, OC, KCSG is a historian, columnist and publisher who was for a time the third biggest newspaper magnate in the world...
bought the Post in 1990, Morris was one of the 30 Israeli left-wing journalists. He continued to write as a freelance, producing
Israel's Secret Wars, co-written with Ian Black of
The Guardian, and
Righteous Victims, a history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In 1996, he told a journalist that he was thinking of moving to America to find work; when this appeared in an article, he was invited to talk to Israel's president, Ezer Weizmann, who reportedly interrogated Morris for an hour about 1948, to find out whether he was a good historian and a good Zionist. Satisfied that he was both, Weizmann found him a job as a history professor at the University of the Negev in Beersheba.
Selected book summaries
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (1988)
In his first
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (1988), Morris argues that the 700,000 Palestinians who fled their homes in 1947 left mostly due to Israeli military attacks; fear of impending attacks; and expulsions. He argues that there was no centralized expulsion policy as such, but expulsions were ordered by the Israeli high command as needed. This was a controversial position when Morris first wrote of it; the official position in Israel was that the Palestinians had left voluntarily, or under pressure from Palestinian or other Arab leaders. At the same time, Morris documents atrocities by the Israelis, including cases of rape and torture. The book shows a map of 228 empty Palestinian villages, and attempts to explain why the villagers left. In 41 villages, he writes, the inhabitants were expelled by the IDF; in another 90, residents fled because of attacks on other villages; and in six, they left under instructions from local Palestinian authorities. He was unable to find out why another 46 villages were abandoned.
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (2004)
In his updated
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (2004), Morris answers critics of the first version and adds material from the opening of new Israeli government archives. He writes that the contents of the new documents substantially increase both Israeli and Palestinian responsibility for the refugee problem, revealing more expulsions and atrocities on the Israeli side, and more orders from Arab officials to the Palestinians to leave their villages, or at least to send their women and children away. Morris writes that his conclusions are unlikely to please either Israeli or Palestinian propagandists, or "black-or-white historians."
1948 and After (1994)
1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians is a collection of essays dedicated to the Palestinian exodus of 1948 and subsequent events. It analyses
MapaiMapai was a left-wing political party in Israel, and was the dominant force in Israeli politics until its merger into the Israeli Labor Party in 1968.-Background:...
and
MapamMapam was a political party in Israel and is one of the ancestors of the modern-day Meretz party.-History:...
policy during the exodus, the
IDFThe Israel Defense Forces , commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym Tzahal , are Israel's military forces, comprising the ground forces, air force and navy. It is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces, and has no civilian jurisdiction within Israel...
report of July 1948 on its causes, Yosef Weitz's involvement in the events, and some cases of expulsions that occurred in the fifties.
Righteous Victims (1999)
Righteous Victims: A history of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001 is based largely on secondary works and gives a synthesis of existing research on the various subjects and periods covered. Morris writes that "a history of this subject, based mainly on primary sources is, I suspect, beyond the abilities of a single scholar. There are simply too many archives, files, and documents. Nonetheless, parts of the present book-the coverage of the 1948 war and the decade after it, and of certain episodes that occurred during the 1930s and the 1982-85 Lebanon War-are based in large measure on primary sources."
Making Israel (2008)
Edited by Morris, this collection of articles was written by "traditionalists and revisionists who openly and directly lay out their key insights about Israel's origins." The articles can be downloaded from the website of the University of Michigan Press.
1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (2008)
Morris gives a detailed account of the 1947-1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine.
Yoav GelberYoav Gelber is a professor of history at the University of Haifa, and a visiting professor at the University of Texas.Gelber was born in Mandatory Palestine in 1943 and studied world and Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Gelber is an expert on the history of the Israel Defense...
writes that "
1948 is a praiseworthy achievement of research and analysis, the work of a historian unwilling to rest on his already considerable laurels." Gelber disagrees with some of Morris's analysis, in particular with the idea that the
1948 Palestine WarThe 1948 Palestine war refers to the events that happened in Palestine between the vote on the partition plan of Palestine on November 30, 1947, to the end of the first Arab-Israeli war on July 20, 1949.Historians divide this into two phases :...
was more a "clash of civilizations" between the West and Islam than a nationalist struggle. He also argues that Morris overestimates Israel's military strength, and disagrees with Morris about the aims of King Abdullah of Jordan.
One State, Two States (2009)
Morris contends that there is no
Two-state solutionThe two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is the consensus solution that is currently under discussion by the key parties to the conflict, most recently at the Annapolis Conference in November 2007....
to the Middle East crisis, and that the One-state solution is not viable because of Arab unwillingness to accept a Jewish national presence in the Middle East. He suggests the possibility of something like a Three-state solution in the form of a Palestinian confederation with Jordan.
Political views
Critics on the Israeli right have alleged that Morris's first book betrayed Arab sympathies, and have criticized his work as biased for that reason. Morris responds that they failed to read his book with moral detachment. They assumed that, when he described Israeli actions as cruel or as atrocities, he was condemning them. In fact, he writes, he not only fails to condemn, but in many cases supports Israeli actions during 1948. That support does not stop him from wanting to describe them.
His work has been cited and praised by Arab writers, but his views seemed to harden in 2000 after the Palestinian rejection of President Clinton's peace accords and the beginning of the Second Intifada:
My turning point began after 2000. I wasn't a great optimist even before that. True, I always voted Labor or Meretz or SheliThe Left Camp of Israel was a left-wing political party in Israel. It was also known as Sheli , an acronym for Peace for Israel .-Background:...
and in 1988 I refused to serve in the territories and was jailed for it, but I always doubted the intentions of the Palestinians. The events of Camp David and what followed in their wake turned the doubt into certainty. When the Palestinians rejected the proposal of [prime minister Ehud] Barak in July 2000 and the Clinton proposal in December 2000, I understood that they are unwilling to accept the two-state solution. They want it all. Lod and Acre and Jaffa.
Morris still describes himself as left-wing because of his support for the two state solution, but he has said that his generation will not see peace in Israel. He has said, "I don't see the suicide bombings as isolated acts. They express the deep will of the Palestinian people. That is what the majority of the Palestinians want." According to
The Economist: "Mr Morris also said, in an interview that stunned his supporters, that Israel was justified in uprooting the Palestinian 'fifth column' once the Arabs had attacked the infant state, and that the number executed or massacred—some 800, on his reckoning—was 'peanuts' compared with, say, the massacres in Bosnia in the 1990s." On the subject of Israel's Arab citizens, Morris has argued:
The Israeli Arabs are a time bomb. Their slide into complete Palestinization has made them an emissary of the enemy that is among us. They are a potential fifth column. In both demographic and security terms they are liable to undermine the state. So that if Israel again finds itself in a situation of existential threat, as in 1948, it may be forced to act as it did then. If we are attacked by Egypt (after an Islamist revolution in Cairo) and by Syria, and chemical and biological missiles slam into our cities, and at the same time Israeli Palestinians attack us from behind, I can see an expulsion situation. It could happen. If the threat to Israel is existential, expulsion will be justified...
Morris calls the Israel-Palestinian conflict a facet of a global
clash of civilizationsThe Clash of Civilizations is a theory, proposed by political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, that people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world....
between
Islamic fundamentalismIslamic fundamentalism Arabic: usul , is a term used to describe religious ideologies seen as advocating a return to the "fundamentals" of Islam: the Quran and the Sunnah.Definitions of the term vary...
and the
Western WorldThe Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term that can have multiple meanings depending on its context...
, saying, "There is a deep problem in Islam. It's a world whose values are different. A world in which human life doesn't have the same value as it does in the West, in which freedom, democracy, openness and creativity are alien. He also says "Revenge plays a central part in the Arab tribal culture. Therefore, the people we are fighting and the society that sends them have no moral inhibitions."
When a
HaaretzHaaretz is Israel's oldest daily newspaper. It was founded in 1918 and is now published in both Hebrew and English in Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with the International Herald Tribune. Both Hebrew and English editions can be read on the Internet...
interviewer called the
1948 Palestinian exodusThe 1948 Palestinian exodus , also known as al Nakba , meaning the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm", occurred when between 650,000 and 750,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes by Jewish or Israeli forces, during the creation of the state of Israel and the civil war...
"ethnic cleansing," Morris responded that "[t]here are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide—the annihilation of your people—I prefer ethnic cleansing."
"We have to heal the Palestinians. But in the meantime, until the medicine is found, they have to be contained so that they will not succeed in murdering us. Something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another."
Morris wrote in the
Irish Times that "There was no Zionist 'plan' or blanket policy of evicting the Arab population, or of 'ethnic cleansing'" and that "the demonisation of Israel is largely based on lies—much as the demonisation of the Jews during the past 2,000 years has been based on lies. And there is a connection between the two." Morris has criticized Ben-Gurion for not carrying out such a plan, saying "In the end, he faltered... If he had carried out a full expulsion - rather than a partial one - he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations."
In an
op-edAn op-ed, abbreviated from opposite the editorial page , is a newspaper article that expresses the opinions of a named writer who is usually unaffiliated with the newspaper's editorial board. These are different from editorials, which are usually unsigned and written by editorial board members...
piece in
The New York Times in July 2008, Morris wrote that "Iran’s leaders would do well to rethink their gamble and suspend their nuclear program. Bar this, the best they could hope for is that Israel’s conventional air assault will destroy their nuclear facilities. To be sure, this would mean thousands of Iranian casualties and international humiliation. But the alternative is an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland." In an interview with the Austrian newspaper
Der StandardDer Standard is an Austrian national daily newspaper which is published in Vienna . It is published on distinctive pink paper. It was founded by Oscar Bronner as a financial newspaper and the first edition was published on 1988-10-19...
Morris argues for a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Iran as the only alternative left to stop the Iranian nuclear program.
Reactions
Avi ShlaimAvi Shlaim is an Iraqi-born British historian. He is a professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and a fellow of the British Academy.Shlaim is especially well-known as a historian of the Arab-Israeli conflict...
, Professor of International Relations at the
University of OxfordThe University of Oxford , located in the UK city of Oxford, is the oldest surviving university in the English-speaking world and is regarded as one of the world's leading academic institutions. Although the exact date of foundation remains unclear, there is evidence of teaching there as far back...
, and himself a New Historian, writes that Morris investigated the 1948 exodus of the Palestinians "as carefully, dispassionately, and objectively as it is ever likely to be," and that
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem is an "outstandingly original, scholarly, and important contribution" to the study of the issue.
Many of Morris's critics cling to the tenets of "Old History," the idea of an Israel born untarnished, a David fighting the Arab Goliath, Shlaim writes. He argues that these ideas are simply false, created not by historians but by the participants in the 1948 war, who wrote about the events they had taken part in without the benefit of access to Israeli government archives, which were first opened up in the early 1980s. Another group of Morris's critics, primarily Orientalists such as Avraham Sela, but also historians on the left such as
Ilan PappeIlan Pappé is professor of history at the University of Exeter in the UK, and co-director of the Exeter Center for Ethno-Political Studies. He was formerly a senior lecturer in political science at Haifa University , and chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian and Israeli Studies in Haifa...
, argue that he has relied too heavily on Israeli sources and hardly at all on the Arabs.
Norman FinkelsteinNorman Gary Finkelstein is an American political scientist and author, whose primary fields of research are the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust. A graduate of SUNY Binghamton, he received his Ph.D in Political Science from Princeton University...
and Nur Masalha argue that Morris has been too soft on the Israelis, often ignoring the force of his own evidence.
Efraim KarshEfraim Karsh is professor and head of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King's College London. An historian of the Middle East, and a best-selling author, he is regarded as the most vocal critic of the New Historians, a group of Israeli scholars who have questioned the conventional history...
alleges that Morris has distorted source material, an allegation not accepted by other historians.
Efraim Karsh
Efraim Karsh, professor of Mediterranean Studies at
King's College LondonKing's College London is a British higher education institution and co-founding constituent college of the University of London. Founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, its royal charter is predated, in England, only by those of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge...
, writes that Morris engages in what Karsh calls "five types of distortion." According to Karsh, Morris "misrepresents documents, resorts to partial quotes, withholds evidence, makes false assertions, and rewrites original documents... [he] tells of statements never made, decisions never taken, events that never happened ... at times [he] does not even take the trouble to provide evidence..... He expects his readers to take on trust his assertions that fundamental contradictions exist between published accounts and the underlying documents.....he systematically falsifies evidence. Indeed, there is scarcely a document that he does not twist. This casts serious doubt on the validity of his entire work."
Yezid SayighYezid Sayigh, Baltimore, Maryland. Sayigh is Professor of Middle East Studies in the Department of War Studies at King's College London, member of the Academic Board of the Gulf Research Center and member of the Board of Trustees of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research...
, professor of Middle East Studies in the Department of War Studies at King's College London, writes of Karsh's criticism that, "[t]his is not the first time that Efraim Karsh has written a highly self-important rebuttal of revisionist history. He is simply not what he makes himself out to be, a trained historian (nor political/social scientist)." (Karsh responds that he has an undergraduate degree in modern Middle Eastern history, and Arabic language and literature, and a doctorate in political science and international relations.) Sayigh urges academics to compose "robust responses [to Karsh] that make sure that any self-respecting scholar will be too embarrassed to even try to incorporate the Karsh books in his/her teaching or research because they can't pretend they didn't know how flimsy their foundations are."
Ian LustickIan Steven Lustick is an American political scientist and specialist on the modern history and politics of the Middle East.Lustick completed his Ph.D...
, professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, writes of Karsh's attacks on the New Historians that, "however likely readers are to be impressed by the intensity of Karsh's pristine faith in
ZionismZionism is the international political movement that originally supported the reestablishment of a homeland for the Jewish People in Palestine. The area was the Jewish Biblical homeland, called the Land of Israel...
, they are sure to be stunned by the malevolence of his writing and confused by the erratic, sloppy nature of his analysis. Errors, inconsistencies and over-interpretations there may be in some of the new Israeli histories, but nothing in them can match the howlers, contradictions and distortions contained in [Karsh's
Fabricating Israeli History: The New Historians]."
Morris responds that Karsh's article is a "mélange of distortions, half-truths, and plain lies that vividly demonstrates his profound ignorance of both the source material (his piece contains more than fifty footnotes but is based almost entirely on references to and quotations from secondary works, many of them of dubious value) and the history of the Zionist-Arab conflict. It does not deserve serious attention or reply."
Anita ShapiraAnita Shapira is an Israeli historian. She is the founder of the Yitzhak Rabin Center for Israel Studies, a Ruben Merenfeld Professor of the Study of Zionism and head of the Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism at Tel Aviv University...
, Dean of Tel-Aviv University, argues that "thirty of [Karsh's] references actually refer to writings by Shlaim and Morris, and fifteen others cite primary sources, and the rest refer to studies by major historians..."
Morris elsewhere argues that Karsh "belabor[s] minor points while completely ignoring, and hiding from his readers, the main pieces of evidence" and argued that " ... Karsh, while claiming to have 'demolished' the whole oeuvre, in fact deal[t] with only four pages of
Birth. These pages tried to show that the Zionist leadership during 1937-38 supported a 'transfer solution' to the prospective Jewish state's 'Arab problem.'" Shapira writes that, "[w]hoever dares to oppose or to criticize the pronouncements of these self-styled iconoclasts [the New Historians] is savagely maligned."
Finkelstein and Masalha
From the other side Morris has been criticised by
Norman FinkelsteinNorman Gary Finkelstein is an American political scientist and author, whose primary fields of research are the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust. A graduate of SUNY Binghamton, he received his Ph.D in Political Science from Princeton University...
and Nur Masalha. They argue that Morris’s conclusions have a pro-Israeli bias, in that:
- Morris did not fully acknowledge that his work rests largely on selectively released Israeli documentation, while the most sensitive documents remain closed to researchers.
- Morris treated the evidence in the Israeli documents in an uncritical way, and did not take into account that they are, at times, apologetics.
- Morris minimized the number of expulsions: Finkelstein asserts that in the table in which Morris summarizes causes of abandonment, village by village, many cases of "military assault on settlement (M)" should have been "expulsions (E)".
- Morris’s conclusions were skewed with respect to the evidence he himself presents, and when the conclusions are harsh for the Israelis he tended to give them a less incriminating spin.
Both Finkelstein and Masalha prefer the central conclusion that there was a transfer policy.
In a reply to Finkelstein and Masalha, Morris answers he "saw enough material, military and civilian, to obtain an accurate picture of what happened," that Finkelstein and Masalha draw their conclusions with a pro-Palestinian bias, and that with regard to the distinction between military assault and expulsion they should accept that he uses a "more narrow and severe" definition of expulsions. Morris holds to his central conclusion that there was no transfer policy.
Ilan Pappé
Benny Morris is fiercely critical of
Ilan PappéIlan Pappé is professor of history at the University of Exeter in the UK, and co-director of the Exeter Center for Ethno-Political Studies. He was formerly a senior lecturer in political science at Haifa University , and chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian and Israeli Studies in Haifa...
's book
A History of Modern Palestine for
The New RepublicThe New Republic is an American magazine of politics and the arts. It is published semimonthly and has a circulation of approximately 60,000. The editor-in-chief is Martin Peretz and the current editor is Franklin Foer...
. Morris called Pappé's book "truly appalling." He says it subjugates history to political ideology, and "contains errors of a quantity and a quality that are not found in serious historiography." In his reply, Pappé accused Morris of using mainly Israeli sources, and disregarding Arab sources which he cannot read. Pappé says Morris holds "racist views about the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular" since the late 1980s. He also attributed Morris's perceived rightward drift since the late 1980s to political opportunism.
Michael Palumbo
Michael Palumbo, author of
The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from Their Homeland, reviewing the first edition of Morris's book on Palestinian refugees, criticises Morris's decision, which Palumbo thinks characteristic of
Israeli revisionist historiansThe New Historians are a loosely-defined group of Israeli historians who have challenged traditional Israeli assumptions about Israeli history, including Israel's role in the Palestinian Exodus in 1948 and Arab willingness to discuss peace with Israel...
generally, to rely mainly on official, 'carefully screened' Israeli sources, especially for radio transcripts of Arab broadcasts, while disregarding unofficial Israeli sources such as
BBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation, usually referred to by its abbreviation as the "BBC", is the longest established and largest broadcaster in the world...
and CIA transcripts, many of which point to a policy of expulsion. He says Morris failed to supplement his work in Israeli archives, many still classified, by U.N., American, and British archival sources which Palumbo considers objective on such issues as
IDFIDF or idf may stand for:"idf" can be:* short for "identifier"* short for "identification"-Acronyms:* Intel Developer Forum* Intermediate Data Format, a file format for transferring 3D electronics data between programs...
atrocities, as well as oral testimonies of Palestinians and Israelis, which can be reliable if their substance can be independently verified. Palumbo says:
Morris' regard for documentation is indeed commendable, were it not for his tendency to choose sources which support his views, while avoiding those document collections which contain information inconsistent with his principal arguments. His decision not to use the testimony of Israeli veterans is unfortunate, since some of them have spoken candidly about Israeli atrocities and expulsion of civilians at Deir YassinDeir Yassin was a Palestinian Arab village of around 600 people near Jerusalem. It had declared its neutrality during the civil war between Arab and Jewish Palestinians...
, LyddaLydda can refer to:*Lod, also named Lydda*Exodus from Lydda and Ramla, the Palestinian exodus from the city in July 1948...
-Ramle and JaffaJaffa is an ancient port city believed to be one of the oldest in the world. Jaffa is located south of Tel Aviv, Israel on the Mediterranean Sea...
.
See also
- History of Israel
The State of Israel was established on May 14, 1948 after nearly two thousand years of Jewish dispersal, and after 55 years of efforts to create a Jewish homeland . The 61 years since Israeli independence have been marked by conflict with neighbouring Arab states and the Palestinian-Arabs...
- 1948 Palestinian exodus
The 1948 Palestinian exodus , also known as al Nakba , meaning the "disaster", "catastrophe", or "cataclysm", occurred when between 650,000 and 750,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes by Jewish or Israeli forces, during the creation of the state of Israel and the civil war...
- Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodusThe causes and explanations of the exodus of Palestinian Arabs that arose during the 1947-1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War are a matter of great controversy among historians of, and commentators on, the Arab-Israeli conflict....
- Exodus from Lydda and Ramla
External links
- Claremont Review of Books on Benny Morris and 1948
- Morris, Benny. Camp David and After: An Exchange (1. An Interview with Ehud Barak), continued, The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs published in New York City. It takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
August 9, 2001;
- Benny Morris essay regarding a nuclear Iran - Jerusalem Post, January 18 2007
- Israel Revisited Benny Morris, Veteran 'New Historian' of the Modern Jewish State's Founding, Finds Himself Ideologically Back Where It All Began, by Scott Wilson, Washington Post Foreign Service, March 11 2007
- 'New Historian' Shifts from Old View of Israel Israeli "new historian" Benny Morris was online Monday, March 12, at 2 p.m. ET to discuss his books and changing views that have driven him away from the critical perspective of Israeli history that he helped create.
- Benny Morris meets his readers at the International Book Fair of Turin
- Review of Benny Morris' book "1948: The First Arab-Israeli War" in Jewish Literary Review
- Journal of Paleastinian Studies Vol 21(1), p. 98-114 :Morris Response to Finklestein and Masalah
- History in the (almost) making, Ynetnews
Ynetnews is an English language Israel news and content website operated by Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s most-read newspaper, and the Hebrew Israel news portal, Ynet...
, November 2007
- ISRAEL AT 60: From Dove to Hawk Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly newsmagazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
May 8, 2008