Benny Morris
Encyclopedia
Benny Morris is professor of History
in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
in the city of Be'er Sheva, Israel
. He is a key member of the group of Israeli historians known as the "New Historians
".
Morris's work on the Arab-Israeli conflict and especially the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
has won praise and criticism from both sides of the political divide. He is accused by some academics in Israel of only using Israeli and never Arab sources, creating an "unbalanced picture." Regarding himself as a Zionist
, he writes, "I embarked upon the research not out of ideological commitment or political interest. I simply wanted to know what happened."
Ein HaHoresh
, the son of Jewish immigrants from the United Kingdom
. His father, Ya'akov Morris, was an Israeli diplomat
, historian, and poet. According to The New Yorker
, Benny Morris "grew up in the heart of a left-wing pioneering atmosphere."
His parents left their kibbutz and moved to Jerusalem when Morris was a 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 served as a paratrooper in the Israel Defense Forces
during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. He was wounded in 1969 by an Egyptian shell at the Suez Canal
, and was released from the army four months later. He completed his undergraduate studies in history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
and received a doctorate in Anglo-German relations from the University of Cambridge
.
, and also served as a reservist, taking part in the siege of Beirut
in a mortar unit. In 1986, he did reserve duty in the West Bank
. In 1988, when he was called up for reserve duty during the First Intifada
, he refused to serve
and spent three weeks in jail.
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 Palmach
, then turning his attention to the origins of the Palestinian refugee problem. Mainstream Israeli historiography
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 '.
Morris coined the term "New Historians" to describe himself, and historians Avi Shlaim
and Ilan Pappe
. All three were attacked by the Israeli right, accused of being anti-Semites and Arab lovers, and compared to Holocaust deniers
.
When Conrad Black
bought the Post in 1990, Morris was one of the 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 Weizman
, 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
.
His work has been cited and criticized by Arab writers for failing to use the evidence he found of forced evictions of Palestinians in 1948 from their homes and land,. His views seemed to harden in 2000 after the Palestinian rejection of President Clinton's peace accords and the beginning of the Second Intifada:
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:
Morris has called the Israel-Palestinian conflict a facet of a global clash of civilizations
between Islamic fundamentalism
and the Western World
, 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 Haaretz
interviewer called the 1948 Palestinian exodus
"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."
Morris endorses the creation of a Palestinian state, as reducing the urge for violence against Israelis. But he thinks Israel needs take measures to protect her citizens in the meantime:
“We have to try to heal the Palestinians. Maybe over the years the establishment of a Palestinian state will help in the healing process. 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.” This was said in the context of Palestinian terrorists and suicide bombers during the second intifada.
In the end, he says, the Jews, in their restored existence as a national state, are the greater victims, past and potential:
"...that's so for the Jewish people, not the Palestinians. A people that suffered for 2,000 years, that went through the Holocaust, arrives at its patrimony but is thrust into a renewed round of bloodshed, that is perhaps the road to annihilation. In terms of cosmic justice, that's terrible. It's far more shocking than what happened in 1948 to a small part of the Arab nation that was then in Palestine."
"...We are the greater victims in the course of history and we are also the greater potential victim. Even though we are oppressing the Palestinians, we are the weaker side here. We are a small minority in a large sea of hostile Arabs who want to eliminate us. So it's possible than when their desire is realized, everyone will understand what I am saying to you now. Everyone will understand we are the true victims. But by then it will be too late."
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-ed
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 Standard
Morris argues for a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Iran as the only alternative left to stop the Iranian nuclear program.
Morris' comments concerning the Palestinian expulsions in 1948 have also proved controversial in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 2004:
These comments have been interpreted by Morris' critics as the endorsement of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, after Morris stated Ben-Gurion's expulsions had not gone far enough.
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 Mapai
and Mapam
policy during the exodus, the IDF
report of July 1948 on its causes, Yosef Weitz's involvement in the events, and some cases of expulsions that occurred in the fifties. Although Morris dismisses the claim that the Palestinians were systematically expelled due to orders from Israeli officials, he nevertheless cites an IDF Intelligence Report that concludes that 70% of the exodus was caused by Israeli forces and 'Jewish dissidents
The IDF report lists: 'the factors that precipitated the exodus in order of importance -
1) direct, hostile Jewish [Haganah/IDF] operations against Arab settlements.
2) the effect of our [Haganah/IDF] hostile operations on nearby Arab settlements
3)Operations of the Jewish dissidents [the Irgun Z'va'i Leumi and Lohamei Herut Yisrael]'
Collectively these 3 factors were considered to be responsible for causing 70% of the exodus, according to the IDF report. Furthermore, Morris states 'the report makes no mention of any blanket order issued over Arab radio stations or through other means, to the Palestinians to evacuate their homes and villages' despite as Morris states the IDF 'monitoring Arab radio transmissions'. Confirming as has been argued elsewhere, notably by Avi Shlaim in 'the debate about 1948' that the myth of the invading 'Arab armies' calling Palestinians to flee is totally unsustainable and without substance.
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 1948 Palestine war
. Yoav Gelber
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 war 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 solution
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.
, professor of international relations at the University of Oxford
, 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 Pappe, argue that he has relied too heavily on Israeli sources and hardly at all on the Arabs. Norman Finkelstein
and Nur Masalha argue that Morris has been too soft on the Israelis, often ignoring the force of his own evidence. Efraim Karsh 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 London
, 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 Sayigh
, 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 Lustick
, 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 Zionism
, 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 Shapira
, 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.'"
Finkelstein and Masalha
From the other side Morris has been criticised by Norman Finkelstein
and Nur Masalha
. They argue that Morris’s conclusions have a pro-Israeli bias, in that:
Both Finkelstein and Masalha prefer the 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 conclusion that there was no transfer policy.
Ilan Pappé
Benny Morris wrote a fiercely critical review of Ilan Pappé
's book A History of Modern Palestine for The New Republic
. 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, criticizes Morris's decision, which Palumbo thinks characteristic of Israeli revisionist historians
generally, to rely mainly on official, 'carefully screened' Israeli sources, especially for radio transcripts of Arab broadcasts, while disregarding unofficial Israeli sources such as BBC
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 IDF
atrocities, as well as oral testimonies of Palestinians and Israelis, which can be reliable if their substance can be independently verified. Palumbo says:
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev is a university in Beersheba, Israel, established in 1969. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has a current enrollment of 17,400 students, and is one of Israel's fastest growing universities....
in the city of Be'er Sheva, Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. He is a key member of the group of Israeli historians known as the "New Historians
New Historians
The New Historians are a loosely-defined group of Israeli historians who have challenged traditional versions of Israeli history, including Israel's role in the Palestinian Exodus in 1948 and Arab willingness to discuss peace. The term was coined in 1988 by one of the leading New Historians, Benny...
".
Morris's work on the Arab-Israeli conflict and especially the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Israeli-Palestinian conflict
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The conflict is wide-ranging, and the term is also used in reference to the earlier phases of the same conflict, between Jewish and Zionist yishuv and the Arab population living in Palestine under Ottoman or...
has won praise and criticism from both sides of the political divide. He is accused by some academics in Israel of only using Israeli and never Arab sources, creating an "unbalanced picture." Regarding himself as a Zionist
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
, he writes, "I embarked upon the research not out of ideological commitment or political interest. I simply wanted to know what happened."
Biography
Morris was born in KibbutzKibbutz
A 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 HaHoresh
Ein HaHoresh
Ein HaHoresh is a kibbutz in central Israel within the jurisdiction of the Hefer Valley Regional Council.It was founded in November of 1931 by Hashomer Hatzair members from Eastern Europe who reclaimed the land...
, the son of Jewish immigrants from the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. His father, Ya'akov Morris, was an Israeli diplomat
Diplomat
A diplomat is a person appointed by a state to conduct diplomacy with another state or international organization. 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 Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, Benny Morris "grew up in the heart of a left-wing pioneering atmosphere."
His parents left their kibbutz and moved to Jerusalem when Morris was a 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 served as a paratrooper in the Israel Defense Forces
Israel Defense Forces
The Israel Defense Forces , commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym Tzahal , are the military forces of the State of Israel. They consist of 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 Canal
Suez Canal
The Suez Canal , also known by the nickname "The Highway to India", is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Opened in November 1869 after 10 years of construction work, it allows water transportation between Europe and Asia without navigation...
, and was released from the army four months later. He completed his undergraduate studies in history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...
and received a doctorate in Anglo-German relations from the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
.
Journalistic career and military refusal
After graduation from the University of Cambridge he returned to Jerusalem and worked as a correspondent for the Jerusalem Post for 12 years. In 1982, he covered the Lebanon War1982 Lebanon War
The 1982 Lebanon War , , called Operation Peace for Galilee by Israel, and later known in Israel as the Lebanon War and First Lebanon War, began on 6 June 1982, when the Israel Defense Forces invaded southern Lebanon...
, and also served as a reservist, taking part in the siege of Beirut
Beirut
Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon, with a population ranging from 1 million to more than 2 million . Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean coastline, it serves as the country's largest and main seaport, and also forms the Beirut Metropolitan...
in a mortar unit. In 1986, he did reserve duty in the West Bank
West Bank
The West Bank ) of the Jordan River is the landlocked geographical eastern part of the Palestinian territories located in Western Asia. To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel. To the east, across the Jordan River, lies the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan...
. In 1988, when he was called up for reserve duty during the First Intifada
First Intifada
The First Intifada was a Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories. The uprising began in the Jabalia refugee camp and quickly spread throughout Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem....
, he refused to serve
Refusal to serve in the Israeli military
Refusal 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 pacifist or anti-militarist views or disagreement with the policies of the Israeli government as implemented by the army, such as the...
and spent three weeks in jail.
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 Palmach
Palmach
The Palmach was the elite fighting force of the Haganah, the underground 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 historiography
Historiography
Historiography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialized topic...
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 '.
Morris coined the term "New Historians" to describe himself, and historians Avi Shlaim
Avi Shlaim
Avi Shlaim FBA is a British/Israeli 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 Pappe
Ilan Pappé
Ilan Pappé is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the UK, director of the university's European Centre for Palestine Studies, co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies, and political activist...
. All three were attacked by the Israeli right, accused of being anti-Semites and Arab lovers, and compared to Holocaust deniers
Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is the act of denying the genocide of Jews in World War II, usually referred to as the Holocaust. The key claims of Holocaust denial are: the German Nazi government had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews, Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas...
.
When Conrad Black
Conrad Black
Conrad Moffat Black, Baron Black of Crossharbour, OC, KCSG, PC is a Canadian-born member of the British House of Lords, and a historian, columnist and publisher, who was for a time the third largest newspaper magnate in the world. Lord Black controlled Hollinger International, Inc...
bought the Post in 1990, Morris was one of the 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 Weizman
Ezer Weizman
' was the seventh President of Israel, first elected in 1993 and re-elected in 1998. Before the presidency, Weizman was commander of the Israeli Air Force and Minister of Defense.-Biography:...
, 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
Beersheba
Beersheba is the largest city in the Negev desert of southern Israel. Often referred to as the "Capital of the Negev", it is the seventh-largest city in Israel with a population of 194,300....
.
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 criticized by Arab writers for failing to use the evidence he found of forced evictions of Palestinians in 1948 from their homes and land,. 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 SheliLeft Camp of IsraelThe 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
Fifth column
A fifth column is a group of people who clandestinely undermine a larger group such as a nation from within.-Origin:The term originated with a 1936 radio address by Emilio Mola, a Nationalist General during the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War...
' 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 has called the Israel-Palestinian conflict a facet of a global clash of civilizations
Clash of Civilizations
The 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 fundamentalism
Islamic fundamentalism
Islamic fundamentalism 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. According to Christine L...
and the Western World
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
, 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 Haaretz
Haaretz
Haaretz 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 exodus
1948 Palestinian exodus
The 1948 Palestinian exodus , also known as the Nakba , occurred when approximately 711,000 to 725,000 Palestinian Arabs left, fled or were expelled from their homes, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the Civil War that preceded it. The exact number of refugees is a matter of dispute...
"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."
Morris endorses the creation of a Palestinian state, as reducing the urge for violence against Israelis. But he thinks Israel needs take measures to protect her citizens in the meantime:
“We have to try to heal the Palestinians. Maybe over the years the establishment of a Palestinian state will help in the healing process. 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.” This was said in the context of Palestinian terrorists and suicide bombers during the second intifada.
In the end, he says, the Jews, in their restored existence as a national state, are the greater victims, past and potential:
"...that's so for the Jewish people, not the Palestinians. A people that suffered for 2,000 years, that went through the Holocaust, arrives at its patrimony but is thrust into a renewed round of bloodshed, that is perhaps the road to annihilation. In terms of cosmic justice, that's terrible. It's far more shocking than what happened in 1948 to a small part of the Arab nation that was then in Palestine."
"...We are the greater victims in the course of history and we are also the greater potential victim. Even though we are oppressing the Palestinians, we are the weaker side here. We are a small minority in a large sea of hostile Arabs who want to eliminate us. So it's possible than when their desire is realized, everyone will understand what I am saying to you now. Everyone will understand we are the true victims. But by then it will be too late."
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-ed
Op-ed
An 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...
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 Standard
Der Standard
Der Standard is an Austrian national daily newspaper which is published in Vienna . 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.
Morris' comments concerning the Palestinian expulsions in 1948 have also proved controversial in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 2004:
if he was already engaged in the expulsion, maybe he should have done a completed job. I know that this stuns the Arabs and the liberals and the politically correct types. But my feeling is that this place would be quieter and know less suffering if the matter had been resolved once and for all. If Ben-Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleaned the whole country - the whole land of Israel, as far as the Jordan valley. It may yet turn out this was his fatal mistake. If he had carried out a full expulsion - rather than a partial expulsion - he would have stabilized the state of Israel for generations
These comments have been interpreted by Morris' critics as the endorsement of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, after Morris stated Ben-Gurion's expulsions had not gone far enough.
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 Mapai
Mapai
Mapai 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...
and Mapam
Mapam
Mapam was a political party in Israel and is one of the ancestors of the modern-day Meretz party.-History:Mapam was formed by a January 1948 merger of the Hashomer Hatzair Workers Party and Ahdut HaAvoda Poale Zion Movement. The party was originally Marxist-Zionist in its outlook and represented...
policy during the exodus, the IDF
Israel Defense Forces
The Israel Defense Forces , commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym Tzahal , are the military forces of the State of Israel. They consist of 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. Although Morris dismisses the claim that the Palestinians were systematically expelled due to orders from Israeli officials, he nevertheless cites an IDF Intelligence Report that concludes that 70% of the exodus was caused by Israeli forces and 'Jewish dissidents
The IDF report lists: 'the factors that precipitated the exodus in order of importance -
1) direct, hostile Jewish [Haganah/IDF] operations against Arab settlements.
2) the effect of our [Haganah/IDF] hostile operations on nearby Arab settlements
3)Operations of the Jewish dissidents [the Irgun Z'va'i Leumi and Lohamei Herut Yisrael]'
Collectively these 3 factors were considered to be responsible for causing 70% of the exodus, according to the IDF report. Furthermore, Morris states 'the report makes no mention of any blanket order issued over Arab radio stations or through other means, to the Palestinians to evacuate their homes and villages' despite as Morris states the IDF 'monitoring Arab radio transmissions'. Confirming as has been argued elsewhere, notably by Avi Shlaim in 'the debate about 1948' that the myth of the invading 'Arab armies' calling Palestinians to flee is totally unsustainable and without substance.
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 1948 Palestine war
1948 Palestine war
The 1948 Palestine war refers to the events in the British Mandate of Palestine between the United Nations vote on the partition plan on November 30, 1947, to the end of the first Arab-Israeli war on July 20, 1949.The war is divided into two phases:...
. Yoav Gelber
Yoav Gelber
Yoav Gelber is a professor of history at the University of Haifa, and was formerly a visiting professor at The University of Texas at Austin....
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 war 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 solution
Two-state solution
The 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.
Praise and criticism
Avi ShlaimAvi Shlaim
Avi Shlaim FBA is a British/Israeli 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 Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
, 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
Avraham Sela
Avraham Sela is a scholar on the Middle East and international relations, currently the A. Ephraim and Shirley Diamond Professor of International Relations and a senior research fellow at the Harry S...
, but also historians on the left such as Ilan Pappe, argue that he has relied too heavily on Israeli sources and hardly at all on the Arabs. Norman Finkelstein
Norman Finkelstein
Norman Gary Finkelstein is an American political scientist, activist and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust. He is a graduate of Binghamton University and 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 Karsh alleges that Morris has distorted source material, an allegation not accepted by other historians.
Efraim Karsh
Efraim Karsh
Efraim Karsh
Efraim Karsh is professor and head of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King's College London, and director of the Philadelphia-based think tank, the Middle East Forum...
, professor of Mediterranean Studies at King's College London
King's College London
King's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...
, 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 Sayigh
Yezid Sayigh
Yezid 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 Lustick
Ian Lustick
Ian 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 Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
, 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 Shapira
Anita Shapira
Anita 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.'"
Finkelstein and Masalha
From the other side Morris has been criticised by Norman Finkelstein
Norman Finkelstein
Norman Gary Finkelstein is an American political scientist, activist and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust. He is a graduate of Binghamton University and received his Ph.D in Political Science from Princeton University...
and Nur Masalha
Nur-eldeen Masalha
Nur-eldeen Masalha is a Palestinian writer and academic.He is Professor of Religion and Politics and Director of the Centre for Religion and History and the Holy Land Research Project at St. Mary's University College, University of Surrey...
. 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 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 conclusion that there was no transfer policy.
Ilan Pappé
Benny Morris wrote a fiercely critical review of Ilan Pappé
Ilan Pappé
Ilan Pappé is a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the UK, director of the university's European Centre for Palestine Studies, co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies, and political activist...
's book A History of Modern Palestine for The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
. 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, criticizes Morris's decision, which Palumbo thinks characteristic of Israeli revisionist historians
New Historians
The New Historians are a loosely-defined group of Israeli historians who have challenged traditional versions of Israeli history, including Israel's role in the Palestinian Exodus in 1948 and Arab willingness to discuss peace. The term was coined in 1988 by one of the leading New Historians, Benny...
generally, to rely mainly on official, 'carefully screened' Israeli sources, especially for radio transcripts of Arab broadcasts, while disregarding unofficial Israeli sources such as BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
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 IDF
Israel Defense Forces
The Israel Defense Forces , commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym Tzahal , are the military forces of the State of Israel. They consist of 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...
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 YassinDeir Yassin was a Palestinian Arab village of around 600 people near Jerusalem. It had declared its neutrality during the 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine between Arabs and Jews...
, LyddaLodLod is a city located on the Sharon Plain southeast of Tel Aviv in the Center District of Israel. At the end of 2010, it had a population of 70,000, roughly 75 percent Jewish and 25 percent Arab.The name is derived from the Biblical city of Lod...
-Ramle and JaffaJaffaJaffa is an ancient port city believed to be one of the oldest in the world. Jaffa was incorporated with Tel Aviv creating the city of Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel. Jaffa is famous for its association with the biblical story of the prophet Jonah.-Etymology:...
.
Published works
- The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, Cambridge University Press, 1988. ISBN 978-0521330282
- Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence ServicesIsrael's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence ServicesIsrael's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services is a 1991 book written by Ian Black and Benny Morris about the history of the Israeli intelligence services from the period of the Yishuv to the end of the 1980s...
, New York, Grove Weidenfeld, 1991. ISBN 978-0802111593 - Israel's Border Wars 1949-1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993. ISBN 9780198292623
- 1948 and after; Israel and the Palestinians1948 and after; Israel and the Palestinians1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians is a collection of essays by the Israeli historian Benny Morris. The book was first published in hardcover in 1990. It was revised and expanded, and published by Clarendon Press, Oxford, in 1994, ISBN 0-19-827929-9.The expanded 1994 edition contained a...
, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994. ISBN 0-19-827929-9 - Correcting a Mistake? Jews and Arabs in Palestine/Israel, 1936-1956, Am Oved Publishers, 2000.
- The Road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2003. ISBN 978-1860648120
- The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University PressCambridge University PressCambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
, 2004. - Making Israel (ed), University of Michigan Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0472115419
- 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War, Yale University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0300126969
- One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict, Yale University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0300122817
See also
- History of IsraelHistory of IsraelThe State of Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948 after almost two millennia of Jewish dispersal and persecution around the Mediterranean. From the late 19th century the Zionist movement worked towards the goal of recreating a homeland for the Jewish people...
- 1948 Palestinian exodus1948 Palestinian exodusThe 1948 Palestinian exodus , also known as the Nakba , occurred when approximately 711,000 to 725,000 Palestinian Arabs left, fled or were expelled from their homes, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the Civil War that preceded it. The exact number of refugees is a matter of dispute...
- Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodusCauses 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 between historians and journalists, and of 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 BooksThe New York Review of BooksThe 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
- 1 hour interview of Benny Morris about the 1948 war (2008)
- Journal of Palestinian Studies Vol 21(1), p. 98-114 :Morris Response to Finklestein and Masalah
- History in the (almost) making, YnetnewsYnetnewsYnetnews is the online English language Israeli news website of Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s most-read newspaper, and the Hebrew Israel news portal, Ynet...
, November 2007 - ISRAEL AT 60: From Dove to Hawk NewsweekNewsweekNewsweek is an American weekly news magazine 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 - Benny Morris debates with Norman Finkelstein On RT CrossTalk May 21, 2010