An audience with Benny Morris, the historian whose exposure of Israeli atrocities during the war of independence marked him out as a bete-noire of the nationalist right, provides a startling illustration of the corrosive impact of the intifada on Israeli opinion and the peace process.
Fifteen years after the publication of his landmark tome The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, Morris has now produced a new version with conclusions that have overturned the reputation of a man who still considers himself a leftist.
"There are circumstances in history in which ethnic cleansing actually turns things out for the better, makes things better," the 55-year-old history professor said in an interview here, in reference to the first Arab-Israeli conflict.
Some 700,000 Palestinians left their homeland, either forcibly or voluntarily, during the conflict which culminated with the proclamation of the Jewish state in May 1948.
Now numbering some 3.7 million, these refugees and their descendants constitute one of the principal obstacles to peace in the Middle East conflict.
Born several months after the creation of Israel, Morris, a former journalist who is now a professor of history at Ben Gurion university in the southern town of Beersheba, forged his reputation with his searing expose of the atrocities committed against the civilian Palestinian population during the first conflict.
In the eyes of the Israeli right, only a militant anti-Zionist could have penned such a book and delivered such ammunition to the enemy.
Since then the label of new historian has stuck.
It's a description Morris is happy with as it implies "looking afresh at Israel's past and revising that history on the basis of documentation."
"And if the revised history means Israel looks worse or reveals things which were not particularly favorable about Israel's behavior, so be it."
Morris' publishers have also just published a Hebrew version of Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001, a comprehensive history of the conflict which was first written in English at a time when the Oslo peace accords appeared to promise a brighter future.
"In the 1990s, I was cautiously optimistic that the Palestinians were really willing, they were sincere and they were really willing to accept a two-state solution," he said.
But his optimism has taken a pounding both from a deep immersion in the history archives and the launch of the intifada, or Palestinian uprising, at the end of September 2000.
"In the year 2000, it dawned on me that the Jews really were bigger victims," he said. "The people here who are in danger of actual annihilation and genocide are the Jews. The Arabs do not face that. The worst they face is expulsion."
Morris has also become increasingly convinced that the Palestinians are not prepared to compromise.
"They want the whole of Palestine. They want the destruction of the Jewish state."
Morris speaks without embarrassment of "a partial ethnic cleansing" which took place at the birth of the state of Israel.
"No Jewish state would have been established in 1948 without the displacement of 700,000 Arabs," he said.
He even appears to regret that the founders of the state did not expel all the Arabs.
"Had the war ended with the Jews in possession of and living west of the Jordan river in Palestine and Arabs of Palestine going across the Jordan ... the Middle East would have been a quieter place and the two peoples, in my view, would have been much happier."
Morris concedes that expelling Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip "today would be immoral and impractical."
But he adds that he does not rule out the possibility that such a scenario may one day become necessary if the Arab-Israelis join forces with neighboring countries in a concerted attack on the Jewish state.
LANDMARK CASE: ‘Every night we were dragged to US soldiers and sexually abused. Every week we were forced to undergo venereal disease tests,’ a victim said More than 100 South Korean women who were forced to work as prostitutes for US soldiers stationed in the country have filed a landmark lawsuit accusing Washington of abuse, their lawyers said yesterday. Historians and activists say tens of thousands of South Korean women worked for state-sanctioned brothels from the 1950s to 1980s, serving US troops stationed in country to protect the South from North Korea. In 2022, South Korea’s top court ruled that the government had illegally “established, managed and operated” such brothels for the US military, ordering it to pay about 120 plaintiffs compensation. Last week, 117 victims
China on Monday announced its first ever sanctions against an individual Japanese lawmaker, targeting China-born Hei Seki for “spreading fallacies” on issues such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and disputed islands, prompting a protest from Tokyo. Beijing has an ongoing spat with Tokyo over islands in the East China Sea claimed by both countries, and considers foreign criticism on sensitive political topics to be acts of interference. Seki, a naturalised Japanese citizen, “spread false information, colluded with Japanese anti-China forces, and wantonly attacked and smeared China”, foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters on Monday. “For his own selfish interests, (Seki)
Argentine President Javier Milei on Sunday vowed to “accelerate” his libertarian reforms after a crushing defeat in Buenos Aires provincial elections. The 54-year-old economist has slashed public spending, dismissed tens of thousands of public employees and led a major deregulation drive since taking office in December 2023. He acknowledged his party’s “clear defeat” by the center-left Peronist movement in the elections to the legislature of Buenos Aires province, the country’s economic powerhouse. A deflated-sounding Milei admitted to unspecified “mistakes” which he vowed to “correct,” but said he would not be swayed “one millimeter” from his reform agenda. “We will deepen and accelerate it,” he
Japan yesterday heralded the coming-of-age of Japanese Prince Hisahito with an elaborate ceremony at the Imperial Palace, where a succession crisis is brewing. The nephew of Japanese Emperor Naruhito, Hisahito received a black silk-and-lacquer crown at the ceremony, which marks the beginning of his royal adult life. “Thank you very much for bestowing the crown today at the coming-of-age ceremony,” Hisahito said. “I will fulfill my duties, being aware of my responsibilities as an adult member of the imperial family.” Although the emperor has a daughter — Princess Aiko — the 23-year-old has been sidelined by the royal family’s male-only
RSS